What's Your Price Limit?

[overgeeked]

Physical books, $60 as an absolute cap. Digital books, $20 as an absolute cap.

As much as I care about the people on the publisher's side of things, supporting them, and helping make sure they can keep making the stuff I love...that doesn't magically create more money in my pocket to spend.

Thankfully a lot of the stuff I love the most is at or well under those caps. The OSR/NSR scenes have done a great job with black and white art and form factors to keep costs down. I think one of my favorites for this is Whitehack. It's just text on the page with maybe 10 images. No fancy and expensive art. No full-color printing.

 

[aramis erak]

I recently noticed that the Player Core and GM Core for Starfinder 2 are $70 each. That's $140 for basically the same material that was $60 in 2018. Add the monster book and that's $210 to get into Starfinder 2.
Yes, inflation. Yes, tariffs. I get it. Paizo can charge what they want. Maybe Starfinder 2 is even so good that it's worth $500. And yes, Archives of Nethys will be free. And yes, PDFs and Pocket rulebooks are cheaper.
But in the era of Shadowdark (which FYI I didn't love), Dragonbane, and Daggerheart when you can get a full game for $50-60, does $210 seem excessive? Does the very thick, three core rulebook model need to continue in the era of $210 games? (This might be the most expensive core system by a major publisher.)
I never played Starfinder 1 - my books went unused. But I did purchase them for study and consideration by my group. I can't see myself dropping $210 for that now.

My limit is about $80 for core rules on paper.
Which, generally, I've found, is good for most everything coming out except D&D and Rolemaster. I paid under cover for Daggerheart dead tree, including shipping.

 

[Koloth]

In 1980, The AD&D PHB was $10 by the price list in the back with a page count of 126. (DMG listed as future publication) Adjusted for inflation, today's price would be $39. By comparison, the PF2 Players Core is listed at $60 on Paizo web site and it has a page count of 326. By page count, today's prices are a bargain compared to 1980. Page count isn't a perfect comparison as the type face in the old PHB is smaller and more dense. But even accounting for font size and such, I think we are probably paying a bit less per word then we did in 1980.
Another point of comparision is the old PHB is black and white compared to the PF2 book being color.
I don't really have a firm price limit but have become fairly selective on what systems I support due to lack of shelf space.

used this inflation site: Inflation Calculator | Find US Dollar's Value From 1913-2025

 

[Micah Sweet]

But that's not quite right, is it?

Because I think it's relatively uncontroversial to say the vast majority of TTRPG books purchased don't get used for actual campaigns, thus dropping $210 is a much bigger issue than it would be from a $/hour perspective (which to be clear, is an sketchy metric, so let's not get too deep into it) if there was certainty. Certainly I wouldn't get into a niche RPG like Starfinder 2 for $210. Like, no way.

Also, we're discussing hardcovers and so on, which are @Morrus outlines are unprofitable, with thin margins or are actively loss-leading. But is that how most companies make most sales revenue (we know it's not how they make most profit)? I mean, I don't know, I genuinely don't, but I'm presuming not, because personally I have over the last 10 years about a 50:1 Digital:Real book purchase ratio, and I know for a lot of other people, it's at least 5:1, and many people purchase both the physical and digital versions of books (sometimes multiple digital versions). Which is presumably how the business keeps running at all!

For me the price limit is dependent on a number of factors, it's quite flexible:

1) How likely am I to actually run/use this RPG/RPG product?

If this is low, then the price limit goes downwards rapidly. Like, I bought Daggerheart digital because I didn't expect to actually run it. But after I had run it, and it was a big hit, I bought the physical copy.

Starfinder 2, for example, the odds of running it are low at best, so the idea of dropping $210 on it sounds insane to me. It seems to me like Paizo have been very self-indulgent in the format they've chosen there too. Does it need to be three books? I rather doubt it.

2) What am I getting? Does it have good art? Is it generally high-quality?

Like, the value of what you're getting matters. Good art, for me, will really significantly raise the price ceiling. If it's a physical product, the perceived quality and number of pages does really raise the price limit a lot potentially. Anything that's "digest format" absolutely lowers the limit a ton for me lol. As does anything like the demented "3 64-page hardcovers" approach of modern Spelljammer. You're giving me something I actively don't want. That has actual negative value.

3) Is it by someone - i.e. a person or company I know and like/respect?

This is a smaller factor but still matters - I will definitely pay more for, and feel better about paying more for a product from an author/company I like. Like say, Grant Howitt and Rowan, Rook and Deckard, I buy most things they make in PDF at least. Whereas WotC? Pfffft. Actively lowers how much I'm willing to pay - they're a massive corporation and they've managed to destroy all good will I had towards them over the last few years (I don't hate them or anything, but like, they get no more breaks than McDonalds' would, say), and they absolutely don't need my support.

I basically feel the same way. I buy physical copies from publishers I care about (all the EN Publishing Level Up books, for example, and a couple other games that matter to me personally), but everything else gets pdf at best. I just can't afford to do otherwise.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

You can barely find board games for less than 60 bucks anymore so I dont think the price is outrageous.

$210 is a pretty huge buy in compared to $60 or even $100 though. Like, a complete core of an RPG for $80? Yeah okay, if I'm definitely going to play it at least a few times, or I insanely love the concept, sure.

But $210 for it to be complete? Bloody hell. I'd have to be certain I was going to run an entire-ass campaign. Very few RPGs warrant that kind of certainty. Not even 5E 2024 does for my money.

 

[payn]

$210 is a pretty huge buy in compared to $60 or even $100 though. Like, a complete core of an RPG for $80? Yeah okay, if I'm definitely going to play it at least a few times, or I insanely love the concept, sure.

But $210 for it to be complete? Bloody hell. I'd have to be certain I was going to run an entire-ass campaign. Very few RPGs warrant that kind of certainty. Not even 5E 2024 does for my money.

I spent that and then some as an adventure path subscriber (that included PDFs) for many years. Hobbies cost money and I don’t bat an eye at RPGs which I consider some of the most affordable.

 

[Clint_L]

For me the main cost is storage space, so now I buy very few books that aren’t digital. One so far this year (the new MM). But books overall are a drop in the bucket compared to what I spend on accessories, especially miniatures, terrain, and paint.

I impulse buy $10-30 books on DDB all the time. Often just to support the publisher.

 

[GrimCo]

For real game use, i buy only digital.

Dead wood, i treat like art books or comic books. If they are good quality and i like them, i'll drop 40-50e on the spot without blinkig. It's my 1 round rule aka anything i really like and wont that's in the price range of 1 round of drinks in my favorite bar, i'm buying.

While 210$ isn't cheap, you don't need to buy all the book at once. Break it down into 3 purchases over 3 months. Buy 1, read it, learn rules, rinse and repeat.

 

[schneeland]

For me, something like 10% of the stuff I buy ever hits the table. Of that, a lot of it is a one shot, or a few session campaign. The challenge for me, as a buyer, is that there is just too much content, and I will never come close to playing it all.

I think this is the key point for me, too: like many people in the hobby, I buy more stuff than I read, let alone play. Theoretically, I can sustain my TTRPG needs completely from what I have in my shelves and on my harddrive. I continue to buy more stuff, but that's mostly because either I find it compelling enough or because I want to support the creator, but while I keep telling myself that I will play a lot of the stuff I buy, I also at least subconsciously know my optimism in that regard is unfounded.
As a result, my willingness to shell out large amounts of money for new systems has gone down quite a bit. It's less that there's a hard limit, but if specific price points are exceeded - e.g. more than 20€ for a PDF, more than 50€ for a printed book, more than 100€ for a special edition - I often think again whether I really need it immediately or whether I just wait until it shows up in retail/on DriveThruRPG.
And then there's also the fact that often enough things show up in bundles after a year or two. Especially for systems in which I have more of a passing interest, this option has become too attractive to ignore.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I spent that and then some as an adventure path subscriber (that included PDFs) for many years. Hobbies cost money and I don’t bat an eye at RPGs which I consider some of the most affordable.

That's not the same thing though, is it?

Spending a certain amount monthly or quarterly on adventures/campaigns for an RPG you already have makes a significant degree of sense, and is pretty natural, I'd say.

It's a very different proposition to having to drop $210 to get all the parts needed to make an RPG even functional. Especially when that RPG is a relatively niche prospect. That said, presumably Paizo have some reason to believe SF2 will sell at this price (I say presumably because bigger companies have made baseless assumptions on things like this before).