What's Your Price Limit?

[payn]

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).

That presumption must be strong in that you can get most of the rules free online via SRD. So, its likely that 210 fee isnt too outrageous for a lot of gamers. Paizo stuff isnt D&D level, but its a level above a lot of indie stuff in available playerbase. Folks have a kick the tires option and then they have a high quality physical buy in option. Its unusual as most RPGs seem to get little beyond the core rulebook into stores if not KS exculsive. Though, any store I go into I know two things for certain, it will have D&D and it will have PF/SF on the shelf. Anything after that is a guess and a surprise.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Though, any store I go into I know two things for certain, it will have D&D and it will have PF/SF on the shelf. Anything after that is a guess and a surprise.

By store you mean FLGS?

 

[payn]

By store you mean FLGS?

Those and bookstores like Barnes and Noble in U.S.

 

[dragoner]

I dropped upwards of four bills on mongoose stuff, wound up probably not going to run a game, oh well, does sting a bit. I think the policy of $60 per book, and $20 per PDF is reasonable; for my own books, it is a lot cheaper, I have used stock art and stuff for high value: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/19875/Wild-Bee-Publishing Though the big books are cool and look great on the shelf, I am also thinking of doing a run as digest sized books maybe, a little more portable.

 

[delericho]

I don't have a fixed amount, but these days for any physical product I buy I need to be confident that I'll actually use it extensively.

In terms of received value for money, sadly it doesn't look good. The core rulebooks of almost all the systems I own have been absurdly good value. But almost nothing else has been - most of it never saw use at the table, and most of what did see use was only a few pages out of a big book in a handful of sessions.

 

[aco175]

For that price in a game I have not played or sure others in my group would play, I would want to first buy a starter set expecting to pay $30-40 for. If that was well received, I would buy books at $70ish. Maybe only 1/month or something but when compared to what I spend on golf it seems that I can afford it.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

I'll just say this: I LOVE my hobbies.

I support my TTRPG hobby as much as I can when I can. People put work into these products, wether you value the work or the result of the work it doesn't matter. People put time and effort into the final product and if you want to use that product and support the work, you do that with your dollars.

If you cant afford it? I get that! But to complain about paying $60 - $80 for a hardcover, full color, 400+ book when if you were paying for the equivalent textbook in college it would probably twice or three times that? Even looking for a specific Python programming book I wanted and that book was roughly 200+ pages, paperback and black and white and it was $73!!

It's an option, It's a hobby. Either we support the things that we like with our dollars or they go away.

And I guess as a long time Warhammer 40k guy I really dont empathize with people complaining about paying $60 - $180 for a few hardcovers that are possibly going to give them days if not MONTHS of entertainment value. When I can easily drop $60 -$80 on a box of miniatures that I have to assemble and paint myself (And I WANT TO DO THIS. It's part of the hobby that I love and enjoy! LOL)

 

[Desdichado]

TTRPG books are massively undervalued. The profit margins are non-existent, and creators get paid less than minimum wage for a book which took many people months or years to make, and which you can get months or years of use out of.

So, yeah, $70 doesn't pay for a hardcover TTRPG book.

WotC sells its core rules -- three books -- for, what $30 each? Depending on where you are in the world. But it's Hasbro and can print hundreds of thousands of them at a time, and so pays pittance for each book. And in doing so, trains the market what a hardcover TTRPG book is worth.

Troll Lord Games sells their core full color hardback rule books for $49/each, and they don't use low cost printing countries. Maybe they're really bad businessmen and are losing $50 on every book that the sell, but they certainly look like a counter example to your math there.

And they're only $40 on Amazon.

To answer the original question, absolutely would not pay that much for a refreshed version of a rules system. I struggle to spend more than $50 on any gaming product, honestly—that's kind of my limit on what is reasonable. And it better be something really amazing to expect me to pay that much.

 

[Morrus]

Troll Lord Games sells their core full color hardback rule books for $49/each, and they don't use low cost printing countries. Maybe they're really bad businessmen and are losing $50 on every book that the sell, but they certainly look like a counter example to your math there.

And they're only $40 on Amazon.

I don’t know what they pay themselves, their creators, or their suppliers, but it’s important to note that I said that creators being fairly paid for their work is what would price a book out of the market. That important caveat is crucial to understanding what I said, otherwise my post is just a nonsensical half of a thought.

 

[TheAlkaizer]

I actually looked into the Galaxy book for Starfinder 2 a few week back and was shocked at the price increase. I'm from Canada, so we get wrecked with the currency conversion, the shipping and all that jazz. Paizo books used to be around 60-65$ CAD in my FLGS (around 45-50$USD). They are now 79.99$. I just didn't buy it. It's a price too high for a system that I might not run, or run only a few times. Especially when there's several books.

Yesterday, I stopped at the same FLGS and I found Shadowdark. I was surprised. But the price was 82.99$ CAD (+tax) which is the priciest (non-premium or special edition) TTRPG book I've seen. I couldn't get myself to spend a hundred bucks on it.

So I don't know where my price limit is, it kind of depends on some other factors. But some publishers are getting near it. Prices can increase, and it may increase profit margin, but I'm sure many like me will just buy less books total and in the long run I'm not sure if that'll be positive for every publisher.