What's Your Price Limit?

[overgeeked]

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.

I think that's a key part of this that gets constantly overlooked or lost in the shuffle. If your joy comes from simply collecting, sure. If your joy comes from simply reading, sure. If your joy comes from solo play, sure. But if your joy comes from actually playing with other people, not so much. The canard that you can buy an RPG and play it forever is so ridiculously false it smacks of white-room theorycrafting.

While it's true that a certain few core books are absurdly good value if and only if they're attached to incredibly popular games, it's absolutely not true that all RPG books are absurdly good value. There's a massive disparity between D&D, D&D-likes, licensed games of incredibly popular IP, then a massive drop off from there. As you say, most of it never sees use at the table.

You can fairly easily find a game of just about any edition of D&D, with a few notable exceptions. So the core books are incredibly good value, player-facing supplements slightly less so, DM-facing supplements slightly less so, etc.

Niche games or less popular genres? Forget it. You better love staring lovingly at a shelf full of dusty books because you're never going to get to play most of them.

 

[Velderan]

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.

Why would you drop $210 on SF2e when you bounced off PF2e? The mechanics are the same, it’s just putting a sci-fi coat of paint on them. If you really want to throw some money away, I will give you my Venmo info and you can send it to me.

 

[TheSword]

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.

They’re terrible value for you, because you aren’t playing the game.

If you were playing the game they are amazing value. Even a simple three session adventures of five players and the DM works out at less than $10 per session per player. Play 10 sessions in a small campaign and it’s $4. Play a longer campaign over a year and it’s less than $1 per session per player.

Luckily there are lots of ways to try these games without having to shell out $210 first which is the big change that has happened in the last couple of decades.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

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).

I agree with your overall viewpoint, but I think Paizo is not expecting that people will decide, as a group, suddenly to play SF2 and buy all the books. If my group got into it, my path would be:

• Play for free at a local con
• Buy Player's PDF for $20 and play seriously in their Living Campaign
• Maybe buy the $60 Player's guide if I decided I wanted a paper form
• Buy GM's PDF for $20 and run scenarios or an Adventure Path using SRD for monsters
• Realize I really like the system and drop $200 for paper everything.

This is pretty much the same paths as I took for PF2. Actually, I stuck at the second bullet point, but my son went all the way to paper copies of the main books.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I agree with your overall viewpoint, but I think Paizo is not expecting that people will decide, as a group, suddenly to play SF2 and buy all the books. If my group got into it, my path would be:

• Play for free at a local con
• Buy Player's PDF for $20 and play seriously in their Living Campaign
• Maybe buy the $60 Player's guide if I decided I wanted a paper form
• Buy GM's PDF for $20 and run scenarios or an Adventure Path using SRD for monsters
• Realize I really like the system and drop $200 for paper everything.

This is pretty much the same paths as I took for PF2. Actually, I stuck at the second bullet point, but my son went all the way to paper copies of the main books.

I mean, cool if that works for you, but I feel like this and the "well you could read the SRD!" help show that yeah, this is a pretty massive barrier to entry when an awful lot of games you'd have everything you needed for a $30 PDF or single $60 book.

 

[LordEntrails]

I won't buy printed books, at least only under extreme conditions. The last I bought were a couple from a fantasy author that I really enjoyed talking with and the DMing presentation he did (Todd Fahnestock) at the con. The actual last hard cover was Rime of the Frostmaiden, and I won that as a door prize.

Why do I generally not buy printed books?

1. environmental waste. I'm not an environmental activist, but printed books have no significant additional value to me. They just are not that useful compared to digital and why take up the space, trees, etc.
2. I find digital a better experience. Even a PDF with proper bookmarks is easier to navigate and search than a printed book. More portable by far.
3. Price, I would struggle mightily to pay $60 for a TTRPG book. Would be much more comfortable around $45. As as Morrus pointed out, most books can not be printed for that cost. And I believe in support RPG creators. Buying hard covers doesn't really do that economically.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

The canard that you can buy an RPG and play it forever is so ridiculously false it smacks of white-room theorycrafting.

While it's true that a certain few core books are absurdly good value if and only if they're attached to incredibly popular games, it's absolutely not true that all RPG books are absurdly good value.

If you are tying your two statements together and saying it is incorrect that ALL RPG you buy you will play forever, then sure. Just like saying you will re-read EVERY book you ever buy. This is pretty much common sense.

But if you are saying that those RPGs do not exist at all, or even that they are extremely rare, I think there are a lot of counterexamples. I mean, I'm not an OSR person, but I ran an AD&D campaign a couple of years back and there are many people still playing D&D, AD&D, 3.5, 4.0 and PF1. Books from nearly 2 decades ago or longer.

For me, Call of Cthulhu is perennially playable and is a solid "forever" game. Entire conventions play basically just that game and it sells out at big cons instantly. Savage Worlds is not my favorite system -- but I've run 3 campaigns using it over the last couple of decades. FATE I've only been running for a decade, but I'm pretty sure it's a forever game. And I'm running a Pendragon campaign right now, and literally the last RPG book I've referenced for a game (session #49 -- tonight!) is Savage Mountains, from 2025.

My experience is the exact opposite of what your statement appears to say: Most games that are played are games that can be played forever, and are absurdly good value.

And this doesn't even count niche games that I run every so often but not continuously -- games like My Life With Master, Fiasco, DramaSystem -- what you might call "sporadic forever games".

I do have games that have not earned back their dollars in play time, but it's not honestly a lot. I generally try out new games at cons or online, so I don't end up with games I don't want to play very often. Maybe I'm vastly atypical, but I don't think so. YMMV!

 

[Spellslinging Sellsword]

I paid $70 for Baldur's Gate 3 on my Xbox. I spent a bit over 200 hours to complete the campaign. If I get a 4 hour session weekly game for a year for an RPG book it's roughly the same amount of time. Will I get 200 hours of play from that book? If yes, then no problem. If it is just to flip thru and set on my shelf, probably not.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

My experience is the exact opposite of what your statement appears to say: Most games that are played are games that can be played forever, and are absurdly good value.

I'm not trying to be diffficult but I don't see any contradiction at between what he said:

While it's true that a certain few core books are absurdly good value if and only if they're attached to incredibly popular games, it's absolutely not true that all RPG books are absurdly good value.

And what you're saying.

On the contrary it looks like you're really just demonstrating how he was right. Your actual examples don't show "most games" at all. Instead they're a collection of the some of the most popular games. The only even slightly obscure one is DramaSystem.

 

[Desdichado]

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.

I paid attention to your numbers, and found them nonsensical half thoughts, regardless of the rhetorical context around them, given the fact that not even Paizo, arguably the most overpriced major RPG studio, charges what you claim is necessarily to be economically valid.