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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SteveC" data-source="post: 9715508" data-attributes="member: 9053">I think this is a very good question, and it's an important one to discuss. And I'm going to say right at the start that this is only my opinion. The latest Kickstarter that arrived for me was the offset printing of Ashes Without Number. I backed that for the book + PDF for $80. Will I play it? Maybe. And yet there's no way I will be picking up the Starfinder2 books. I haven't picked up the Pathfinder2 or revised books either, despite playing the system regularly for the last couple of years.But there's more to the story than that: I have given Paizo a bunch of money for PDFs and Foundry modules, and so I'm very much a customer of theirs! And I've backed ... I think it's 20 projects in the past couple of years, for projects made by creators who've discussed their products with me on another site. So what gives? I'm willing to spend about $80 for hardcover books to support a project or developer I care about. And if you discuss your project with me? I'm going to back it on the PDF level at least, provided it's, say, $40 or less. What I'm not going to do is buy physical books for Starfinder for $140, especially since they will be available online. I don't know if I'm going to play the game, and even if I did, I'd probably never crack the book open. And, in talking with my group of friends who are 30-60 years old and can afford RPGs, they kind of say the same things.That may not be realistic or reasonable due to COVID, inflation, tariffs, supply chain issues, and everything else, but it's where I am.What that means for people creating a product: either I need to have a relationship with you where I'm going to buy your products, you need to release them electronically for less, or you need to release the rules for free and get me to buy other materials. Otherwise, I'm going to pass.There have been quite a few businesses in my area that had to close in the wake of COVID because people weren't willing to pay the prices they now needed to charge. And some of them were run by people I liked. I supported them, but not enough people did, so they had to close. Talking with a friend who ran one of those businesses, in the post-COVID world, they felt that the type of business they had was no longer viable. I'm going to put some RPGs into the same category. You might need to charge $80, $100, or more to make your product break even. If that's the case, I'm sorry, but unless you're Brandon Sanderson or something similar, you either have to find another model for making money, or ... good luck.</blockquote>

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