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Message: <blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 2398047" data-attributes="member: 10201">How about self-interest? Is that sufficiently ignoble of a cause to apply to everyday luxury purchases?By buying at the cheapest price possible, you're sending the message that the goods are only worth whatever that price is. IOW, you're driving the market price of the goods down, in the long run. Given the wages in the RPG industry, it is safe to say that RPG books are already priced at or below the lowest price that can support the producers. So if prices were to be driven down, across the board (and if the discounters manage to drive the small stores out of business, that will be the effective result), then the discounters would want to lower prices even further to compete with the new baseline, which would start to squeeze the producers more. Meaning ever more of the RPG producers leave the field for better wages (such as videogames, or novels, or even newspaper journalism)--as have the best of the previous generation of game designers, already. Prices are already too low in the RPG market, so by buying exclusively, or even regularly, at discounted prices, you are helping to kill the RPG industry. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that, since you buy enough RPG books that discounting matters [if you only bought one D&D3E PH, and never another RPG book your entire life, the difference between $30 and $20 would matter a lot less], you'd prefer RPG books to be available for sale.Also, while it is true that the RPG industry will never truly die, at least in our lifetimes, it could become a true cottage industry. IOW, buying at steep discount now could lead to much higher prices in the future.  To get an idea of what i mean, compare WotC or WWGS prices to what the current indie-press folks are charging (since they're already operating basically like a cottage industry): WotC/WWGS: ~$35 for hardcover, full-color, letter-size, 300ppD20 System publisher: ~$35 for hardcover, B&W, letter-size, 250ppindie-press: ~$25 for softcover, B&W, digest-size, 150ppYou don't like the first two prices, how're you gonna feel when they all look like the last? Or, extrapolating, when the MSRP for a hardcover, full-color, letter-size, 300pp RPG book is more like $60 or $70? (and that's in current dollars, not adjusting for inflation.)Also on the self-interest front: there is a link between prices of goods and wages.  And i don't just mean the wages of the people who produced those goods, but the wages of everyone. By always buying at the lowest price possible, you are contributing to keeping wages--including your own--low.</blockquote>

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