Worlds of Design: A Pretty High Price

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Picture courtesy of Pixabay.

Can an overemphasis on attractive art, components, and hardcovers price gamers out of the market?

High Quality​

As the gamer market has matured, we've begun to see board games that are priced at over 60 U.S. dollars or higher. These are luxury products, with more focus on the look and presentation of the game (usually thanks to its components, miniatures, board, etc.). The problem is that the presentation drives the price up far enough that some people cannot afford to buy these games. In other words, there’s a concern that people are being priced out of gaming.

Keep in mind, in boardgames there’s a tendency for a few people to buy huge numbers of games, while others, through friendship or game clubs, play those games with the buyer. It’s somewhat different for tabletop role-playing games, although game masters still tend to buy most of the material for the group. The issue still applies though: companies have to strike a balance between producing an attractive game and a functional one, all while balancing cost. Not everyone can afford to make or buy a beautiful game.

What’s Driving “Art Inflation”?​

There are so many games (including RPGs) out there, and so many people are exploring games rather than learning to master them, that games seem increasingly designed to be played just one to three times (or one sequence of adventures), because that’s all the time gamers have to devote to them before moving on. Whether a game gets played at all depends partly on how it looks - game explorers will play a game that looks interesting before a game that doesn’t, and in today’s world “interesting” usually involves three dimensional pieces and artwork (artwork is expensive).

In other words it involves expense in the physical production of the game rather than in the design. This can be true in both video games and tabletop games: if you pay attention to video games much you certainly have heard complaints about how developers spent more time on the graphics of a video game than on making the game fun to play.

The question is, has an “ooh, shiny!” attitude leaked into RPGs?

Ooh, Shiny!​

The recent Spelljammer product is an example. With around a $70 list price, you get three pasteboard hardcover “books” all of 64 pages each, and a GM screen, in a slipcase. See Beth’s review for more details on what was included. Why so few pages? I suspect it was because the artwork, high quality paper, hardcover, and slipcase cost a lot of money.

Of course, companies will produce products that the market will bear, and despite my misgivings about the product, it’s clear it has fans. I often wonder, with modern supplements to RPGs, how many people actually use them, though. Are they produced more to be read and admired than to be used? (Kind of like “coffee table books?”)

This happens with board games too. I designed a wargame (Hastings 1066) that I tried to make as inexpensive as possible, as the impetus was something that could be sold in British National Heritage stores at museums and battle sites. The cards and paper strips provided the “board.” Other components included a die and some cubes. A Kickstarter was run and the list price was $35, very low for this kind of game. It did not sell well (though keep in mind, it never got into the kind of distribution I’d envisioned).

I designed another game on the (modified) system, Stalingrad Besieged. The publisher decided to include a mounted board, and three different sets of pieces (mini-cards, blocks, and very large cardboard). This increased the list price to $70. The Kickstarter tells the story. The publishers felt that their clientele were happy enough with the expense, and they made twice as much money. Yet it was all about presentation. The presentation, in other words, helped sell the book, even if it meant fewer people could afford to buy it.

What to Do About It​

We might ask ourselves what’s “natural” for different kinds of games. For board games, showing most of the rules to the players is expected, while for card and video games, hiding these rules is natural. Insofar as much of what happens in RPGs takes place primarily in the mind and imagination, we could say that given sufficient imagination, the game needs very few props and pieces.

If you want to self-publish an RPG product, how do you avoid spending a lot on presentation? Smaller publishers without the resources of large game companies may rely on AI-generated or public-domain art. But the reality is, there’s an increasing expectation of attractive presentations overall as layout software has become more accessible and print-on-demand has surged. And then there’s the Internet itself, which relies on thumbnails and quick scrolling, making it very challenging for any new game from an indie publisher to stand out.

Some publishers try to split the difference by creating “bare bones” versions and more advanced, elaborate games with all the bells and whistles. But this is a luxury too; few indie publishers have the resources to produce both options.

Do We Really Need All That Stuff?

My view is that genuine imagination is in short supply. I don’t mean “brain fever” – that’s easy to generate - I mean imagination that is useful in problem-solving. I wrote about this at some length in "The Chain of Imagination" and "The Lost Art of Making Things Up.”

There's a balance to be struck between indie designers, who are often new to the hobby and don't have the financial resources to pour into their games, and experienced game companies, who can afford to create luxury content that not everyone can afford. In theory, there is room for both audiences; in practice, the luxury games (merely by existing) can raise the bar for the indie games. Artists have a right to make a living; conversely, the market is bound by who will pay for the game, and whether or not they play the game is almost beside the point. There's a danger here though, which is that if a market caters too much to the affluent spectrum, there will be an increasingly smaller customer base to support the creation of new products, and that's bad for gamers everywhere.

In defining what we really need to play RPGs, there’s a spectrum of opinions ranging from the basics (paper, pencil, and imagination) to the elaborate (expensive miniatures and other components). Experienced gamers who grew up with tabletop games before the era of advanced manufacturing and the Internet may lean more on imagination. But today, with the massive amount of gaming choices and the accessibility of crowdfunding means the bar has been raised, and it’s not enough to simply have a good game … it has to be pretty too.

Your Turn: When it comes to buying games, how much does form (it’s presentation, including hardcover vs. softcover, more vs. less art) matter over function (how often you’ll actually play the game)?
 

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Lewis Pulsipher

Lewis Pulsipher

Dragon, White Dwarf, Fiend Folio
Part of that is inflation. Per Inflation Calculator | Find US Dollar's Value From 1913-2025
an item costing $20 in 1980 would be expected to cost $76 today.

There's also a distinction to be made between good art and fancy, expensive art. Also between good text layout and attempts at getting fancy with the text presentation. I remember how I disliked the fancy art & text layout of the 3.0 and 3.5e[1] D&D books, even though "it raises the price!" was not a concern that appeared on my radar.

On the other hand, "chrome" can sometimes really add to the enjoyment of a game. Back in the day, the board/card game Mystic Wood had plastic pawns to represent characters, but I found it really improved things to have painted miniatures for the characters. I first saw this in another person's copy, and when I got my own, I bought and painted a set of miniatures to produce the same look & feel upgrade.

[1] I passed on 4e and 5e D&D, so I can't speak to their artwork. Also, I saved the rant I wrote back in the day about the 3.x books:

== begin rant from the Old Times==
The D&D 3rd ed. Players Handbook is a rulebook for a game. Those buying it generally wish to (a) read the rules and (b) play the game. This means that the graphic designer's priorities ought to be to (1) make the text easy to read, and (2) make the text easy to reference. Providing "atmosphere" or making the book "look cool" is at best a third priority - if not a fourth or fifth.

The D&D 3rd ed. Players Handbook fails at this in a number of ways:

1. The first priority is to make the text readable. This means high contrast. The text should consist of dark printing (preferably black) on a light background (preferably white) But the first page in each chapter is black on dark yellow. Hard to read. BAD.

2. The first priority is to make the text readable. This means avoiding background bits behind the text that makes it hard to read. But the text has these half-erased guidelines behind it - except for those yellow pages where the yellow has a pattern. Hard to read. BAD.

3. The first priority is to make the text readable. This means that graphical ornamentations should be subdued, so as to not overpower the text. Color should be used sparingly (if at all), and only where necessary. But in the PH, the graphics are heavy and color is everywhere. This makes the text - you guessed it - hard to read. BAD.

4. The first priority is to make the text readable. This means avoiding ragged left margins, which are the hardest of all to read. Graphics and illustrations should not force raggedness on the left margin of the text. But in the PH, they do, often enough. BAD.

5. . The first priority is to make the text readable. (Get the hint?) This means text flows that the eye naturally follows - and that it does not follow into a wrong turn. Sidebars and tables need to be set off so that the reader does not try to read them as continuations of an earlier paragraph of main body text. In the PH, the sidebars are set off weakly, and the tables not really set off at all. Hard to read. BAD.

6. The second priority is to make the text easy to reference. This means that page numbers should be large and friendly. In the PH, they're large enough, but not very friendly. They're overpowered and lost in the graphical fanciness around the margins. And the blue gem-button makes every page number look alike. Not good. (Now, if you used a different color and shape of gem for the page numbers of each chapter, that would be an improvement. Better yet, use a different shaped outline - hairline, so as to not overpower and distract attention from the page numerals themselves.)

7. The second priority is to make the text easy to reference. This means that it should be easy to tell what chapter you're in from a quick glance at the chapter heading. At least the PH has chapter headings. But they're turned on their side - hard to take in. And they're overpowered by the fanciness of the margin ornamentation. Bad.

8. The second priority is to make the text easy to reference. This means putting graphics as landmarks and breaking up the text with intelligent use of whitespace. The PH has the graphics, but they're in color and otherwise tend to overpower the text, making it hard to read - bad. Graphics also should be placed at natural breaking-points in the text, but the PH has text squeezing around the graphics. As for the use of whitespace in the PH - it doesn't strike me as being very intelligent.

9. The second priority is to make the text easy to reference. This means including an index. The PH does this. Good. But the index should be at the end, not almost-at-the-end-but-not-quite. Bad.

10. The second priority is to make the text easy to reference. This means using large friendly headings in a logical and intelligent manner. The PH isn't outstanding in it's use of headers, but at least it isn't outstandingly bad, either.

11. Finally, creating an appropriate "atmosphere" may be the third priority - but isn't necessarily. In the case of something like the PH, I'd say that it's more important to avoid an inappropriate atmosphere. Different gamers play their D&D games in a lot of different styles. Some games are serious, others are silly. Some are drawn in bright primary colors with Good and Evil clearly defined. Others are grim and gritty and full of shades of gray. Some are optimistic, others are tragic. Some are mellow, others have sharp-edged attitudes. The graphic work in a book like the PH should be nicely neutral to avoid clashing with any of these different styles. Unfortunately, the graphics in the PH have a brooding, edgy style that clashes horribly with the preferences of many players. This causes those players to view the graphics as being ugly as well as badly laid-out.
== end rant ==
 


Can an overemphasis on attractive art, components, and hardcovers price gamers out of the market?

High Quality​

As the gamer market has matured, we've begun to see board games that are priced at over 60 U.S. dollars or higher. These are luxury products, with more focus on the look and presentation of the game (usually thanks to its components, miniatures, board, etc.). The problem is that the presentation drives the price up far enough that some people cannot afford to buy these games. In other words, there’s a concern that people are being priced out of gaming.

Keep in mind, in boardgames there’s a tendency for a few people to buy huge numbers of games, while others, through friendship or game clubs, play those games with the buyer. It’s somewhat different for tabletop role-playing games, although game masters still tend to buy most of the material for the group. The issue still applies though: companies have to strike a balance between producing an attractive game and a functional one, all while balancing cost. Not everyone can afford to make or buy a beautiful game.

What’s Driving “Art Inflation”?​

There are so many games (including RPGs) out there, and so many people are exploring games rather than learning to master them, that games seem increasingly designed to be played just one to three times (or one sequence of adventures), because that’s all the time gamers have to devote to them before moving on. Whether a game gets played at all depends partly on how it looks - game explorers will play a game that looks interesting before a game that doesn’t, and in today’s world “interesting” usually involves three dimensional pieces and artwork (artwork is expensive).

In other words it involves expense in the physical production of the game rather than in the design. This can be true in both video games and tabletop games: if you pay attention to video games much you certainly have heard complaints about how developers spent more time on the graphics of a video game than on making the game fun to play.

The question is, has an “ooh, shiny!” attitude leaked into RPGs?

Ooh, Shiny!​

The recent Spelljammer product is an example. With around a $70 list price, you get three pasteboard hardcover “books” all of 64 pages each, and a GM screen, in a slipcase. See Beth’s review for more details on what was included. Why so few pages? I suspect it was because the artwork, high quality paper, hardcover, and slipcase cost a lot of money.

Of course, companies will produce products that the market will bear, and despite my misgivings about the product, it’s clear it has fans. I often wonder, with modern supplements to RPGs, how many people actually use them, though. Are they produced more to be read and admired than to be used? (Kind of like “coffee table books?”)

This happens with board games too. I designed a wargame (Hastings 1066) that I tried to make as inexpensive as possible, as the impetus was something that could be sold in British National Heritage stores at museums and battle sites. The cards and paper strips provided the “board.” Other components included a die and some cubes. A Kickstarter was run and the list price was $35, very low for this kind of game. It did not sell well (though keep in mind, it never got into the kind of distribution I’d envisioned).

I designed another game on the (modified) system, Stalingrad Besieged. The publisher decided to include a mounted board, and three different sets of pieces (mini-cards, blocks, and very large cardboard). This increased the list price to $70. The Kickstarter tells the story. The publishers felt that their clientele were happy enough with the expense, and they made twice as much money. Yet it was all about presentation. The presentation, in other words, helped sell the book, even if it meant fewer people could afford to buy it.

What to Do About It​

We might ask ourselves what’s “natural” for different kinds of games. For board games, showing most of the rules to the players is expected, while for card and video games, hiding these rules is natural. Insofar as much of what happens in RPGs takes place primarily in the mind and imagination, we could say that given sufficient imagination, the game needs very few props and pieces.

If you want to self-publish an RPG product, how do you avoid spending a lot on presentation? Smaller publishers without the resources of large game companies may rely on AI-generated or public-domain art. But the reality is, there’s an increasing expectation of attractive presentations overall as layout software has become more accessible and print-on-demand has surged. And then there’s the Internet itself, which relies on thumbnails and quick scrolling, making it very challenging for any new game from an indie publisher to stand out.

Some publishers try to split the difference by creating “bare bones” versions and more advanced, elaborate games with all the bells and whistles. But this is a luxury too; few indie publishers have the resources to produce both options.

Do We Really Need All That Stuff?

My view is that genuine imagination is in short supply. I don’t mean “brain fever” – that’s easy to generate - I mean imagination that is useful in problem-solving. I wrote about this at some length in "The Chain of Imagination" and "The Lost Art of Making Things Up.”

There's a balance to be struck between indie designers, who are often new to the hobby and don't have the financial resources to pour into their games, and experienced game companies, who can afford to create luxury content that not everyone can afford. In theory, there is room for both audiences; in practice, the luxury games (merely by existing) can raise the bar for the indie games. Artists have a right to make a living; conversely, the market is bound by who will pay for the game, and whether or not they play the game is almost beside the point. There's a danger here though, which is that if a market caters too much to the affluent spectrum, there will be an increasingly smaller customer base to support the creation of new products, and that's bad for gamers everywhere.

In defining what we really need to play RPGs, there’s a spectrum of opinions ranging from the basics (paper, pencil, and imagination) to the elaborate (expensive miniatures and other components). Experienced gamers who grew up with tabletop games before the era of advanced manufacturing and the Internet may lean more on imagination. But today, with the massive amount of gaming choices and the accessibility of crowdfunding means the bar has been raised, and it’s not enough to simply have a good game … it has to be pretty too.

Your Turn: When it comes to buying games, how much does form (it’s presentation, including hardcover vs. softcover, more vs. less art) matter over function (how often you’ll actually play the game)?
Presentation and art in an RPG product is definitely low priority for me as a consumer. I want necessary art for purposes of literal illustration, and maybe to break up the text a bit for easier reading, but beyond that it simply isn't a selling point for me. In fact, making a big deal in your promotional materials about the art is actually a great way make me less interested in your product, as to me it implies that you think the art is why people should buy your stuff.

That's not why I'm here.
Part of that is inflation. Per Inflation Calculator | Find US Dollar's Value From 1913-2025
an item costing $20 in 1980 would be expected to cost $76 today.

There's also a distinction to be made between good art and fancy, expensive art. Also between good text layout and attempts at getting fancy with the text presentation. I remember how I disliked the fancy art & text layout of the 3.0 and 3.5e[1] D&D books, even though "it raises the price!" was not a concern that appeared on my radar.

On the other hand, "chrome" can sometimes really add to the enjoyment of a game. Back in the day, the board/card game Mystic Wood had plastic pawns to represent characters, but I found it really improved things to have painted miniatures for the characters. I first saw this in another person's copy, and when I got my own, I bought and painted a set of miniatures to produce the same look & feel upgrade.

[1] I passed on 4e and 5e D&D, so I can't speak to their artwork. Also, I saved the rant I wrote back in the day about the 3.x books:

== begin rant from the Old Times==
The D&D 3rd ed. Players Handbook is a rulebook for a game. Those buying it generally wish to (a) read the rules and (b) play the game. This means that the graphic designer's priorities ought to be to (1) make the text easy to read, and (2) make the text easy to reference. Providing "atmosphere" or making the book "look cool" is at best a third priority - if not a fourth or fifth.

The D&D 3rd ed. Players Handbook fails at this in a number of ways:

1. The first priority is to make the text readable. This means high contrast. The text should consist of dark printing (preferably black) on a light background (preferably white) But the first page in each chapter is black on dark yellow. Hard to read. BAD.

2. The first priority is to make the text readable. This means avoiding background bits behind the text that makes it hard to read. But the text has these half-erased guidelines behind it - except for those yellow pages where the yellow has a pattern. Hard to read. BAD.

3. The first priority is to make the text readable. This means that graphical ornamentations should be subdued, so as to not overpower the text. Color should be used sparingly (if at all), and only where necessary. But in the PH, the graphics are heavy and color is everywhere. This makes the text - you guessed it - hard to read. BAD.

4. The first priority is to make the text readable. This means avoiding ragged left margins, which are the hardest of all to read. Graphics and illustrations should not force raggedness on the left margin of the text. But in the PH, they do, often enough. BAD.

5. . The first priority is to make the text readable. (Get the hint?) This means text flows that the eye naturally follows - and that it does not follow into a wrong turn. Sidebars and tables need to be set off so that the reader does not try to read them as continuations of an earlier paragraph of main body text. In the PH, the sidebars are set off weakly, and the tables not really set off at all. Hard to read. BAD.

6. The second priority is to make the text easy to reference. This means that page numbers should be large and friendly. In the PH, they're large enough, but not very friendly. They're overpowered and lost in the graphical fanciness around the margins. And the blue gem-button makes every page number look alike. Not good. (Now, if you used a different color and shape of gem for the page numbers of each chapter, that would be an improvement. Better yet, use a different shaped outline - hairline, so as to not overpower and distract attention from the page numerals themselves.)

7. The second priority is to make the text easy to reference. This means that it should be easy to tell what chapter you're in from a quick glance at the chapter heading. At least the PH has chapter headings. But they're turned on their side - hard to take in. And they're overpowered by the fanciness of the margin ornamentation. Bad.

8. The second priority is to make the text easy to reference. This means putting graphics as landmarks and breaking up the text with intelligent use of whitespace. The PH has the graphics, but they're in color and otherwise tend to overpower the text, making it hard to read - bad. Graphics also should be placed at natural breaking-points in the text, but the PH has text squeezing around the graphics. As for the use of whitespace in the PH - it doesn't strike me as being very intelligent.

9. The second priority is to make the text easy to reference. This means including an index. The PH does this. Good. But the index should be at the end, not almost-at-the-end-but-not-quite. Bad.

10. The second priority is to make the text easy to reference. This means using large friendly headings in a logical and intelligent manner. The PH isn't outstanding in it's use of headers, but at least it isn't outstandingly bad, either.

11. Finally, creating an appropriate "atmosphere" may be the third priority - but isn't necessarily. In the case of something like the PH, I'd say that it's more important to avoid an inappropriate atmosphere. Different gamers play their D&D games in a lot of different styles. Some games are serious, others are silly. Some are drawn in bright primary colors with Good and Evil clearly defined. Others are grim and gritty and full of shades of gray. Some are optimistic, others are tragic. Some are mellow, others have sharp-edged attitudes. The graphic work in a book like the PH should be nicely neutral to avoid clashing with any of these different styles. Unfortunately, the graphics in the PH have a brooding, edgy style that clashes horribly with the preferences of many players. This causes those players to view the graphics as being ugly as well as badly laid-out.
== end rant ==
I did the same thing with my copy of Mystic Wood. Love that game!
 

For RPGs, im mostly digital these days with PDF if possible. Thats actually saved me some money, not that I find 50-100$ an imposition. Im not sure why RPG and board gamers are considered such paupers, while video gamers go through 60 dollar video games faster than a box of Cheerios. Every time a new core three of D&D comes out you get the inevitable, "150 bucks!! I wont be able to eat out for 6 months!" reactions. Inflation wise, games of all types are actually an incredible deal.

That said, I do like a good uniform artwork style to give a game that certain aesthetic. Just something that brands it as "X" so you know it when you see it. Otherwise, its just generic insert genre here game. Though, function is very important. A usable index, readable font, mindful organization are all just as important to me.
 

Yeah, I can't help but think inflation is a big deal in some of these issues. When I bought my 1e Player's Handbook in 1981, I paid $11 for it. That's $37 in 2024 dollars. That may be less than the current $50, but it was also a lot smaller and, by the rules, had a lot less game in it. The DMG, which was $15, comes in at $51 in 2024 dollars. That's right on the current price.

But I can't help but think of the components issue. Would I spend more to have a mounted board? I sure as hell would! I want the games I spend my hard earned cash on to have good, sturdy components that will stand up a little wear. Fiddly bits like customized playing pieces - those are nice to a point (though it's possible to go overboard). I like custom ones better than super generic ones that could have been bought at a general game supply store - like printed tokens over blank, colored mini-poker chips. The little colored wooden blocks used represent different colonial products/resources in Puerto Rico - great! Something distinctive can help the game experience.
To illustrate a couple of choices - consider the crayon rail games Euro Rail, Nippon Rail, Empire Builder, etc. Nippon Rail was one of the first to be shipped in plastic tubes with a laminated map instead of a mounted map board. That worked OK. But one shortcut or cost cutter was not including a deck of the demand cards. It had a laminated sheet with the same info as the demand cards and dice. You rolled to select the card - when fulfilled, you marked it off and rerolled if it came up again. That may have been cheaper, but it was a much less pleasurable aspect of the game and most other versions, even in the plastic tubes, went back to including cards. That may have been more expensive, but it feels like it has value to me as a player.
 
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Use first. I'm now at a point where I have enough 'good' RPG material that even if I did nothing else but run games for the rest of my life I still wouldn't use it all. So I won't buy any more physical product unless I can see myself actually using it in the near future.

That said, it's something of a false assessment, because presentation is also a barrier. But it's more a case of "you need to be this tall to gain entry" - once you get beyond that minimum threshold then any further 'enhancements' are of little to no value. Indeed, in the case of the Spelljammer set you referenced they are actually negatives, increasing the price/reducing the content in a way that doesn't improve the utility (to me) at all.
 


Excellent post.

As I read it, my mind went back to the 80s and Steve Jackson's line of minigames, such as O.G.R.E., and new RPGs that were almost pamphlets. My friends and I got a lot of value out of these liw-cost games and some were very well designed as well as capturing the imagination. They didn't have a ton of art but the art succeeded at storytelling and got us to buy into the game metaphor.

Today, there are still a lot of great minigames with interesting strategy and lots of replay value. Schotten Totten and Jekyll and Hyde come to mind. They're pretty games but don't have a huge amount of art

All this to say ..I don't think that product space is dead, far from it.
 

Depends.

Sometimes I like a game for the rules but the art is a turn-off (BBG's Supers). Then other times I really like the art but the rules are trauma (Palladium's Heroes Unlimited). Formatting isn't a big deal. As long as it's better than the AD&D 1e DMG, it can work.

Price-wise, if I like the game, I will pay whatever to have it.

Great piece!
 

I guess I’m in a specific boat in that if it’s something that I know that I’ll use and enjoy, I have no problem springing for the premium version of a product, while if it’s something that I’m not as interested in, then all the extra presentation will actively work against me buying it on a whim.
 

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