WoTC books are CHEAP!

[teitan]

The core rules are cheap, sure and the core hardcovers are nicely priced but outside of that the DnD books and the other product lines are over priced!!! The Forgotten Realms books are inexcusably overpriced at softcovers, especially when I can get a larger hardback book, full color for the same price. This has evened out with recent hardcover releases but hey, that is not the point. I had some guy tell me that I was paying for the FR name and that was why the FR books were so expensive but screw that, I can take that line of reasoning on the Star Wars stuff, but WOTC owns the Realms and telling me I am paying for the Realms name is ludicrous. THEY AREN'T PAYING ROYALTIES FOR THE REALMS!!!!!

When your product has a HUGE buy in price (90 dollars is a BIG investement) and a selection of equally large priced materials, some low quality paperbacks included then it gets hard for the average person on the street to go into a gaming store and pluck down the cash. When he sees that he is paying almost as much or more for softcover books then we have a problem.

But let us compare it to a PS2. A 180 buy in price with similarlyu priced product to add on to it... difference is that game prices drop. Don't have the 40 for Devil May Cry 2? Well, give it a year and it will be half that... and you don't have to convince a few of your friends to also make a big purchase just so you can play with your new toy. It can be hard to find a gaming group, let alone a good one. Took me almost a year to find a gaming group when I got back into DnD when 3rd came out... That could have been a lot of money down the john there...

Comparing RPGs to movies or video games is just assinine because it is a different media and RPGs appeal to a different market. I can understand the reasoning behind it, what people would rather do etc... but let us look at it this way: little Joey plucks down his allowance and purchases the core rulebooks. Joey was torn between these two new video games or the DnD stuff and after listening to the arguement of how you get so many more hours of enjoyment out of an RPG than a video game, Joey gives in to the pressure that RPGs are better. Well, Joey calls in his friends to come over and play. He poured over the rules and memorized each and every spell, blah blah blah. Well, iot is time to play and they start. They quickly get bored and decide not to play anymore because RPGs are boring and Joey wasted 90 dollars on a set of books he will never use again and regrets the decision because he could be playing Dead or Alive Volleyball and Grand Theft Auto 3: Vice City, but some idiot convinced him DnD was a better value.

I am not saying we are idiots for thinking it is, I know I get a lot more enjoyment out of DnD than I did Matrix: Regurgitated but the line of reasoning used implies that RPGs are for everyone, and while they are, they aren't necessarily everyone's cup of tea.

Now Tri-Stat DX, that is a good deal.

Jason

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

What I find kind of funny is that since I bought a 2nd printing of the first Core books...I STILL payed closer to $30 for them...and now that I'm getting the Revised books from Amazon, I'm paying more around $20 per book. CHEAPER.

 

[Camarath]

You question why the changed the rules. Well I think aside from making money obviously the changes are mainly to put more balance and to fix some of the overly powerful things.

I'm a bit of a munchkin in the fact that I always max/min characters I make to make them powerful. Now I still love to role play so i'm not a real "munchkin" or anything but I still want to kick butt. When I look at what things my charater chooses its usualyl the most powerful mix of things I can think of.

It seems odd to me but I think I would have been happier if there were less game mechanic changes. I don't mind the class changes or the monster changes (in fact I like them) they are both easy to use and deal with. It is the little changes to how the game is played that worry me.

This is a bit off topic but. There is nothing wrong with powerful characters. I like my player to have powerful characters since ot allows me to use interesting and powerful thing against them. As long as role-playing is not scarified I like them to take advantage of the rules as they can. I am a power gamer as a player and as a DM. And usally my player don't try to out power game me. I have ways of beating them at that game is the want to play it.

Now I fear a lot of the tricks and combos me and my player use will not work the same and we will have to spend time relearning the nitty-gritty nuts and bolts of the system again.

 

[sithramir]

It seems odd to me but I think I would have been happier if there were less game mechanic changes. I don't mind the class changes or the monster changes (in fact I like them) they are both easy to use and deal with. It is the little changes to how the game is played that worry me.

This is a bit off topic but. There is nothing wrong with powerful characters. I like my player to have powerful characters since ot allows me to use interesting and powerful thing against them. As long as role-playing is not scarified I like them to take advantage of the rules as they can. I am a power gamer as a player and as a DM. And usally my player don't try to out power game me. I have ways of beating them at that game is the want to play it.

Now I fear a lot of the tricks and combos me and my player use will not work the same and we will have to spend time relearning the nitty-gritty nuts and bolts of the system again.

I fear that those tricks and combos aren't meant to work the same in 3.5. You are suppose to still be able to play with 3.0 character but in reality a lot of character won't convert right if it involved being based on a certain spell or PrC etc. Its a revision and even though it'd be nice to not lose those things I think it was inevitable. I definitely think they went overboard on a few of the things they did that had nothing to do with balance or change that was needed. At least this is offset by them making the books a lot better like the DMG having terrain stuff, etc that I felt are more important things to add to a DMG than some bonus PrC's.