Hardback sales I can understand, but publishers who charge half the same price or more for a PDF is absolutely absurd.

I fully understand that art costs are difficult to recoup, however a successful Kickstarter campaign or Paypal "donation bucket" should be enough to close that gap.

I've spent well over $800 on RPG products (print or PDF) in the last 4 years, and although it doesn't quite follow Sturgeon's Law, way too much of it has been crap.

Quote from: ZWEIHÄNDER;827386Hardback sales I can understand, but publishers who charge half the same price or more for a PDF is absolutely absurd.

I fully understand that art costs are difficult to recoup, however a successful Kickstarter campaign or Paypal "donation bucket" should be enough to close that gap.

Yeah, I always factor in the cost of having to print and bind a pdf myself when deciding to buy one.

PDFs aren't worth the paper they're printed on.

This has been a bugaboo of mine for decades.

The current cost on Amazon for the current three corebooks combined is $102.  That would give, I expect, a hardcore D&D player fun for years to come.

The current cost in Boston for taking your SO to a quality restaurant (presuming you don't order drinks) and a movie afterwards (presuming you don't hit the concession stand) is around $110.

Let's see ... what I spent on GURPS 4th edition books?  The two corebooks, plus Magic and Martial Arts?  Around $100 total: eleven years ago.

In those eleven years, between all my groups, I've GMed 533 sessions.  That comes out to thousands of hours of entertainment.

For the price of a single dinner and a single movie.

Sadly there are people who don't think that rpg writers and artists need to be paid for their work. To them, any price is too high. These people suck.

I will limit my purchasing to just stuff that I think will be most useful when funds are tight and vendors who provide free pdf copies with the purchase of a hard copy have my gratitude.

I love having a hard copy of the material to reference but sometimes its nice to have that soft copy in order to print out just what I need for a session to cut down on book weight. Not being double charged for the same content leaves more cash in the pocket for more offerings from such vendors.

Quote from: Ravenswing;827446This has been a bugaboo of mine for decades.

The current cost on Amazon for the current three corebooks combined is $102.  That would give, I expect, a hardcore D&D player fun for years to come.

The current cost in Boston for taking your SO to a quality restaurant (presuming you don't order drinks) and a movie afterwards (presuming you don't hit the concession stand) is around $110.

Let's see ... what I spent on GURPS 4th edition books?  The two corebooks, plus Magic and Martial Arts?  Around $100 total: eleven years ago.

In those eleven years, between all my groups, I've GMed 533 sessions.  That comes out to thousands of hours of entertainment.

For the price of a single dinner and a single movie.

Do you light your cigars with $1000 bills whilst playing?

I suspect a lot of it is the population of prolific forum posters.  Having ample free time to read and respond to threads is time not being spent earning money.

I concur that the hobby is dirt cheap entertanment.  Just as Ravenwing says, the line up of current DnD books ran me about the same as one night out with the wife with the books lasting practically forever.  And the hobby doesn't even have to cost that much.

Year to date 2015, I have only spent $5 on a used Rifts book and about $100 in gas traveling to the game.  Every couple weeks when the bug for new material hits, I browse the free downloads at drivethru or wherever and get a copy of whatever looks interesting.  The hobby cost nothing if you want.

Quote from: ZWEIHÄNDER;827386Hardback sales I can understand, but publishers who charge half the same price or more for a PDF is absolutely absurd.

I fully understand that art costs are difficult to recoup, however a successful Kickstarter campaign or Paypal "donation bucket" should be enough to close that gap.

Kickstarter certainly could close that gap, but that not every book is made on the kickstarted platform. I don't think a paypal button would do much to recoup art costs.

Every company does things a little differently but if you write everything yourself and do the layout yourself, your still looking at hundreds to thousands of dollars for art (assuming you are not getting it free or on the cheap), potentially hundreds for editing (this can go up to the thousands too though), and you still need to do marketing. Companies also often have sellers who take a percentage out (and without them you don't get into distribution).

Most of the smaller companies are either just barely making a bit of profit or hoping they can simply recoup their money.

We try to set our prices low. We just put out a print book that is about 70 pages and 14.99. This was honestly as low as we could bring it without people losing money. It really ought to be 19.99 at least, but because it wasn't a full 100 pages, I wanted it to be 15. The PDF is free however.

But for some books I can't do that. Some books I have to make back a certain amount plus I want to grow the line. So I have to set the price where I think that is viable.

Generally for PDF prices I set core books at 9.99 and modules/supplements range from 1.99 to 4.99. I also lower prices over time sometimes. That is honestly as low as I can get things (at least upon initial release). If I go lower, I really can't release anything else at all. And kickstarted simply doesn't appeal to me because I just don't feel comfortable designing a product for people who have already paid for it (something about that just feels strange to me).

Quote from: Old One Eye;827489I suspect a lot of it is the population of prolific forum posters.  Having ample free time to read and respond to threads is time not being spent earning money.

Depends entirely on the nature of your job.

That said, I don't spend much money on RPGs (as I said, average one product a year). The only Kickstarter I ever backed was Domains@War for ACKS.

Regarding pricing of PDF vs physical copies.
What with tablet hardware being quite powerful now, affordable and being able to quickly read and page media rich PDFs much better these days, I'm more accepting of paying more for PDFs than I was a year ago.
I DO expect a PDF to have a really good index though so I can navigate around it easily.
A big turn off for me is getting a PDF of RPG material with a bad or no index and will certainly affect whether I buy a product from that person again.

Still, if I actually run an RPG, I like to own a physical copy, as once you get to know the locations of parts of a set of rules in a physical copy, it Is quicker to just flip to it, compared to the same on a PDF.

I'm intending to run Silent Legions using just the PDF copy only, which is unusual, but the index is very good and the system itself is pretty simple anyway.
I might end up actually buying a physical copy of silent legions if I end up using it a lot I suppose.

Most of the people I know and play RPGs with atm, are either students (about 25% of the RPGers I know) , so not much money an they don't tend to buy RPG material pretty much at all and just come to games and use what other people have bought. Which is absolutely fine with me.

The rest are working, married, with kids etc (like myself).
They mostly work in the IT field and I suspect are doing pretty well financially. (I also work in the IT field and am doing OK financially).
These people seem to buy RPG material pretty much on a whim, moreso than I do actually.
But then I notice not many of these people post online much or at all in RPG forums. They're just too busy with life to bother much with social media, so their voices and spending habits aren't noticed.

I DO tend to buy electronic forms of RPG material on a whim if it's lower than say $10.   If I'm pretty sure I'll use it, I don't mind spending up to $25 on a full RPG electronic book.
Above that, I'll reserve my spending to physical media only.

I'm more tolerant with higher prices for Physical RPG media, especially if I go into a physical shop and buy it.
I paid $60 for each of the 5E core books and was ok with that. I've used them a lot.
The production quality of these books are very high as well.  Hardback, full colour, lovely art etc...
That makes a big difference to me when deciding if I'm going to splash out for a book if I'm on the fence.

I guess so far this year I've spent about $250 on RPG material. I've used all of it as well, especially the DnD stuff.
Historically, I think I probably used about 75% of RPG material I end up buying. I'm just playing more RPGs this year.

And like some have said. an RPG book is the price of a decent meal, so I try to keep that in perspective.
My wife and I will probably spend about $50 (AUD) on a meal. we tend to share a meal and a starter, as she doesn't eat much and I'm trying to cut down how much I eat so I can keep my weight down.
I'm getting to the age now where all that food doesn't just disappear to a fast metabolism, as mine's slowed down somewhat!  

There's a very cheap cinema near us as well, so we can both see a movie for about $12 for the both of us, also we bring our own snacks, as they're much healthier than the cinema fare.

Still, that's over $60 for a night out. An RPG book lasts for years, so it's a bargain.

Quote from: TristramEvans;827306I know that RPGs are one of the highest theft items in retail books, so make of that what you will.


I play Warhammer, so "cheap" is relative to me.

I worked in a Book/Music/Movie/Games retail chain years back, I can confirm that we had lots of RPG books walk out the door.

As to cheap, stingy, or poor I suppose I'm cheap and poor. I don't mind paying top dollar for RPG books when I have the money I just don't often have the money. I always love it when I hit a good deal, like I bought DCC today and feel like I got a lot of bang for the buck.

I'd buy 5E .pdf's of the core materials if they were substantially cheaper than the hard copies. This isn't because I don't feel creators don't need to be paid for their efforts, but rather what is more useful to me, and my knowledge of how much less it costs to publish an e-doc versus a hard copy. Sooooo...when and if 5E core comes out as .pdf's, I'll look into it. If they're the same price as the hard copies, I won't buy them. I already have plenty of other stuff toscratch my gaming itch. That's not being a dick about not paying. That's just preference and economics.

Yes.

In my experience the majority of players I've encountered in the wild are somewhat spendthrift. When I want to play a new game I get push back on the cost of buying new books. I've had to hassle a player or two about pirating (so far I've been successful in convincing them that it was #douchey AND to buy the f-ing book). I have run many games in public where people say they've played a game for years and don't own a book. Yeah, if I wanted to stereotype "gamers", I would say we're a cheap lot.

However, I don't conform to the stereotype. I spend a significant amount of my disposable income on RPGs and related materials. I'm a collector. I'm sure that is likely a larger budget than most. I may have a problem. Since there isn't an official support group or 12 step program, I feel like I can embrace this psychological deficiency until my first intervention. :-)

I love the above posts about the value of RPGs. It's so true.

On the subject of PDF pricing. Intellectual pursuits and creative measures DO take time, sweat, effort and blood. I think it's reasonable to price a PDF at "whatever your market will bear". If you look at a traditional model, you print a book for $5, then sell it to the distributor for $10, who sells it to the store for $20, who then sells it to you for $40 (btw - that cost/price has increased...). The creator generally makes the least profit. Also, the "lower" per copy print prices are print runs at volume. This requires a significant cash layout up front!

So, a normally priced 49.99 book would cost about $6.25 to print. If I use a store-front like OBS, I imagine they take less then the expected 75% of the retail price off the top. :-) However, it does present an opportunity to make more per sale. Which also compensates for a smaller potential market and volume. I don't think it's unreasonable to pay 50% of the expected retail price. Since printing runs about 15% of that retail cost, double that for POD or home printing (a reasonable doubling of volume costs) - you can purchase and print the book for a 20% discount from retail. Not only does the creator make more profit but the customer gets that book in a format generally more usable than a print version alone.