Quote from: VectorSigma;780182DCC adventures are ten dollars each.  Frog God does big ol' hardbacks.  I don't think it's the same thing.

Fair enough. I was thinking of DCC core.

Quote from: The Butcher;780184Fair enough. I was thinking of DCC core.

The DCC core rulebook feels spendy to me, but I'm a cheapass; it isn't any spendier than some of the other hardbacks out there.  5e PHB?

Quote from: danbuter;613255A year from now, half the people complaining about this ad will have bought the product. You know it's true!  

Or making fun of how late it is?

[Edit - and I posted that before I knew I was reading an old thread, and that it's late! ]

Quote from: Larsdangly;780004This thread started as a mean spirited poke in the eyeball for someone's project, for no obvious reason.

I dunno about that.  Seemed to me like Black V had plenty of reasoning behind his opinion.  To wit...

Quote from: Black Vulmea;613222Because the hype machine is turned to eleven once again (". . . this is the dungeon crawl that rules them ALL." "Players will rush to discover some of the most powerful items ever created." "For the GM, the grande temple represents the ultimate expression in dungeon design.")

Because one of the backer rewards is cheat codes (". . . random dungeon level map - don't tell your GM!").

Because of the "resurrection mechanic" ("And if they die in the search - but amuse Jing in the process - he just might grant them a do-over.").

Because if you pay enough money, you get to help write the thing.

Those are reasons.  You might not agree with them, but that's a matter of subjective taste.  But he had reasons, and I think he made them pretty darn obvious.  In fact, the idea that BV would hide his opinion and make his thoughts not-obvious kinda flies in the face of who BV is, at least online.  Shy, he is not.

Quote from: The Butcher;780179Isn't this Goodman Games'/DCC's schtick too?



"Being able to afford" is not the same as "willing to dish out" for expensive stuff.

I can afford $100 adventure modules in the same sense that I can afford a $1000 bottle of wine. And I won't for the same reason: I think no adventure module can possibly be worth $100, and no bottle of wine can possibly merit $1000 a bottle.

It's not so much about income as it is about priorities. I dare say even most "wheezing obese men with tobacco-yellowed fingers living in shabby apartments" can squeeze $100 if they really want that adventure module. Probably not on a monthly basis, though.

Goodman stuff is very cheap IME, probably its main attraction. Necromancer was much more expensive but better quality control. Frog God won't even put their stuff in distribution so I don't get it - Labyrinth Lord is available in most FLGSes so I don't know why most OSR stuff is only POD.

Quote from: S'mon;780208Labyrinth Lord is available in most FLGSes so I don't know why most OSR stuff is only POD.

To reduce up-front cost and take care of distribution.  I would never have published ASE if I had to spend a couple of grand to print books and then try to get distributors to carry it, so it might end up in stores, where it would be ignored because it's a niche-within-a-niche.

Quote from: The Butcher;780179"Being able to afford" is not the same as "willing to dish out" for expensive stuff.

I can afford $100 adventure modules in the same sense that I can afford a $1000 bottle of wine. And I won't for the same reason: I think no adventure module can possibly be worth $100, and no bottle of wine can possibly merit $1000 a bottle.

The subject of spending and value is an interesting one. If Frog God released Rappan Athuk as six $25 books, most gamers wouldn't bat an eye. But bundle it together as one $100 book and it's a show-stopper for some. I have an annual budget for gaming, and whether it's spent on 30 items or 10 is irrelevant.

If I thought I'd play RA, I wouldn't hesitate to spend $100 on a book that will give me 100-300 hours of gaming. Of course, the RPG book industry is supported largely by people who read the books but don't use them in play, which affects perceptions of value in weird ways.

Quote from: S'mon;780208Labyrinth Lord is available in most FLGSes so I don't know why most OSR stuff is only POD.

After the distributor and retailer take their cuts and discounts, you can expect to be looking at a minimum of 65% off the cover price. On a $40 hardback that leaves you about $18, with POD costs running a very charitable $10 if you order in bulk. Now amortize the production cost over that $8, trim out a minimum of 25% or so from the remainder for taxes, and that's your per-book profit. You can make it work if you can drive down your cost of goods with serious print runs and can even find a distributor willing to take a shot on a small publisher game, but it's a lousy way to make a buck.

Quote from: SineNomine;780506After the distributor and retailer take their cuts and discounts, you can expect to be looking at a minimum of 65% off the cover price. On a $40 hardback that leaves you about $18, with POD costs running a very charitable $10 if you order in bulk. Now amortize the production cost over that $8, trim out a minimum of 25% or so from the remainder for taxes, and that's your per-book profit. You can make it work if you can drive down your cost of goods with serious print runs and can even find a distributor willing to take a shot on a small publisher game, but it's a lousy way to make a buck.

This is exactly why I think a lot of the Frog God stuff is overpriced. There aren't any distributors & retailers taking the lion's share of the money.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;780531This is exactly why I think a lot of the Frog God stuff is overpriced. There aren't any distributors & retailers taking the lion's share of the money.

It ain't overpriced if it sells.

Of course, that's a gross simplification. There's always the sweet spot for copies sold and price charged, and you can be on the far side of it as easily as on the near. But from what I see of Frog God, if anything, they're lowballing their conventional sales and bankrolling production off Kickstarter. They're pitching 700 - 1000 page products at a per-page price of maybe a quarter what other producers would demand for 200-page items. And production costs are largely linear- a 400-page book costs roughly twice as much to produce as a 200-page book, even if print costs differences are minimal.

If you check their products on DTRPG, you'll notice an absence of sales badges on products that have been up for years. This means that they've probably moved less than 100 copies per-product through DTRPG/RPGNow, with the great bulk of their sales moving through KS and their own site. Their Kickstarters are pulling 500-1000 backers and making their real cash on high-end, high-commitment whales to whom they promise a lot. You'll also notice that a lot of stretch goals involve the creation of additional material, thus allowing the KS to bankroll future production costs on salable secondary products.

I couldn't say for sure how much of the KS take is actually turning into unencumbered profit by the time the packages are shipped and the taxman's wetted his beak, but even Rappan Athuk isn't looking like sunshine and muni bonds to me after they parcel out production costs, pay taxes, and split the take among the Frog God participants. All the same, it's looking like those KSes are where they're making their real money, with secondary print and PDF sales being priced low for the sheer mass of content involved.

I understand the statement, "the dungeon crawl that rules them ALL" is a bit jarring to those who first come across it. It's not how I would have billed it. Yet, that is how it is billed, unapologetically. And with the right GM behind it, it could very well be true.

Full disclosure: I have been a fan of the Grande Temple of Jing since the beginning. It has always been the intention to expand the original mini-adventure book into a massive dungeon crawl, and I have been one of the people encouraging its completion. The fact that such luminaries as Monte Cook, Jonathan Tweet, and Skip Williams have signed onto it is evidence that I wasn't the only one.

The premise of the Grande Temple is that it has always been over the top. It mixes campy fun with serious challenge and death. It's the home of a trickster god whose only rule is that rules are meant to be broken. Who needs game balance when Jing (i.e., the GM) has a +10 Thumping Stick? It's the ultimate small sandbox where experimentation on all sides is encouraged with as much or as little interaction with the rest of the GM's game world as desired. I could  go on, but until you experience it, any explanation will be difficult.

Quote from: Rabbitball;818128The premise of the Grande Temple is that it has always been over the top. It mixes campy fun with serious challenge and death. It's the home of a trickster god whose only rule is that rules are meant to be broken. Who needs game balance when Jing (i.e., the GM) has a +10 Thumping Stick? It's the ultimate small sandbox where experimentation on all sides is encouraged with as much or as little interaction with the rest of the GM's game world as desired. I could  go on, but until you experience it, any explanation will be difficult.

Yes, well... with the book being 18 months late and still not sent off to the printer, I wonder when it would be possible to experience it.

Post-mortem: The Grande Temple of Jing Kickstarter was finally published, and it's currently available to non-backers as hardcover and a pdf. The reviews I found without searching particularly hard are favorable - an example.