The Dresden Files > DFRPG
The Dresden Files RPG - Cover Art, Wallpaper, and Book Pricing
Shecky:
--- Quote from: traeki on February 28, 2010, 12:38:15 AM ---From my friend's gamestore about half the time, and Amazon the other half. If my friend's game store were in my town or I owned a car, I'd buy from them always, but waiting the 2 weeks or more between the occasions when I see him to get my hands on an exciting game is often a dealbreaker.
Fred hit the nail on the head, really -- the problems with the B&M model are real, and the changes are probably inevitable, but it's tragic to watch, and I do what I can to support it.
In any case, note that I said *list* price. Even the discounted link you provided prices the two main books (ignoring the Monster Manual) at $40, which is not all that far shy of the $50 *list* price for DFRPG.
--- End quote ---
??? The price they give for the PHB is $34.95, a significant difference from $40. And that's the list price, not what they're actually charging. See, I can understand indie/small publishers actually needing to charge list price, but the bigmegaOMGhuge publishers like WotC? They could sell their books for a fraction of the price and MORE than make up the difference in volume. It takes retailers like Game Outfitter cutting their own profit to get the price down to what it should be.
The big publishers' stuff is largely like mass-produced products everywhere - it should be cheaper. Small/indie publishers' stuff, on the other hand, is usually a very artisanal product; it's almost always worth the "extra" (and I use that term loosely) cost. It's a question of craftsmanship.
Anyway, I miss my old brick-and-mortar game shops. I may try to talk the wife into taking a field trip (she plays D&D too) to a good one out west of here tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed. :D
iago:
--- Quote from: Shecky on February 28, 2010, 02:30:43 AM ---??? The price they give for the PHB is $34.95, a significant difference from $40. And that's the list price, not what they're actually charging. See, I can understand indie/small publishers actually needing to charge list price, but the bigmegaOMGhuge publishers like WotC? They could sell their books for a fraction of the price and MORE than make up the difference in volume. It takes retailers like Game Outfitter cutting their own profit to get the price down to what it should be.
--- End quote ---
Why should they, though? The additional volume you figure they'd make up the difference on is not cheap to support (there are tax burdens and warehousing and inventory logistics that come along for the ride), and the fact that they have yearly, if not seasonal, layoffs suggests that maybe they should be trying to make the most money they can. WOTC's operation might be the biggest in the RPG business, but they're also one of the few companies in the business that can afford to pay a staff a living wage. And their scale relative to their parent company at this point is actually pretty micro. RPGs are a tough sell -- great for developing intellectual property, but not so hot for the ROI.
--- Quote ---The big publishers' stuff is largely like mass-produced products everywhere - it should be cheaper. Small/indie publishers' stuff, on the other hand, is usually a very artisanal product; it's almost always worth the "extra" (and I use that term loosely) cost. It's a question of craftsmanship.
--- End quote ---
Man, the craftsmanship evident in the latest edition of D&D -- one which I've spent some time talking about with Mike Mearls, one of its architects -- is pretty choice. Plenty of indies should be so lucky to produce a system like that. I dunno that I buy it.
traeki:
--- Quote from: iago on February 28, 2010, 05:42:17 AM ---Man, the craftsmanship evident in the latest edition of D&D -- one which I've spent some time talking about with Mike Mearls, one of its architects -- is pretty choice. Plenty of indies should be so lucky to produce a system like that. I dunno that I buy it.
--- End quote ---
Seriously. D&D 1-3 never really pulled me in much. Growing up, I was a huge fan of lots of big RPGs, but TSR didn't do a lot for me. Then I played a bunch of 4th Ed. at PAX this year and I was really impressed. It's pretty much a board game, but it is a damned fine board game. I don't know that I have the mettle to run a campaign, but I'd sure love to be a player in one, one of these days.
People gripe about it being WoW Lite, but frankly it's what I wish WoW actually was. Getting to strategize about how to make the best use of the random little abilities on my sheet is a blast! I had some ability as a druid that did a little damage and dragged the target one square towards me. I used it to position enemies for massive team strikes, pulled enemies off ledges for fall damage, shifted enemies into hazard zones, it was awesome. Good luck getting that same kind of joy from Judgement of Light, you know?
But when it's time to scratch the "RPG" itch, I'll take Aspects over Squares. ;)
traeki:
--- Quote from: Shecky on February 28, 2010, 02:30:43 AM ---??? The price they give for the PHB is $34.95, a significant difference from $40.
--- End quote ---
The link you posted had all three books for about $60. 2/3 * $60 is $40. Sorry for the confusion. =)
Good luck with the spouse persuasion!
Shecky:
--- Quote from: traeki on February 28, 2010, 07:22:13 AM ---The link you posted had all three books for about $60. 2/3 * $60 is $40. Sorry for the confusion. =)
Good luck with the spouse persuasion!
--- End quote ---
Oh, all three books together were that much. Sorry for the confusion on MY end.
Fred, it's true that the big publishers would face additional obstacles in lowering their prices, and that small publishers do face a cyclical up/down that they simply can't handle as well as the big guys. And yes, WotC is sort of the gold standard for potential employees in many ways. I also agree that 4e is a fine product considering its intent and its targeted audience (I've never given them less than their due for accomplishing precisely what they set out to accomplish). And finally, I don't have any conclusive answers regarding the difference in feel between that standard and what's put out by indie/small publishers (other than to say that my general impression is that the indie/small productions just feel more... loved, for lack of a better term, the same way original D&D seems painfully obviously a labor of love [I chose poorly when I said "craftsmanship"; it's like deciding between store-bought and handmade jewelry as a gift for one's wife]), other than reiterating that my original point about the whole price-point issue was intended to support the somewhat higher price of indie/small products.
*shrug* I wish it were simpler and that my feelings towards WotC were less disappointed. I don't know the industry backwards and forward; heck, I hardly know it forward. All I do know is what I, as a purely small-time player of a few RPGs, have encountered over the past three decades and how the trends of those three decades have appeared to me (with strong emphasis on "appeared"). It's probably a selfish viewpoint, focusing on how much bang for the buck I get as a consumer alone; I admit it. But there it is, all the same.
... heh. I just realized a rough parallel in everyday life. Our grocery store offers a few self-checkout lanes, where you scan the items yourself without a checkout person doing it and without a bagger. My wife argues that she's not doing all the work herself if she's not getting a discount, whereas I point out that the lines are always shorter and faster at the self-checkouts, so you get "paid" for your effort by cutting your wait time significantly. We're looking at different things. Unfortunately, she has an irrefutable response: that store DID cut down on staff when they installed the self-checkout system. Not much, to be sure, but self-checkout meant that some part-time checkers were no longer employed there. From the point of view of the informed consumer, it's a tough decision: double your time in the store to support the checkers or not? All things being roughly equal, I choose yes. But when the weather's horrible, I'm tired from a long, difficult day at work and I don't have much time to get all the stuff home before having to hurry back out again to pick my wife up at her train, and I see lines 5-6 people deep at the regular checkouts but one self-checkout that's empty, I make that choice in the other direction. It's crass, self-serving and not at all socially conscious, and I do feel a bit of remorse for deciding that way. But sometimes people simply can't afford to make the "right" choice; the workable choice is the one that presents itself when times are tougher. And when that decision coincides with getting a product or service that better matches one's personal preferences... it's hard not to see the other choice as a bad idea all around; when times are better, on the other hand, people tend to get what they LIKE, even if the price is higher.
*shrug* All I know is this: looking at the bits I've seen of DFRPG and comparing it to D&D 4e, it seems obvious to me (YMMV, naturally) that DFRPG is a labor of love, which is something I can't see with 4e. Oh, I bought the 4e PHB because I couldn't help it :D ; I'm such a fan of D&D that I'm naturally inclined to give any shortcomings a free pass. But it doesn't feel to me that it had the same kind of loving craftsmanship that something like DFRPG so obviously had, and that kind of thing is a strong motivator in deciding what I think is worth spending hard-earned money for. The intangibles motivate far more strongly than do points of logic, no matter how much I evidently rationalize it after the fact ;) .
When it comes down to it, I trust indie/small companies more than big companies as a general rule. Silly and wrong-headed, I know (a small company is certainly not exempt from human jackassery, not by a long shot, and a big company is not automatically Big Ebul Corporate Devil, either). But there it is.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version