rogueattorney wrote:*Off topic tangent - I've never understood this hobby's fascination with "newer is better" from an economic standpoint. About a year back, I got a used 6th edition CoC rulebook in great condition for about a third the price of what they were selling the new 7th edition books. Of course, the differences in editions in CoC are minimal at most. So why, why, why would anyone buy the new one?
So as not to sidetrack the OSRIC thread, I'm splitting this comment off into a new thread.
I'm astounded by this attitude as well. Reading ENWorld today, I run across the thread "How soon would you buy 4e?"
It's full of people saying "Well, I have a lot of money invested in 3.5e books, but if the rules were better, I'd be willing to set those books aside and buy the new edition." (paraphrased).
WTF?
Most of these people will also tell you that 3.5e is the pinnacle of D&D, the best version of the game ever printed. If it's so good, why are they willing to trash the books they are so in love with now just to buy all new versions with slightly tweaked rules a few years after they purchased them?
How can it be difficult to make money in the RPG industry when the customers are such sheep?
BPoM, most of those people will insist that the game keeps getting better from one iteration to the next; that D&D was not a revolutionary game but is an evolutionary game and should always be expanding, expanding, expanding.
I question the wisdom of such thinking. If D&D 3.5 was just a bunch of fixes for D&D 3, and you can get along perfectly with D&D 3 plus the fixes that were released on the web, why did they forcefully cram 3.5 down the throats of their fans? To-wit, 3.0 ceased printing and 3.5 is the only thing you can buy now.
At the risk of creating a strawman, the argument that "Well, there were rule clarifications in Dragon, and all the way back to The Strategic Review, so why did they release new corrected editions of the older rules" doesn't hold up: this is the age of the instant download, the PDF that can be printed and distributed out, etc.
Hell, when the first rules corrections to D&D were created the first practical home computers were still a couple of years away, and dial-up BBSs where anything could be practically distributed were five years further down the road (or thereabouts). Rules had to be reissued with corrections and updates in magazines or in whole new rulesets.
But there's no excuse for cracking the whip over the heads of your fanbase now. All I heard from 1999 until, what 2003? was how perfect 3.0 was. What a great thing it was, how it was "D&D as it should have been" and how everyone with a lick of sense was going to play D&D 3 and on and on. Now 3.5 (which is just about the most stupid way to name an RPG, unless you want it mocked and derided as mimicing buggy software), and then 4.0? Wait, what happened to "the perfect game"?
Will 4.0 simply be fixes for 3/3.5? If so, once again I say: why not make the fixes free?
The monetary difficulty comes because truly the emperor has no clothes. WotC would like you to believe that d20 fantasy is the most popular version of the game, ever. Well, sorry, but that simply doesn't hold any water. If that was the case, then they'd have supplements that sold 200,000+ copies (the sales of S1 Tomb of Horrors) or more. Now we come to the WotC hate on for older editions of D&D: every one of us who runs a game with five or six people happily enjoying 2nd edition (either printing) AD&D, the RC version of D&D, Mentzer "Basic/Expert", Moldvay "Basic/Expert", Holmes "Basic", or Original D&D is a lost sale. So they attempt corporate peer pressure to try and drive people away from those games: Hey, 3.5 is the most popular and best version of D&D, ever! Don't you want to play the popular game? The one that works the best?
Fie on them.
"Peace Is Our Profession"
"Relativism is flatfooted, and orthodoxy packs one hell of a punch." - Kellri
you pretend to be living inside a classic fairy tale
The thing is, I can understand someone switching from AD&D to D&D3e because the games are fundamentally different. If you hate the way AD&D does things there's every possibility that 3e will be something that you enjoy.
But these people are putting perfectly good books on the shelf to gather dust and buying replacements that are not fundamentally different in the way the rules work.
I just can't understand how WotC isn't making even MORE money with the D&D brand name when the customers seem willing to buy a new copy of the Complete Book of Whatever every 18 months or so as long as the cover art is different and you've changed the average move rate of a Wizard's toad familiar.
It's like sending a perfectly good car to the junkyard and buying a new model because the new one has slightly deeper cupholders.
thedungeondelver wrote:
Will 4.0 simply be fixes for 3/3.5? If so, once again I say: why not make the fixes free?
The "fixes" are/were available for free. They are of little worth in my view (surprise !) and reflected a far gretaer philisophical difference in gaming then was refelcted in the implementation of 3e itself. But people fell all over themselves saying how great they were (small greatsword...b.s., it isn't a greatsword if it is small, morons).
Folks buying the same thign again and again does baffle me. RPGs aren't marketed to attract many new customers but to keep hold of a customer base, publishing essentially the same thing again and again is to keep the same people buying things not to attract new customers that didn't earlier versiosn of the product either.
New is not always better, certainly not if it isn't rewardingly and measurably different.
Last edited by JDJarvis on Wed Nov 15, 2006 6:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
thedungeondelver wrote:...
So they attempt corporate peer pressure to try and drive people away from those games: Hey, 3.5 is the most popular and best version of D&D, ever! Don't you want to play the popular game? The one that works the best?.
Don't forget. Engineered to be more fun too!
"The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek." - Joseph Campbell
The way rpgs are marketed and sold nowadays, publishers won't take back unsold merchandise. Thus, a ton of stuff just sits on the shelf and is eventually marked way down. There is simply no incentive whatsoever on the part of the purchaser to ever pay full price for a new game product, when you know, nine times out of 10, you're going to be able to get it at a significantly reduced cost in six months or so.
This unsold merchandise just seems to linger in the marketplace. I bought a shrink wrapped copy of Everway (a 10 year old game, originally priced at about $35) for $10 last year.
The only rpg products that seem to retain any sort of value are the really early TSR stuff from the 70's (OD&D box, EotPT, Warriors of Mars, etc.) and for some unfathomable reason, a lot of the 2e stuff from the 90's. If you're interested in non-D&D stuff at all, and it was printed in any sort of quantity, you can usually find it for a price cheaper than you'd get anything new.
With all the product out there available for cheap, it just boggles my mind that people dish out close to $40 for these new hardbacks that aren't even a complete game.
R.A.
"I woke up in a Soho doorway
A policeman knew my name
He said you can go sleep at home tonight
If you can get up and walk away"
rogatny wrote:What gets me is strictly from a cost standpoint.
The way rpgs are marketed and sold nowadays, publishers won't take back unsold merchandise. Thus, a ton of stuff just sits on the shelf and is eventually marked way down. There is simply no incentive whatsoever on the part of the purchaser to ever pay full price for a new game product, when you know, nine times out of 10, you're going to be able to get it at a significantly reduced cost in six months or so.
This unsold merchandise just seems to linger in the marketplace. I bought a shrink wrapped copy of Everway (a 10 year old game, originally priced at about $35) for $10 last year.
The only rpg products that seem to retain any sort of value are the really early TSR stuff from the 70's (OD&D box, EotPT, Warriors of Mars, etc.) and for some unfathomable reason, a lot of the 2e stuff from the 90's. If you're interested in non-D&D stuff at all, and it was printed in any sort of quantity, you can usually find it for a price cheaper than you'd get anything new.
With all the product out there available for cheap, it just boggles my mind that people dish out close to $40 for these new hardbacks that aren't even a complete game.
R.A.
A big part of the buy new is a lack of knowing what is out there. Anybody who doesn't frequent areas that discuss older games have little idea what they are. All they really know is what advertising and word of mouth tells them.
The players in the group I've been gaming with over the past year do not buy much gaming material at all, except minis (they're mini maniacs). Right now, we're playing GURPS, but they are mostly d20/3e players. Except for the GM, none of the players purchased a single GURPS book and they buy very little in the way of 3e material. Their 3e DM has the core books plus a few, but players each only buy a splat book or two to share among the group. Except for old man time here, the age range of the group is early twenties to mid-thirties.
My exposure to d20/3/3.5 has been pretty limited, so I don't know if this is typical behaviour, or if this is an atypically frugal group.
"The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek." - Joseph Campbell
thedungeondelver wrote:
I question the wisdom of such thinking. If D&D 3.5 was just a bunch of fixes for D&D 3, and you can get along perfectly with D&D 3 plus the fixes that were released on the web, why did they forcefully cram 3.5 down the throats of their fans? To-wit, 3.0 ceased printing and 3.5 is the only thing you can buy now.
How did they "force" 3.5 on gamers. The D20 system hasn't changed, adapting from 3.0 to 3.5 is no harder than adapting 3.0 material to fit a groups houserules.
. WotC would like you to believe that d20 fantasy is the most popular version of the game, ever. Well, sorry, but that simply doesn't hold any water. If that was the case, then they'd have supplements that sold 200,000+ copies (the sales of S1 Tomb of Horrors) or more. Now we come to the WotC hate on for older editions of D&D: every one of us who runs a game with five or six people happily enjoying 2nd edition (either printing) AD&D, the RC version of D&D, Mentzer "Basic/Expert", Moldvay "Basic/Expert", Holmes "Basic", or Original D&D is a lost sale. So they attempt corporate peer pressure to try and drive people away from those games:
Your kidding yourself DD. Do you really think that with D&D in every major bookstore, an MMORPG, a minatures line, top selling videogames, books on the NY times best seller list, that WOTC is worried about the popularity of D20 just because thier supplements sell a little less than 1st ed did 20 years ago?
The mind set of this market segment is not that much different then any other. People want new things, a new dress, a new watch etc. and if its trendy all the better. People buy for many reasons, often on the bottom of the list is functionality. And if its more expensive people think it must be worth it, they want to feel like they live in quality. Thats psychographics for you.
"I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery."
Thomas Jefferson in letter to Madison
Back in the days when a leopard could grab and break your Australopithecus (gracile or robust) nek and drag you into the tree as a snack, mankind has never had a break"
** Stone Giant
Considering the number of "remastered" and "special edition" CDs and DVDs I see every time I go into Best Buy, I'd say this phenomenon is by no means confined to RPGs (and I'm not talking about actual tech-upgrades like the new HD-DVD and BluRay releases, but rather stuff like the new edition of Scarface that comes in a naugahyde box and has a raft of gimmicky new "special features" (count the 'F-words' drinking game, etc.) and promotional tie-ins to the video game but is, fundamentally, the same movie it's always been).
The Mystical Trash Heap - blog about D&D and other 80s pop-culture The Heroic Legendarium - my book of 1E-compatible rules expansions and modifications, now available for sale at DriveThruRPG
T. Foster wrote:Considering the number of "remastered" and "special edition" CDs and DVDs I see every time I go into Best Buy, I'd say this phenomenon is by no means confined to RPGs (and I'm not talking about actual tech-upgrades like the new HD-DVD and BluRay releases, but rather stuff like the new edition of Scarface that comes in a naugahyde box and has a raft of gimmicky new "special features" (count the 'F-words' drinking game, etc.) and promotional tie-ins to the video game but is, fundamentally, the same movie it's always been).
i saw a commercial yesterday for a new relese of th eKing Kong DVD with 38 added minutes of footage and over 200 new visual effects...oh yeah, that movie needs another 38 minutes...zzzzzz
