You’re getting way ahead of me with this comment, Steven! The impact of PDF downloads and more recently Kickstarter is undeniable, and something that part two of the article will address. This article specifically talked about the percieved value of dead-tree paper products in a pre-PDF environment. Sure, at the end, I started looking ahead to what some of those perceptions might mean in the future to products such as DnDNext, but that was simply to lay the foundations for the material still to come.

I would also dispute, to some extent, the general statement that people will pay more for an RPG over any other form of entertainment. Not with Blu-Ray and DVD sets having comparable prices to RPG books.

Finally, I should point out that I very specifically limited my comments to the perceptions and experiences that my local gamers had, here in Australia. There’s more to the world than the USA, and those perceptions may not necessarily translate to the American Domestic market. And the difference in location can make a huge difference – P&H for a DVD or CD is under US$2 to Australia, P&H for a dead-tree gaming product comes close to doubling the price. I can order a book priced at 1 cent on Amazon and it will still cost me around US$12 by the time P&H is factored in.

People are willing to pay more for what they want because they put a higher value on their TTRpg over any other form of entertainment, and because it has a value of continual use over time it is cheaper than any other form of entertainment.

I could point to any number of Kickstarters that have a higher # of backers than most TTRpgs have sales via pdf and hardcopy combined. Just go look at the dresden files rpgs #s for the proof of that. And then you can actually ask people to pay more than they would for the standard product (and you get to keep more of the money than you would in standard distribution).

Glad to hear that you found the article worthwhile, Rodney. Hopefully the next part will be equally valuable.

That’s a good point, Greg. It only tends to reinforce the point that one of the reasons the game system succeeded was that it was percieved as offering value for money, though.

@Robert: I could probably have bought my copies for less, too, especially if I had bought second-hand – even though the game store gave me a reasonably good discount because of the size of the order (buying all 6 PFRPG books at once). But all the other prices were quoted based on what they cost at a bricks-and-mortar game shop, so that was the standard that had to be applied throughout. Besides, I listed it as a work expense!