"Price of Rules - what's fair?" Topic

I have been looking at a few sets of rules recently and have been struck by the wide range of prices for what are basically the same thing. We also now have the option of a PDF version which complicates things further. Some pdf rules cost almost as much as the hard copy, some are much cheaper (50%).

What is a fair price for a set of rules, what discount should there be for the PDF option?

The price of a set of rule should be what the public will pay for them.

What Phil said.

Ideally at least (Hoped for return / Projected sales) + production cost.

Return should take account of time spent writing/testing/etc.

The only thing worth anything on this planet is people's time. Everything else can be obtained by those willing to purchase enough of it. This is what IP Pirates don't understand.

The only thing worth anything on this planet is people's time. Everything else can be obtained by those willing to purchase enough of it. This is what IP Pirates don't understand.

Exactly. And well said.

Fair market value is that which an informed willing buyer will pay to a willing seller with neither party under compulsion to sell or buy.

If I'm willing to pay X dollars for a set of rules that I have been able to obtain sufficient information about, whether I choose to avail myself of that information or not, then X dollars is a fair price.

If you're doing a "serious" release, with art and editing and what-not, there won't be much of a discount for the PDF. Paper's cheap in comparison to a professional's time.

That said, printing on demand is kind of a hassle, so the print versions might be marked up to cut down on demand.

Cost also depends on how many copies you intend to sell. Guessing this is the hard part, and where self-publishing goes to die.

I buy so few rule sets these days compared with twenty years ago – I have lots of my old rules and few of them have been bettered.

I do write my own (for fun) and I buy the odd one or two that catches my eye (Dux Brit!, World Aflame…)

Price – depends on size of rule book, kind of paper, glossy photos or stapled together pamphlet. And if they're any good or not.

Pretty much what people are willing to pay. That's what gives something value – what you're willing to pay for it.

We sell PRIDE OF LIONS at $20 USD for the pdf and $30 USD for the printed, which also includes the pdf. I make maybe $1 USD more on the printed than the pdf; the extra $10 USD is almost entirely eaten up by printing. And of course folks can get the pdf and print their own. So it is basically $20 USD for the content, regardless of format.

I agree that Time is a commodity, and I certainly put in plenty of that in writing and testing and developing. But it seems to me that there's way more to content than time spent; it is just that we can measure time more easily than quality of content, and it is certainly true than good work takes longer.

Btw, Sundance, I'd distinguish between price and value. When I purchase something, I VALUE it higher than the price, else I'd not buy it. And the seller values it below the price, else he'd keep it.

And if they're any good or not.

Certainly, but of course that's mostly subjective and specific as to the buyer's preferences and also expectations.

Page count has been mentioned -- and that again is measurable. "Glossy" means what in relation to a pdf?

Looking at PRIDE, I'm counting 121 pp (2nd edition). Color cover that is a fine battle scene by John Dotegowski; color back cover that is essentially an ad for Splintered Light, though it has pretty pictures of our well-painted minis.

Flipping through and counting in approximate page equivalents, I see about 30 pp. worth of photos, of which perhaps half actually illustrate some rule, with the other being just to break up large blocks of text and look pretty.

Roughly speaking the front third is basic rules, middle third is special rules and magic; last third is lists (spells, point costs, armies) and scenarios.

But the thing is, there's a dozen or more ideas, more or less original, incorporated into rules mechanisms mostly, that I'm pretty proud of. THAT's the value for me.

And some folks find that they combine into an enjoyable game: THAT's the value for them.

Fair enough, doc.

I'm generally willing to pay more if I know more about the rules. The mid range is about USD10-15 for small to medium publishers.

I recall a hobby game publishing rule of thumb back in the day that retail price would be the production cost plus a 40% mark-up to cover profit and other costs. So you might figure that as a baseline if you are interested in producing your own rules or have a knowledge of what a product costs to make. That said, that figure is based on memory and a business model for commercial publishing (that employed real workers) that dates before the internet or print-on-demand.

But what is "production cost" for a pdf?

And indeed, what is production cost in terms of an author's time (&c)?

The price is what the market will bear… look at 40k.

But what is "production cost" for a pdf?

And indeed, what is production cost in terms of an author's time (&c)?

Significant, especially if it's formatted for .pdf (bookmarks and all). Suffice it to say that there's a reason I buy the print version of the THW titles (as I bookmark and remove the white space from the .pdfs that come included myself).

But what is "production cost" for a pdf?

It's not so much the poroduction cost of the PDF it's the production "cost" of the content …

Wargames rules are luxury commodities, not products essential for life. Therefore, there is not something called "fair price", only what you are willing to pay for. To be honest, I find midly annoying the presumption that things like rules or miniatures should have 'fair prices'.

There are a lot of high quality rules out there for FREE.

Production cost for a pdf is much higher than for a paper set of rules. You have to add in a huge amount of overhead to cover the thievery factor. One guy buys it and sends the file to twenty friends or runs off 20 copies at work and gives it to his friends.

In any case the printing and shipping of a booklet is a minor part of the cost when compared to the time and effort the designer/lay out person puts into it which can range up to 400 hours. As this is closest to engineering in real industry, let's just say it's about $100 USD an hour or part thereof, consultant or lawyer rate. That's $100 USD x 400 is $40,000. USD If you publish 1000 copies, it doesn't matter if you it's print or pdf, that $40,000 USD is still a cost that has to be amortized over the 1,000 copies, or $40 USD each. That is, IF you sell 1,000 copies! You could get a lower theoretical cost by publishing 10,000 copies, but then I don't think there are 10,000 war gamers in the whole world, and most of them would rather steal it than pay for it.

We haven't even given thought to the paper cost for $1,000 USD which might be somewhere around $10 USD a copy for the printing.

This is why so much of this hobby is put out by romantic involvement by the people in it.

Personally, I would rather pay for quality of game design, playability, simplicity combined with realism, playtesting and absence of errata/additions in a concise rulebook, than for pages of unnecessary 'eye candy', colour pictures, historical background/painting advice &c. that I already know/can obtain easily elsewhere, hardback binding and so on.
So I prefer Snappy Nappy to most other recently published Napoleonic rules, some that are published in magazines and many of the free rules published on the internet – not so much because they're cheap or free, as because they are usually concise, simple, easy to print off/copy in b&w, and I can tweak them to suit myself.
The people who make their efforts available in this way deserve our gratitude.
If someone were to publish a 12pp A5 pamphlet that contained rules so easy to learn that you could play after first reading; so easy to learn that you only needed a one page QRS; that gave a playable, yet realistic/satisfying game you complete in 2-3 hours without having to invest in lots of different dice, special packs of cards &c., wouldn't you be willing to pay as much for them as for a glossy hardback book?

Hi

'If someone were to publish a 12pp A5 pamphlet that contained rules so easy to learn that you could play after first reading; so easy to learn that you only needed a one page QRS; that gave a playable, yet realistic/satisfying game you complete in 2-3 hours without having to invest in lots of different dice, special packs of cards &c., wouldn't you be willing to pay as much for them as for a glossy hardback book?'

NO!

Some of those hardback rules are £50.00 GBP!

But, I would pay perhaps £10.00 GBP for such a set – IMO, that would give the producer a good profit (a pamphlet of the size mentioned would cost a couple of pounds at best).

I don't see any reason to pay what would be a ridiculous/extortionate price for something, even if it has a 'high' value to me (in terms of a hobby interest).

Bear in mind we are not talking about food, fuel, housing or such – this is a hobby/luxury item.

Production cost for a pdf is much higher than for a paper set of rules. You have to add in a huge amount of overhead to cover the thievery factor.

Well, technically that's more of an opportunity cost, than a production cost. It's also impossible to factor for, since we don't know how widely it happens or what its effect is. (For example: if Buyer A makes free copies for Friends B,C, and D, then there's only a "cost" if B, C, and D were originally willing to pay for it, themselves. If none of them would have bought the game anyway, then there's no cost.)

Disclaimer for the Anxious and Easily-Offended: I am NOT advocating copyright theft. Just addressing an economic point.

I've never tried to calculate how many hours I spend designing a game. For the sake of my morale and sanity, I probably never will. (It would be like one of those depressing factoids that one sees occasionally, about how we each spend 9 years of our lives sitting at red lights, or 5 years waiting on hold on the telephone…)

I would rather pay for quality of game design, playability, simplicity combined with realism, playtesting and absence of errata/additions in a concise rulebook, than for pages of unnecessary 'eye candy', colour pictures, historical background/painting advice &c. that I already know/can obtain easily elsewhere, hardback binding and so on.

That's a commonly-held false dichotomy. An individual's opinions about quality, simplicity, realism, etc, are neither objective, nor unrelated to the physical product. For many people, a full-color, well-illustrated book IS part of the quality of the product.

As I've mentioned here many times: good page layout and design takes careful notice of the use of color and illustration to balance the quantity of text on a page and organize rules so that readers encounter only one major idea or section of ideas per page. (Which also makes it that much easier to look-up and find a rule when you need one in mid-play. Where are the rules for Reloading an Ornithopter? On page 34, with the picture of the Ornithopter.)

The bottom line, though, is that the customer is paying for a product that he reads, and the goal of that reading is to understand something. Therefore any layout and style which makes reading more enjoyable, and comprehension easier, is a good layout and doing its job, whether the customer appreciates that at the time, or not.

flipper,
with respect, you may be ignoring the very demanding – and probably impossible to achieve in reality! – standards I set for the rules. And you appear to be concerned only with the production cost of the final book, not the research and skill that would have gone into such a set, not to mention considerable playtesting and revision resulting therefrom, which deserve reward.

Both Daniel Day Lewis and I can don a frock coat, stovepipe had and pretend to be Abe Lincoln for a couple of hours. A film studio could lavish the same production values on both of us. His performance will result from years of acting experience, immersing himself in the character and sheer talent, and will be brilliant; mine will be but a poor caricature. Doesn't he deserve to be paid much more than I do?

Suppose, now, that DDL (forgive me) is only given a charity shop coat, a cardboard hat and a joke shop fake beard, whereas I still have an authentic costume, professional make up, lighting &c. He is performing in a church hall; I'm in the Olivier Theatre or Broadway. Wouldn't you still pay more to see DDL rather than me?

To be honest, I'm not sure I would pay as much as £50.00 GBP GBP for my imaginary rules – there's always Amazon, of course! – but I'd rather pay £30.00 GBP for a set that met my specifications than for Black Powder or WH's Waterloo, for example. And, if I was offered either of those two, or Paddy Griffith's Napoleonic Wargaming For Fun, for the same money, I'd take the latter every time.

If a set of rules meets all my needs, so that I never need bother buying another, and gives me lots of entertaining games, I'm getting a better return for my money than a bigger, glossier rulebook that I soon abandon because it didn't live up to expectations.

Klumpenproletariat,

I calculated that my friends and I spent two whole weeks in high school waiting for the headmaster to come into assembly, working 24/7! As you say, depressing…

I appreciate that simplicity, realism &c. are subjective – but I would argue that, once one has mastered the rules and can play with only occasional reference to the QRS, the physical construction, illustration and layout of the rulebook then ceases to matter thereafter, though it will have played a significant part part in facilitating one's understanding of the rules.

What matters to me is the quality of the wargames that result from using the rules, rather than the physical quality of the book wherein they are printed.

Arthur makes all the germain points, AND highlights the problem.

I like Black Powder. I understand the short comings, yet see them as a good set of wargames rules. I understand why other take the opposite view.

Wargame Rules, like War, is an art, not a science. If it was that simple we would have long ago settled on one set per period.

Since basic economic principles do not apply to wargame rules (if you would count the real costs such as time spent etc., no one would buy them because they would be too expensive), the price for wargames rules is largely artificial.

The only agreement there is about rules is people's opinion what a fair price is. That is set by precedence – not by the economy of the thing. Cfr. novels, paintings, works of art, etc.

I can buy a masterpiece of classical music for less than a euro. Something to think about.

Phil has a point.

But his point is a dangerous one. To determine a "fair" price you have to establish by normal rules the costs etc. But any such exercise by the "normal way" reaches a cost that is exhorbitant as he pointed out.

But if we're not going to pay that price, as many are not, then it really says that all wargame rules must then be sold- more or less- at a loss, which means people are deriving non-monetary income from it, -ego, a sense of self satisfaction of offering one's inspiration to the hobby.

But if that's the case, then here is the dangerous part. Then why charge for it at all? If it's only to recover the physical costs of glossy cover, booklets, glitcy internal picutres which aren't going to help at all with any game you put on using the rules, then why not just leave them out and make the book cheaper. This then calls into question the "pewter porn" aspects of fancy pictures, staged scenes, which might be breathtakingly beautiful, but you're not in this to make breathtakingly beautiful, scenes, you're in it for wargame rules, and under that logic, simple pages of typewritten rules with line drawings would be far more helpfull to teach "the game."

So, what we see now is that the price you put on the rules is neither fair, nor comensurate with the market, but in fact, simply a price pegged to keep people who will not pay that much away. What you are saying then is "I only want to sell my rules to people who will pay $50 USD and up for it, or whatever price you put on.

@Otto:

The idea of not charging for rules (except for the physical cost of producing a copy), is an appealing one. One could have a bare-essence, no-frills-attached version of the rules, and one could sell a premium version, with nice lay-out, lots of pictures, at a somewhat higher cost.

That's what you also see in the bookmarket. I can buy a cheap pocket version, but also a nice, hard-cover, sometimes even luxuruous version meant for the biblio-phile. Or I can buy an e-book version. There is value in the medium, even though the message is the same.

As for earning a profit on writing and selling (historical) wargames rules: kudos to people who would like to try that, but in all honesty, I think the market is just too small and the perception and expectation of rules quality is just too low to warrant prices like that.
If you look at the rulesets that do keep companies afloat, most of them are coupled with other things like miniatures, and most of them do not have an excellent reputation for rules quality. Hence, the medium is more important than the message ;-)

Dear Phil

Yeah- pretty much. Considering also the longevity of rules, that is, how long any specific system will be in use by a person which I estimate at about 18 months, and depending on how many actual games you think you'll get out of that-- the higher cost rules and more sophisticated systems are somewhat problematic.

The other problem I see with the whole rules writing thing is that I don't see most players actually reading the rules. Most of them seem to simply play whatever the club leader is playing and do what he wants to do and thier grasp of the rules is fairly shaky. They will remember a few things from previous games (usually things they were burned on and from that have a rather skewed version of the game) and they rely on the GM to tell them what to do and when to do it, and if he doesn't oh-well- An awful lot of people are content to just sit there and roll dice when told. You don't need ANY rules for that. When I asked one of these persons who habitually did this, in private, why he didn't bother to learn the rules, he simply shrugged and said "In three weeks we'll be playing something completely different so why should I."

He had a point.

Otto,

Your statement regarding your estimate of the longevitry of rules is fascinating. The reasons for longevity would make an excellent topic. Why for instance was WAB so overwhelmingly popular one year and yesterday's news the next?

Bob Coggins

How could anybody measure "longevity" of game rules?

We don't even know how many gamers there are. Much less:

- where they are
- what they're playing
- how often they're playing games X, Y, or Z
- the ratio of players to purchasers (i.e., how many of the people playing Game X, bought a copy of it? How many of the people who bought a copy of it, never played it?)

I can't think of any information I've ever seen, compiled by anybody, for the playing statistics of any game.

And without knowing any of that, you can't possibly formulate any sort of meaningful analysis for why people play one game and not the other. Or even, for that matter, whether they play the "old" game AND the new one. Nobody knows, for example, whether the release of "Field of Glory" had any effect on the number of people playing WAB, or how often they played it, or whether anybody who was playing WAB, switched to FoG, etc, etc, etc.

It's all just anecdote and hearsay, based on the games you see being played in your own circle of friends, and the comments of a few dozen people on various online chat sites. As far as anybody knows, WAB might be getting played every night, by thousands of people. Or it might not.

For example, I haven't seen a game of "Sword and the Flame" played in nearly 20 years. Does that mean it's not getting played? Presumably it still is, but how often? By how many people? In what countries? I can't imagine ever seeing anything like definitive information for something like that.

Klumpenproletariat,

I would point out it was Otto Schmidt, not I, who posited 18 months as the length of time rules are used by players. He then allowed the value of a set of rules vs. cost can be measured by the number of games a player gets from any set of rules during the period of time he plays them.

I merely suggested longevity as a topic for discussion and used WAB as an off the cuff example. For a few years it was a very popular set of rules, so popular it broke the back of WRG's dominance in ancients, yet within a year or two of GW ceasing publication the number of games played and the number of tournaments available saw a large decline.

Yet you have now seen fit to jump all over my post, claiming it is not possible to determine why some rules have longevity and others do not. To be frank I hadn't considered the matter till Otto and hadn't thought very much about the reasons till your post, which leaped to a conclusion which I yet to arrive at.

I have, however, concluded, based on empirical evidende, you have the disconcerting habit of believing because you don't know how something is done it cannot be done. The ancient Greeks called it hubris. I call it the sickness of infallibility suffered by all too many college professors, and for you or anyone else to attempt to shut down a discussion because you disagree is counterproductive to the free discussion of ideas.

Contrary to your post, given the sales of its products and the length of time over which those sales have been made and the popularity of its tournaments, I would think most gamers would agree FoW has both longevity and popularity which far exceeds that of the average set of rules.

So too, before the turn of the Century, WRG Ancients and its iterations was tremendously popular as evinced by a 30 year period during which a large number of rules and supporting product were sold and a large number of tournaments were hosted by organizations devoted to the play of the rules.

The question is why? What makes these rules different from others?

Bob Coggins

Bob, I have no idea why you feel the need to turn every discussion into a personal conflict, or to assert that anybody who disagrees with you, or asks for evidence to support a statement, is trying "shut down the conversation" or is personally attacking you.

However, given the obvious pain that my writing causes you, it stands to reason that you should employ the Stifle button. Why force yourself to suffer through any more of it? By all means, please, ignore me.

you have the disconcerting habit of believing because you don't know how something is done it cannot be done. The ancient Greeks called it hubris.

No, the definition of hubris is: "a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence or capabilities." The opposite of admitting that one does not know something.

Sam,

Your posts don't pain me; they mystify. There I was minding my own business asking an innocuous question, when in response, you go off the deep end claiming no one could "know," while providing no evidence to support your statement.

The "overestimation of your competence…" which has resulted in the sweeping statement, "How could anybody measure "longevity" of game rules?," followed by, "And without knowing any of that, you can't possibly formulate any sort of meaningful analysis for why people play one game and not the other," presumes you have a transcendent knowledge which mere mortals lack. That is hubris in my book.

Perhaps it is very old fashioned but I was taught to ask questions and get answers before making decisions. In that spirit, do you dispute the longevity and popularity of FoW and WRG Ancients can be measured by the availability of supporting products, tournaments and sales? If so, on what basis?

Bob Coggins

I've certainly heard of people playing sword and flame and even games based on it. There's a FIW variant out there somewhere.
Perhaps spookily though, I can't bring to mind the last time I saw anyone actually playing them.
Maybe it's a conspiracy.

As to measuring rules longevity.
Can't really see you getting a reading on any sort of precise pop-ometer.
It'd be tricky to tell if FoW is as popular, more popular or less so than a year ago.
But.
I think you can readily see where tournaments have sprung up for a given set and now have disappeared.

When all the tournaments (inevitably it would seem) disappear then that would be pretty easy to detect.

Why they come and go?
The grass is always greener.
You pick up a ruleset, play it loads and eventually those little foibles you barely noticed at first become much more noticeable.
But "everyone" plays ruleset X so you're stuck with it.
Then ruleset Y comes along.
People start playing that occasionally.
Eventually a critical mass of players occurs and "everyone" switches to Y.
It's a great system.
Oh, hang on a minute.
There's a problem here and there….
Time goes by.
System Z comes along.
Hey look at rules Z.
They're shiny.
Look how they shine.
Must buy.
Ooooh they're luverly.
Must play.

I think you can readily see where tournaments have sprung up for a given set and now have disappeared.

Tourney games are one slice of the pie. For example, "Fire and Fury" has been a popular ACW game for decades, but it's not a tournament game, so it's very hard to judge how much it's still being played. I always see at least one game of it, at any given HMGS convention, but what does that mean? I also always see Gamer Joe running his obscure "The Glory of Whatever" rules, too. Does that mean that "Fire and Fury" and Gamer Joe are equally popular in some way? We'd assume not, but the only kind of evidence we have is our eyeballs, and what we happen to run across at a convention.

The other bit about tournaments, is that they require a lot of infrastructural support. There are small ad-hoc tournaments run by people who enjoy a game, and who can organize friends for an annual get-together to play it. One of my games has a small event like that in Spain, I believe once a year. But a company like GW or Battlefront invests very seriously in the running, direction, organization, and support of tournaments all over the world. They have employees for whom tournament supervision and support is Job #1.

When Slitherine released FoG, they made a serious and concerted effort to promote it in Europe and North America, by having people visit lots of game shows and conventions; they were consciously working on cranking-up a tournament scene for it. WAB, by contrast, did not; they relied on the ad-hoc method of people coming up with their own local events. Thus to the casual observer it looked like FoG was more popular, and had "displaced" WAB as a favorite Ancients set.

I suspect that concepts like "popularity" and "longevity" for games are usually observations about the degree to which a publisher is promoting the product. Tournaments are one obvious way of doing so.

Hi

One ongoing problem is that of availability – many printed rulesets seem to sell out after short periods – often months.

It would be nice if many older sets were available in PDF format – but then again, the hobby does seem to thrive on the physical attractiveness of printed rules (which often cost £30.00 GBP-50 and are unlikely to see multiple print runs).

So it stands to reason that oldies (but goodies?) will not have the longevity, if only because you can't buy them.

This is why I feel that cheaper price points for rules are more agreeable: product can be produced in larger quantities or perhaps made available on a 'print on demand' basis – PDF's are also good.

I was going to get a PDF copy of the 'look sarge, no charts' rules (I think that's the name!) until I saw the price of $25 USD … I just can't bring myself to pay that.

flipper,

I agree. Most rules have been produced by individuals and with self publishing even more so. When they lose interest, get sick or die, the rules enter a limbo of non-support and most, even those which are popular, die.

Given FoW had the backing of a corporation I suspect it will be around for awile. Certainly it's the same with Warhammer.

Craig and I put 10s of thousands of hourse into designing and developing NBs and I dare say authors of other sets do the same. So my question is what is a designer's time worth? To me $25 USD does not sound excessive. In the end the market will decide.

Bob Coggins