Bandit | 16 Nov 2013 9:48 p.m. PST |
This isn't about if you think the prices asked are fair or correct or justified, this is about what prices you find approachable and what formats you deem acceptable. As silly as it sounds aloud, there is suck a thing as a product that is "too cheap" to be considered. If someone tried to sell a set of rules for $5 USD I doubt many people would take it seriously, yet there is also an upper limit, I haven't met anyone who'd pay $100 USD for a rule book. On the question of cost, what price points are you willing to consider, what price points do you just ignore and what must be included justify the cost? A) $10 USD or less B) $12 USD-20 C) $25 USD-35 D) $40 USD-55 E) $60 USD or more The second question is about format, i.e. paper vs digital. Do you find digital (PDF) to be an acceptable format and does it have equal standing with you vs a printed rule book? Cheers, The Bandit |
Heisler | 16 Nov 2013 10:38 p.m. PST |
I'm in for the B & C price points. Much more than that and it better be getting rave reviews. As an example despite its popularity I haven't purchased SAGA, I consider it to be over priced. I can be happy with digital but don't charge me a printed ruleboo price for a pdf rulebook. |
Desert Fox | 16 Nov 2013 10:41 p.m. PST |
Price break = $25 USD I'm old school, I prefer paper over digital every time |
ArmymenRGreat | 16 Nov 2013 10:58 p.m. PST |
I'm with Desert Fox – $25 USD or less for print (preferred) and half that for PDF. If they're more than that, I just wait and pick them up second hand. There's always too much of a chance they won't get used. |
yorkie o1 | 16 Nov 2013 11:12 p.m. PST |
First of all it has to be a printed rulebook, and my absolute upper limit would be in the region of £30.00 GBP. As for a rulebook being to cheap to consider, well, if its a good game then id get it
Not a fan of electronic ebooks and PDF's etc. Steve |
McLaddie | 16 Nov 2013 11:14 p.m. PST |
I find the answers to the question somewhat 'johnny-one-note' in character, as though all rules sets in presentation, content and paraphenalia are equal. The average board game for GMT is $55 USD, where one battle or campaign is represented, not a rules set/game capable of being used for a variety of battles. Often the rules books are far more elaborate than board wargames, and even then, they will contain counters and other equipment. Yet, from what I have seen, most gamers are not willing to pay that same price for a miniature's set. While any number do not contain materials and quality to justify that cost, others do. So, why are we asking such a generic question? |
Frothers Did It And Ran Away | 17 Nov 2013 12:40 a.m. PST |
I loathe pdf rules unless they're short enough to be worth printing out. I want something physical in my hands that I can flip through to find sections I want. I like the recent slick eye-candy rulebooks, they're nice things in their own right. But I think £25.00 GBP is pretty much the limit of what I'd pay which is about $40.00 USD so D) for me. |
Mako11 | 17 Nov 2013 12:51 a.m. PST |
If it's a PDF, A. I also like A for simple, printed rules sets. B, if the set looks really promising, and has received good reviews, for a printed, hardcopy. I will occasionally stretch to $25 USD, but that is rare, now. I'm pretty much done with C+, since I've found all those pretty photos, and fancy covers usually mean the rules suffer. C+ productions usually fall under "my inverse pricing rulebook law", where the more expensive, and slicker the production, the lower the quality of actual gaming rules. Also, splitting rules up into multiple booklets to meet A and B, doesn't really work for me. I catch on pretty quickly now that I might want a set of rules for more than one 3-month period of WWII, and in more than one theater of combat, including army/aircraft/naval lists, etc. |
Gozzaoz | 17 Nov 2013 3:35 a.m. PST |
My top price to pay would be $70. USD For that price I would expect hardback, full colour high production value and perhaps game counters include similar to those included in the Chain of Command bundle. As much as a book is nice to have in ones hot hand, the full advantage of a PDF is realized when used on an iPad. Completely surchable, no wading through page after page. PDFs are bookmarkagle (if there is such a word), you can highlight important paragraphs and many rule sets can be stored on your iPad for casual reading. By the way I by both formats Lasalle, Maurice, Might & Reason, Koenig Krieg et al. As for losing a copy when a computer fails, an external harddrive, cd/DVD or many of the free online backup services like Google drive can be used for making a backup of your data. Good computer housekeeping practice. |
MichaelCollinsHimself | 17 Nov 2013 3:54 a.m. PST |
"This isn't about if you think the prices asked are fair or correct or justified, this is about what prices you find approachable and what formats you deem acceptable." Well, although this was the original poster`s intention, what is "deemed acceptable" equates to a justifiable price. I have a technical question
. I did not Bookmark my own pdfs linking contents/index pages with text
I might consider doing this if they`re OK for use on touch-sensitive pads? |
Mr Elmo | 17 Nov 2013 4:17 a.m. PST |
PDF – up to B Hard Cover glossy with lots of pictures, E would be ok |
John de Terre Neuve | 17 Nov 2013 5:34 a.m. PST |
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Texas Jack | 17 Nov 2013 6:02 a.m. PST |
Nowadays I find I really enjoy PDFs, but only if they allow you to add comments. That way I can use them for bookmarks. For PDFs I will not pay more than B. For hard copy C. |
79thPA | 17 Nov 2013 6:24 a.m. PST |
I wouldn't dismiss $5 USD rules; they are cheap enough that they are worth the chance of finding something good or useful. The most I have paid for a color, hard bound rule book is $50.00 USD Like everyone, I would like to pay less. I am pretty choosy about what rules I buy. I do not buy rules simply because they are new or have some new gimmick. I want to read multiple reviews and, if possible, I want to see them played a time or two or actually play them at a convention. Depending on the price I might consider a pdf but I prefer actually holding a rule book. |
John D Salt | 17 Nov 2013 7:03 a.m. PST |
Some years ago, I sent traveller's cheques for $100 USD to one of the designers of the computer game Moria, because that reflected a tiny part of the play value I had obtained from this free game over the years. So I don't really have a minimum or a maximum price in mind for games or rules. I do, however, approve of the attitude of Cheapass Games' founder -- I want to be paying for interesting, innovative and entertaining games and rules ideas, not for glossy paper, pretty pictures, and impressive packaging. All the best, John. |
Inventedregiment | 17 Nov 2013 7:14 a.m. PST |
I personally won't pay more than £30.00 GBP for a rulebook, and even that is pushing it. The 3rd edition WH40k rulebook is a prime example for me of successful rulebook design. It is 98% black and white. It is mostly made up of actual rules (with picture diagrams!), and the few photos and (quite a lot) of fluff serve to inspire the players to make their own mark in the gaming universe it is trying to bring to life. That is all I want from a rulebook, especially historical ones. I have the internet for pretty pictures of painted models. The rulebook is, to me, a rulebook. Good scenarios, a few army lists to get things started and some interesting historical background is all I need from it besides the rules. Maybe a select bibliography and some painting guides, but that's only for more niche conflicts – for WW2 or similar, just *give me the rules already*! |
CATenWolde | 17 Nov 2013 7:27 a.m. PST |
Anything beyond B or C and I would have to be convinced that I would actually play them (as opposed to "hey, this is interesting, let's just check it out"), which is a difficult sale when I can't get to conventions anymore. D is unfortunately becoming more common, and I'm buying less rules as a result. |
The Traveling Turk | 17 Nov 2013 8:26 a.m. PST |
There has always been a big difference between what people say they will pay, and what they will actually pay. Far and away the best-selling game books in the hobby are big, glossy, full-color hardbacks that routinely sell for more than $40. USD And in the case of GW products, much more. Those sorts of numbers speak for themselves. How many tens of thousands of FoW army list books have been sold? How many copies of Black Powder? How many Field of Glory? Sure, in some cases they can be gotten discounted on Amazon, but that only speaks to the sheer volume of their sales: Amazon is only viable if you know you're going to sell enough of them to compensate for their big cut. - Since hobbies are by nature idiosyncratic, there is no objective way to measure the "quality" of a game, beyond basic things like whether or not there are lots of typos or errors (and even then, many people don't care). One man's favorite game is another man's piece of crap. One man's high-end glossy book is hardly impressive at all to another man, who thinks it's just so-so in terms of production values. There is therefore no necessary trade-off between "pretty" and "good." Nor anything like a consensus on "what you get for your money." |
Texas Jack | 17 Nov 2013 9:26 a.m. PST |
Itīs funny, I have all those rule sets mentioned above, but I got them all second hand at a big discount. So I guess I have no problem in letting other people spend over forty bucks for rules |
Dave Crowell | 17 Nov 2013 10:12 a.m. PST |
I recently bought a hardcopy of Lassalle after buying and printing out the PDF. The reason is that I very much enjoy playing the game and do find a bound book nicer than a printed out PDF. I will buy and play five dollar rules if they give a fun game. When the price of a rule book starts to climb above $35.00 USD or so I start to get reluctant. This is because I know there will also be a couple of hundred dollars worth of miniatures etc involved. A fairly substantial investment if I don't like a game. I will pay more for a quality board game because I am getting all the components needed for play in one package. I hVe. Nothing against full colour, glossy, photo illustrated hard cover rule books, but don't mind simple black and white booklets either. The play is the thing. Ironically the cheapest wargame I ever bought is also the most expensive wargame I ever bought. Ogre from Steve Jackson games, I bought the. Original micro game for $2.95 USD and shelled out over $300 USD for the Kickstarter for the designer's edition. Why? Game play value. Although expensive, I think the GW boxed games are a good idea, rules and enough figures. To play a basic game in one package. I would pay $300 USD for historicals packaged that way. I balk at PDFs that cost the same as the print rule book. PDFs that replace a print rulebook I will pay higher costs for. |
spontoon | 17 Nov 2013 10:13 a.m. PST |
B, Maybe C. The way tehy churn out rules nowadays it'll turn up in the half-price bin next year anyway. There Is But One True Set Of Horse And Musket Rules! WRG 1685-1845. All Else Is Heresy! |
DestoFante | 17 Nov 2013 10:15 a.m. PST |
It also depends on what you exactly buy for the given price. Do rules include a scenarios? Army lists? Historical backgrounds? Uniform pics? Nowadays, I my price "sweet spot" is $25 USD-$35, but I have my own collection of scenarios and my uniform references, and usually I do not care much about the historical background section in any rule. I confess to be a little impatient in regard of those rules which cannot be really played unless you buy additional bells and whistles (not really bells and whistles, then.) |
bgbboogie | 17 Nov 2013 10:38 a.m. PST |
Were doing our jousting rules for £20.00 GBP or $30 USD for the general public. M |
CorSecEng | 17 Nov 2013 11:18 a.m. PST |
Lots of people on here knock pdfs but you have to understand the crowd. If your target audience is older historical gamers then print is something you should be looking at. If your producing a scifi game then PDF can work fine. Look at Gruntz. It is the best selling game of ALL time at wargamesvault. The only one to gain platinum status. Saga was mentioned and I too will not buy it. If it has a $20 USD pdf option then I'd have a copy for research purposes alone. I don't own check your six either. Same reason. If your not planning to attend conventions and not expecting to push the book into distribution then there is no reason to print a book at all. Wargames Vault works great and they don't take that much. Plus you can get an extra 5% or so by self promoting and using their affiliate program. You also get paid for whatever else they buy on the site. They also have a print on demand option for those that just need paper. They handle promotion and distribution and if someones compute crashes you just log in and download a new copy. $20 USD is also my upper limit for pdfs and it better be 25% or more cheaper then print. |
Sergeant Paper | 17 Nov 2013 11:23 a.m. PST |
PDF option is MOST important, because I live on an island in the middle of the pacific. Pricewise, I'd pay $5 USD or $10 USD, and I'd think about $25 USD-35, but no further. |
Sergeant Paper | 17 Nov 2013 11:24 a.m. PST |
Ditto – flash drives and spare hard drives are cheap, for that matter you can put a LOT of rules on a CD. I back up all my game rules, and I've lost none of them in two drive/computer failures. |
Sergeant Paper | 17 Nov 2013 11:27 a.m. PST |
I also print out pdfs, and stick them on the shelf, because my phd committee told horror stories of losing files, and highly recommended a multi-media approach to file storage
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CorSecEng | 17 Nov 2013 12:14 p.m. PST |
I just use dropbox for backup
Makes it easy to transfer them to the ipad/phone as well. |
arthur1815 | 17 Nov 2013 12:35 p.m. PST |
Anything over £35.00 GBP is out of the question, as far as I'm concerned. I'd rather spend that sort of money on a history book. I'm increasingly drawn to short, simple, possibly 'Old School' rules, and have enjoyed playing with very cheap rules, such as USE ME ACW, bought as a PDF and printed off in black and white, and also free rules such as the Portable Wargame published by Bob Cordery on his Wargaming Miscellany blog. Apart from being cheap, they have the great merit of being easy to read and learn, and simple enough to tinker with to create my own rules. |
Bandit | 17 Nov 2013 12:58 p.m. PST |
So in general I'm gathering the following: $25 USD-35 is the sweet spot for a set of rules, lower than that is fine, higher than that and the buyer is pretty choosy. For a lot of historical players PDF is a nice-to-have but paper is a requirement. Sound correct? More input? Cheers, The Bandit |
Who asked this joker | 17 Nov 2013 1:00 p.m. PST |
$40 USD for a rule book. I would not pay ore than $40 USD for any other type of book so why would I pay more for a rule book? I would pay half that price for a PDF. Pretty much echoes Mr Elmo above. |
Elk Eater | 17 Nov 2013 1:40 p.m. PST |
Usually I'd say a decent production value rule book should be in the $30 USD range. I think Iron Ivan has the price point right for the production value they produce. My maximum is ~$50 and I expect good production value for that price (i.e. hardcover and color). I do not buy PDFs. |
ancientsgamer | 17 Nov 2013 2:49 p.m. PST |
Both formats have their place. I love being able to access electronic format rules whenever from a PC or smartphone (old school man, still haven't joined the Cloud universe except for a bit of Dropbox
;-) Since I don't own a pad device though, gaming at the table and being able to easily go back and forth in a hardcopy book rules IMO :-) Access is king in the electronic world. Portability is king in the hard print world. I suppose that with PDF's, I am not doing what I do with paper. When I have a Pad pc and the ability to do the same and more that I do with paper, I will probably switch. After all, I can do a text search in a PDF. A paper copy requires old school scanning. As to price, it isn't the retail price but the price I pay. Field of Glory was heavily discounted when first released; I paid almost what a hobby store would pay. Lasalle, I paid full boat retail at my hobby store because they had it and I support them and understand paying more pays for my gaming venue. I regularly prefer my FLGS as my primary buy as long as time is not an issue or just plain availability problems. D. Is my current price limit but would probably go higher if supplements were integral rather than separate. I look at my FoG purchases and wonder at times where my money went:-) It was well spent but I often wonder if I would do it all over again knowing where the total tally would end up ;-) Love the color stuff, not so much for me but when I show others what we do. I find color to be much more practical already printed as printing color PDFs is more expensive for me by multiple factors over professionally printed (other than print on demand services that is) So far electronic format is valuable but hasn't supplanted printed for reasons above. Should I remedy my pad situation and learn how to use electronic format to its full capability, I will probably jump there but may have backups in printed format, again, the reasons listed above. |
miniMo | 17 Nov 2013 8:43 p.m. PST |
Higher priced rules I will only buy if I know I am going to play the game. So, I have not purchased a number of rules I was otherwise tempted to pick up for consideration. How high I'll pay depends entirely on how much I intend to play the game. Cheap PDFs I will readily buy for consideration and/or comparison $5 USD-$15, the lower the price, the more readily I'll buy it on a whim.. If I do wind up playing the game regularly, I will also then happily buy a hard copy if it's notably better quality than my print-out. If I'll definitely be playing a game $20 USD-$40 is fine. More than that only if I'll play it a lot! I will be playing SAGA occaisionally, so I did buy the main rules folder and one expansion. If the price was lower, I would have bought all the expansions. |
By John 54 | 19 Nov 2013 6:07 a.m. PST |
I too, am not a fan of PDFs, and the like, I like a book in my hand. But, I am willing to pay a bit for it, For instance, I bought 'In the Grand Manner' some 25 years ago, it wasn't cheap, for the time, but I have used it for hundreds of games. Likewise, I bought Crossfire, quite cheap, have had many games out of it. I consider rules to be good value, not cheap, but good VALUE. However, both of these sets, I played, before I bought, so I knew they were the bad boys for me. How much I would punt for an untested/untried set would depend on reviews, and the opinions of the good people on forums like this. John |
ratisbon | 19 Nov 2013 8:45 a.m. PST |
To measure rules by cost has nothing to do with their value. If you pay $10 USD for an unplayable rules set you've wasted your money. If you pay $60 USD for an set which is excellent then it is worth every penny in entertainment. Bob Coggins |
By John 54 | 19 Nov 2013 8:54 a.m. PST |
Isn't that what i said? John |
Dave Crowell | 20 Nov 2013 5:59 a.m. PST |
Exactly what BoB and John just said. I look at hobby purchases in this way when it comes to value: how many hours of enjoyment do I get for my purchase? I will spend about ten bucks to see a movie for an hour and a half, more if I get popcorn and soda. So, for each ten bucks I spend on a hobby purchase if I get at least an hour and a half of enjoyment out of it I'm doing no worse than going to the movies. Now, consider the cost of a round of golf, bowling a few frames, or other leisure activities. Are you getting the same enjoyment time for money spent out of your gaming purchases that would out of doing something else with that money? If you are then you are getting good value. In high school and college I compared my gaming stuff to pizzas and music. Other guys ate a lot of pizzas and had huge record and cd collections, I invested that same money in my collection of gaming stuff. I still play some of those same games. |
Lfseeney | 19 Dec 2013 10:09 p.m. PST |
To read over I like PDF, if I decide to play then I buy a printed book. I like best the folks that give me a pdf with the printed rules, as I have something to read when I buy. If I am unsure of the rules I want a pdf for under 15 to decide. Sad that many companies just to not "get" pdf, and think we want them just to resell in dark alleys. Lee |