Let’s face facts. I didn’t like Terminator: Genisys. It just didn’t resonate with me. Neither did Terminator: Dark Fate. It’s safe to say, I didn’t care for these movies and do not recognize them in the timeline. I will admit to loving the opening of Genisys, though. Give me a movie like that.
Oddly enough, I’m not here to talk about the Terminator franchise or go on about paradoxes and ripple effects. I’m here because what seemed to be a throw-away line from the movie got me thinking.
Awhile back on Twitter, Kneon of Clownfish TV was talking about the state of current AAA and AAAA games releasing incomplete games for which, Day One Patches, Season Passes, Microtransactions, etc continue to dominate the lives of players who become so heavily invested in the game that it borders insanity.
In response, I posted a shelfie which was this…
I also remarked that everything you see, save for the Lovecraft, Howard, Bulfinch and Folklore books were full and complete games. No Day One Patches. No microtransactions. You can’t pay me to get gold or silver pieces in the game. They have to be earned. No annoying DLC. Biggest plus to all of this; no censorship.
Some are going to point to Wicked Ones and, yes, even I’ll point it out, this is part of Wicked Ones and I urge you to be on the lookout for it…
Unlike video games, you can ignore this. As I’m fond of pointing out, once the book is in your hands, it’s out of anyone else’s. The only thing you can control is your own table.
For my post, I was called a luddite, amongst other things. Fact is, most of the games that sit on my shelf are only as old as maybe two years from the day of the release. Some of them are older but they’re newer to me as I’ve only gotten back into this type of gaming in the last few years.
Why did I do that? Several reasons. If your punk kid is going to start acting like he’s in a Call of Duty Lobby, he’s going to have to insult me to my face. After that, I can toss his snot-nosed ass from my table. That’s a big one. No keyboard warriors around my table, virtual or otherwise. Even bigger is the value involved.
In my last post, I talked about Cairn which is a free download. The book on Amazon goes for less than $4 and there’s a ton of cost-effective even a ton more free material out there for it. That’s not bad.
Let me present another few mediums to break this down.
To see Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, a single ticket would cost nearly $18 and this doesn’t include concessions. The price quoted is also the matinee price. I haven’t been to a movie theater in well over four years. Popcorn alone costs nearly $11, bringing a single person’s cost to $28 and the drink is another $8. That means the cost per person for just that would come to $36. Let’s do a quick numbers crunch here.
$36 per person to see a 90 minute movie and your entertainment value comes in at $24 per full hour spent in the theater and the popcorn and drink may have been the best part of the experience, especially with the way Hollywood has gone these days. Even if you were legitimately entertained by the movie and enjoyed it, the next question is how much would you have enjoyed it? Enough to watch it again?
Movies suffer, even the best ones because they’re only a mental vacation for maybe a couple of hours. I recently purchased Dune and Dune: Part Two as a set for less than $30. At four hours for the total running time, I paid $7.50 per hour to be entertained. Whether I go back to that movie or not is irrelevant, that cost is never coming down. All the plot twists and the like have been uncovered. Don’t get me wrong, I will probably enjoy those movies time and again but the fact remains that the story will never change. I’ll essentially be watching the same thing over and over and over again. That’s the lot of any movie.
Likewise, if I were to purchase a copy of Dune from Barnes & Noble for $40, this is where things become a little better in terms of value. It would take me 22 hours of continuous reading to complete that novel. I’m basing that on the length of the audiobook. Now, I spend only $1.88 to be entertained. If I purchase the audiobook and listen to it, the dollar amount per hour changes drastically. The price on the Audible Audiobook is close to $30 which breaks down to $1.36 per hour to be entertained. Sure, you could opt for paperback or you could spend the credit that you earn each month which breaks the cost down further as your credit cost you $15 for the month, now you’ve only spent $0.68 per hour to be entertained.
There is, however, the fact that the book, while probably far superior, is still the same story. Nothing will be different from one read to the next.
Last night, a couple things came to mind. The first, a conversation I had with my friend, Angelique concerning Professional Game Masters charging hundreds of dollars per person, per session and the second being Bill Silvey and Tim Imholt’s conversation over whether or not tabletop RPG books are getting to be too expensive. Great points were made from both of these gentlemen and I think you should watch this because it’s a nice bit of perspective.
Tim and Bill both make great points. These days, the very game they’re talking about cost about maybe $10 per book in PDF. Knowing a Dungeon Master tends to buy everything, there are five books that the DM can purchase that will provide all that you need to run the game. The Player’s Handbook, The Dungeon Master’s Guide, The Monster Manual, Monster Manual II and Fiend Folio are what will give you the most and, speaking only of PDF, you’ll pay $10 for each book. This will cost the Dungeon Master about $50. The player will only spend $10.
There are even books like this which cost about $44 dollars, shipped to your door.
This is OSRIC, it’s a clone of AD&D First Edition. One book and everything you need to run or play the game is right here. It’s house-ruled somewhat to stay on the right side of copyright law but here it is. It’s not a perfect one to one copy of the game but it’s perfectly serviceable. In comparison, a print on demand copy of the AD&D DMG can cost you $30 just for the one book if you must have the original. The PDF to OSRIC is free and the Digest-Sized Paperback version sitting next to my hardcover is less than $15.
Any of those options to play AD&D is fine but the point to this is, no matter what you choose to spend, if anything at all, your cost for entertainment per hour comes down the more you play. Even if you played an AD&D adventure like Keep on The Borderlands using the rule set above, your cost per hour comes down the more you play because no two Keep on The Borderlands game run by a competent DM will ever be the same. Even if one player were to play that particular adventure over and over and over again, it’s a different game every time in some way. Dismissing pre-written adventures altogether, think about homebrewed worlds and campaigns played over the course of many years, the cost per person, per hour…it comes to pennies.
For example, if I as the GM were to take my new hardcover copy ($44) and homebrew an entire world, people it with NPCs, Locations, Monsters, Dungeons, Traps and magical MacGuffins, Treasure Hunts, Pirates, Brigands and Thieves, and so on and so forth and run a game for three to four other players for a few hours every two weeks and the game were to last a minimum of two years, we’re looking at eight hours per month for twelve months for two years, that comes to a total of one hundred and ninety-two hours played. Cost per hour comes to twenty-two cents an hour for just me. If the players downloaded the free PDF which will work and merely brought their fully-charged tablets with the book on it or read it from their phone or laptop, the cost per hour of entertainment is even lower.
Cairn, OSRIC, Basic Fantasy RPG, Castles & Crusades, For Gold & Glory, Labyrinth Lord, Lamentations of The Flame Princess, The Wretched RPG, Mothership, White Box: Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game, The New Crimson Dragon Slayer, Cepheus and so many others are available in PDF as free downloads, absolutely free. The only question involved when it comes to your table is, what’s your preference?
The fact is this. These days, everything is pushing toward the trend of not owning anything at all. Even Ubisoft’s own Phillippe Tremblay made comments to that effect when he mentioned that we stopped caring whether or not we owned our movies or music but it’s about getting comfortable not owning our games. Even D&D Beyond…you own nothing there, no matter whether you’ve given them money or not. You don’t even own the books you’ve purchased. All the links above are full games. You’ll own them. If you have a tablet that’s fully-charged during a power outage and a few independent lighting sources, you and your friends can still play unimpeded. Even solo games such as Four Against Darkness or Fabled Lands can prove invaluable in times where your friends can’t get together for gaming and that’s just naming two. There’s still a solo gaming revolution going on out there and it’s pretty amazing to see.
In short, this medium may perhaps be old but Movies, Music and books as mediums are far older. Role-playing games have only been a thing for about half a century. If anything, The RPG is more of a Johnny-Come-Lately in comparison to those three. Video gaming is even younger than that, yes, but should you lose power or your internet connection, get used to having nothing unless you have some retro games around. I do and I still play those as well but even those are the same games going in.
RPGs in comparison don’t really suffer. No one to play with? Break out an oracle and play solo. No power? Bust out the LED Candles and Lanterns, keep calm and roll on.
Point being, there’s a solid reason why this medium still exists. While other mediums are more convenient and consumable, the fact remains that the resilience of the tabletop RPG proves one thing; they’re old, but not obsolete.
Brilliant. We tell our customers all the time... if you bought our digital book from Slamazon and you want a copy that you can download that isn't some kindle piece of code you can just license, we will give you our master EPUB or however you want it at no cost (just show us the receipt, fam).
We also encourage everyone to buy physical but not every cat has the space for that.
Keep fighting the good fight amigo.