Will we ever see a full-color HERO product?

[Yamo]

It does seem to be the industry standard these days...

[Monolith]

Just my own opinion here, but the only books which I would like to see in full color are "Enemies" or "Superhero" books. I think it adds a very strong feel to the game when you have full color pictures for the good and badguys in the game. When you look at the pictures of the Champion in the book they can seem flat and uninspiring, but when you see the full color pictures from the excellent desktop that Nato did the characters seem alive and vibrant.

As far as everything else though, I have no interest in paying high prices to see color pictures of characters fighting in parks or along skylines. For the windown dressing pictures in most books black and white is good enough for me.

[Yamo]

Well, I don't like superheroes (although I have bought every Champions book and will continue to do so simply to support the system) , but it just irks me to no end to see HERO look (not read, not play, just look) so darn...ghetto next to the competition. Especially when the competetion is garbage like d20.

[Monolith]

Originally posted by Yamo
Well, I don't like superheroes, but it just irks me to no end to see HERO look (not read, not play, just look) so darn...ghetto next to the competition. Especially when the competetion is garbage like d20.
One man's garbage is another man's gold. :)

I was not just discussing the Champions genre, though I seemed to have given that impression. When I say "Enemies" books I mean any book which is dedicated to giving us game stats for individuals (heroes or villains). This could be CKC, or MMM, Scourges of the Galaxy, or Predators.

There have always been companies that produce color over black and white and that is not going to change. Personally, except in the examples I listed above, I have no interest in paying for the "flash" of a book. That does not mean that DOJ's books cannot, or should not, become more flashy in their layout style, but I have no real interest in color.

[Yamo]

Besides, can more impulse buys from the "Ooh! Shiny!" crowd down at the FLGS really hurt? ;)

[Monolith]

Originally posted by Yamo
Besides, can more impulse buys from the "Ooh! Shiny!" crowd down at the FLGS really hurt? ;)
Curb appeal is always a plus, but I am already budgeting to buy $500.00 worth of Hero Games Goodness™ next year (not to mention material from Gold Rush Games and whomever else might want to license), and if I have to throw another $100.00 that direction just to get it all in color I might have to stop feeding my children once a week. :)

[nblade]

Originally posted by Yamo
Besides, can more impulse buys from the "Ooh! Shiny!" crowd down at the FLGS really hurt? ;)

Actually Yes, the "Ooh! Shiny" crowd as you put it, are IMHO not the gamers you want to target anyway. They tend to be what I call flavor of the month gamers. These are the type of gamers which would not generally would buy more than one product of a company unless all the products from a company were of simiarly "shiny".

Well enough of that.

On the subject of color I'm sort of split. While it might be interesting to see some material in color, I don't think it adds that much to a games usefulness and contrary to many peoples' opinion, it is still more expensive to print in color. Actually going through my own game collection, the only books in it that have color are the few D20 books I own and a few games that have color inserts in them like old version of Star Wars from West End Games. Most everyone else tend to not try to spend the $$$ on "shiny". Hell if you take a look at what HERO plans to try to publish in 2004, 18 some odd books, I can not even try to think how they could publish that many if even one of those books had color in them. Likely they would either not publish that many or some material would likely be late. Neither option appeals to me.

Well that's just my insanity, everyone can safely ignore.

[Nato]

Originally posted by Yamo
Besides, can more impulse buys from the "Ooh! Shiny!" crowd down at the FLGS really hurt? ;)

Have you seen the cover to Millennium City? Now that's eye candy!

[Monolith]

Originally posted by Nato
Have you seen the cover to Millennium City? Now that's eye candy!
I think you are the only one to have seen the cover for MC. Is there a link somewhere? :)

[mattingly]

What are the relative costs of publishing some color pages in the middle of an otherwise black and white book? There have been plenty of books that have 16 contiguous pages of color in a 128 (or whatever) page book. If a small color insert like that would only add $1 or $2 to the cover price of a book, compared to the $10 or more it would cost to print the whole book in color, it might be worth it. Just put all the color character art in the color page section, and you're good to go.

[Yamo]

Have you seen the cover to Millennium City? Now that's eye candy!

Nice covers are fine, but they're just a start. People actually pick up those suckers and flip through 'em. Colorful interior art is vital, too.

[Steve Long]

It's highly unlikely you'll ever see a full-color Hero product, not unless there's some major economic change that makes color printing equal in cost to B&W printing, or that increases our revenue to many times what it is now. It's simply too expensive.

Nor do we have any plans for color inserts. Not only do they add little, if anything, to a book, but IMO they don't pay for themselves in terms of increased revenue. They're also more likely to cause binding problems.

[Nato]

Originally posted by Monolith
I think you are the only one to have seen the cover for MC. Is there a link somewhere? :)

Whoops, sorry. I think I looked at it once to because I need to draw a character fetured on it. Sorry. Thought it was posted here once but obviously it was not. *turns red*

[Blackout]

Originally posted by mattingly
What are the relative costs of publishing some color pages in the middle of an otherwise black and white book? There have been plenty of books that have 16 contiguous pages of color in a 128 (or whatever) page book. If a small color insert like that would only add $1 or $2 to the cover price of a book, compared to the $10 or more it would cost to print the whole book in color, it might be worth it. Just put all the color character art in the color page section, and you're good to go.

Color printing is crazily expensive. For every page of color, you need color seperations, and those add about $100 per page of color...

The actual cost of printing (paper and ink) doesn't go up terribly much, but that flat fee for color seps is a killer. Unless you know you're going to sell boatloads of copies (and I mean BOATloads), then it really isn't worth it.

(That may not be exactly the case today. It's been a few years since I looked into publishing anything in color (and that was comic books - though that shouldn't make any difference).)

Personally, I don't want to pay extra for color. It doesn't add enough to my enjoyment of a product to justify the increased expense.

[Nato]

My last real job was with a larg company in their design depatment. I dealt with a pre-press guy, the people who provide color separations for 4-color printing. And yes, the price you estimated for separations per page is about right, IIRC. So it is quite a large investment. Now, there is direct-to-press printing, and a lot of the old pre-press stuff is eliminated. It's still pretty pricey though.

[buzz]

Originally posted by Steve Long
It's highly unlikely you'll ever see a full-color Hero product, not unless there's some major economic change that makes color printing equal in cost to B&W printing, or that increases our revenue to many times what it is now. It's simply too expensive.

I'm all for color, but I can live with economic realities.

My question is, what about physical quality of the books in general?

I've noticed that, e.g., Star HERO seems to be printed on better paper than FREd and UMA. The art (and the quality of its reproduction) and general layout of newer books seems to be improving as well. IMHO, Ninja HERO is pretty much the best-looking cover to date. Seeing more of Chris Stevens' work in the newer books is also a Good Thing(tm).

How far do you think this will go? Will we see more hardcover releases? Slicker, higher-grade paper?

I'm not asking that DOJ turn into White Wolf or anything... but the physical quality of a game is important to me; it adds to the overall experience. How far is DOJ hoping to go in this regard?

And on a side note:

Would DOJ consider a color product if was marketed as a "limited edition" at a premium price? Ryan Dancey has talked about there being an untapped market for "prestige" RPG products. I, for one, would be happy to pay $65 or so for a full-color, leatherette copy of FREd. :)

[Derek Hiemforth]

Coming into this late, I'd also question Yamo's characterization of color as "the industry standard." I don't think it really is when you look at it closely.

Only a tiny handful of companies (cough*wotc*cough) can afford to publish lots and lots of books in color. What seems to be much more common is for one or two "core books" to be color, and support books in black and white. (Or more cynically, one or two core books in color, and the company or game line doesn't live long enough to ever make any support books, color or no.) And these companies can only do this because their core books are much smaller than Hero's. For example, Mutants and Masterminds is only 51% the size of HERO System Fifth Edition, but it's 82% of the price. If HERO System Fifth Edition had the same cost per page as M&M, it would cost $61.14.

I think there are basically four camps: Companies who know they will sell so many units of a book that they can afford to have a very small profit margin on each one. Only WotC and maybe White Wolf fall into this category.
Companies who can afford to publish core books in color because they also have money coming in from CCGs or other sources. Decipher (Star Trek and Lord of the Rings) is an example. Plus, both of those properties use largely photographs from the series/movies; if their license allows them to use production photos like that, they may be saving money on original art which helps defray the cost of the color books.
Small companies who probably shouldn't be doing books in color from an economic standpoint, but who do their core book(s) in color in hopes of catching the buyers' eyes and hooking buyers on their games. Judging by the number of folks who've done one or two books in color, followed by nothing, this seems like a risky move.
Everyone else; there are still a LOT of companies who seldom if ever do books in color.
The followup books factor is important. For example, the Star Trek RPG came out with its two color core books around the same time as HERO System Fifth Edition came out, and the only thing they've come with since then (AFAIK) is a GM's screen. In the same amount of time, Hero Games has come out with another 1500 pages of Hero goodness. :)

In the long run, I think quality material and shelf presence will be more important than color interiors. The new Hero books have good cover art to catch the eye. Beyond that, when there are 40 Hero books out by the end of 2004 and they're occupying a whole shelving section at the FLGS, people will be drawn by that.

A new motto for the HERO System: If you let them build it, they will come. ;)

[Derek Hiemforth]

Originally posted by buzz
Would DOJ consider a color product if was marketed as a "limited edition" at a premium price? Ryan Dancey has talked about there being an untapped market for "prestige" RPG products. I, for one, would be happy to pay $65 or so for a full-color, leatherette copy of FREd. :) Unfortunately, I'd bet such a beast would cost considerably more than $65. FREd would cost over $60 in color, just at the same cost-per-page rate as Mutants and Masterminds. Add in the facts that: It would be a limited run, so they couldn't use large quantities of sales to recoup costs.
They'd have to completely redo everything in the pre-production stage; it wouldn't just be another printing.
They'd have to account for sales lost of a new book they could have published while they were taking the time to make this limited edition instead.
We haven't even factored in the cost of a leather cover yet....and all of a sudden it looks like well over $100 instead of $65.

'Course, I'd pay well over $100 too... ;)

[mattingly]

A new motto for the HERO System: If you let them build it, they will come.

Good one, Derek!

[Crimson-Hawk]

Originally posted by Yamo
Well, I don't like superheroes (although I have bought every Champions book and will continue to do so simply to support the system) , but it just irks me to no end to see HERO look (not read, not play, just look) so darn...ghetto next to the competition. Especially when the competetion is garbage like d20.

I wish I'd seen this thread before Derek, Nato, Monolith, and the others resolved the issue, because it's a topic I have a passionate opinion on. So what I say here is beating a dead horse, but I'm going to beat it anyway.

Ghetto? GHETTO??? I'm sorry, but if Decipher had printed the LORD RPG in B&W and shaved $10-$15 off of the asking price of the book, I would've bought two copies by now. As it stands, I'm still waiting to decide if it's worth $35-$40 bucks simply to buy a licensed book. And the book is been out for about a year now.

Hero Games' products look great, as far as I'm concerned. And each book gets better as Andy gets even more practice in. I don't need to look at all the pretty colors. I need to look at all the pretty text and all the pretty illustrations. And if I can buy a book the size of Star Hero for the price of a book that WotC would charge for a book the size of UMA, I'm a really happy camper.

A couple of friends whose opinions I respect (most notably Albert Deschesne) and I have gone round and round an a couple of occasions about this. Full color makes for better presentation, I agree. But B&W captures me just as easily as color does, if not more often. I beg you to find a copy of AEG's Farscape RPG and try to read it. See what I'm saying? Color doesn't always help and can even make matter worse.

So, I support Steve and Company on their economically sound publishing decisions. The more HERO goodness I can get for my money, the better. Screw color.

Okay, rant off. Thank you for putting up with it.

[buzz]

Originally posted by Derek Hiemforth
...and all of a sudden it looks like well over $100 instead of $65.

Is it?

WotC's Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting is 320pp at $39.95. GoO's SAS deulxe ed. is 324pp or so at $44.95. FREd is 384pp at $39.95. Now, I realize that WotC is printing in much larger quantities, but I don't know that GoO is. Forgetting the leatherette cover for now, would it really require DOJ to more than *double* the cost of these examples to do a deluxe edition?

FWIW, GoO will be releasing a deluxe version of BESMd20 with color and leatherette cover for around $65. Do they just have more money to burn?

[Nato]

Originally posted by buzz
Is it?

WotC's Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting is 320pp at $39.95. GoO's SAS deulxe ed. is 324pp or so at $44.95. FREd is 384pp at $39.95. Now, I realize that WotC is printing in much larger quantities, but I don't know that GoO is. Forgetting the leatherette cover for now, would it really require DOJ to more than *double* the cost of these examples to do a deluxe edition?

FWIW, GoO will be releasing a deluxe version of BESMd20 with color and leatherette cover for around $65. Do they just have more money to burn?

Possibly.

And maybe putting out SAS deluxe in color wasn't the best descision for them to make. How many other SAS products have been put out since it first came out?

[Blackout]

Originally posted by buzz
Is it?

WotC's Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting is 320pp at $39.95. GoO's SAS deulxe ed. is 324pp or so at $44.95. FREd is 384pp at $39.95. Now, I realize that WotC is printing in much larger quantities, but I don't know that GoO is. Forgetting the leatherette cover for now, would it really require DOJ to more than *double* the cost of these examples to do a deluxe edition?

FWIW, GoO will be releasing a deluxe version of BESMd20 with color and leatherette cover for around $65. Do they just have more money to burn?

Well, let's see... FREd weighs in at 370-odd pages. If there were color on each of those pages, it tacks on an extra $37,000 for color seps alone. That doesn't include standard printing costs, the slight increase for color ink, binding, increase in paper cost (so the color doesn't get all "muddy"), or any kind of profit for the good folks who make cool stuff for us.

So... Let's take that $37,000 for color seps and assume a 500 Limited Edition print run. JUST to cover that, the book would cost $74.00. Now, if this is sold through normal distribution channels, DoJ is only going to see 35-45% of that (let's go with 40% just for the sake of exemplifyication) which means they're only going to "make" $14,800. In other words, they lose $22,200 right off the top (without factoring in other costs).

You can play with the numbers a little more if you like, but it isn't going to be a pretty picture until you start selling multiple thousands of copies.

[buzz]

Originally posted by Nato
How many other SAS products have been put out since it first came out?

Well:

SAS d20
Fast-play rule booklets for both d20 and Tri-Stat, iirc
Character folios for both versions
Roll Call (book of NPCs)
GM screen
...and they've scheduled maybe 5-6 more books for 2003.

Not a lot compared to HERO, but then again, HERO is all DOJ does. GoO also puts out BESM, BESMd20, HKAT!, UFG, Tekumel... and now Nobilis as well.

[buzz]

Originally posted by Blackout
Well, let's see... FREd weighs in at 370-odd pages. If there were color on each of those pages, it tacks on an extra $37,000 for color seps alone.

Where are you getting $37k from? Are you saying color adds $100/page for a small print run? That's nuts! (Though it may be true; I have no clue.)

[Monolith]

Originally posted by buzz
FWIW, GoO will be releasing a deluxe version of BESMd20 with color and leatherette cover for around $65. Do they just have more money to burn?
I believe Mark Mackinnon himself stated that SAS deluxe was done as a labor of love, and that the book should have cost $80.00 for them to make a profit. They sold it at that price for virtually zero profit to make a mark in the industry. Little did they know Green Ronin would pop up with M&M in full-color and steal some of their thunder. :)

I do not know what Tri-Stat's market is. I have purchased SAS and Roll Call so far but I do not know how many units they sell. I do know that have not started, or only just starting printing, their non-color Tri-Stat edition, so apparently the Deluxe book did not sell out as quickly as they had hoped it would.

d20 on the other hand, has a fanbase of over 500,000. If you can capture the attention of even 5% of that market you are looking at sales of around 25,000 units per. The cost of printing 196 full-color pages when spread over 25,000 units sold makes a big difference. I would doubt that either Hero or Tri-Stat has a firm fanbase in the 25,000 range. Volume seems to be the key to publishing.

[buzz]

Originally posted by Monolith
d20 on the other hand, has a fanbase of over 500,000. If you can capture the attention of even 5% of that market you are looking at sales of around 25,000 units per. The cost of printing 196 full-color pages when spread over 25,000 units sold makes a big difference. I would doubt that either Hero or Tri-Stat has a firm fanbase in the 25,000 range. Volume seems to be the key to publishing.

I was going to make some comment about the deluxe ed. of Call of Cthulhu and how it might relate to their smaller-than-d20 market share, but then I realized that the current incarnation of Chaosium should never be used as an example of good business sense. :D

Anyway, I just hope to see DOJ continue onward and upward, improving their production values as much as is reasonable along the way. If this precludes color or slick paper, I can live with it. Also, I'd be happy to pay more for HERO products, as I'm a firm believer in the "under-pricedness" of RPGs in general.

(And to make clear: I am in no way unhappy with the current quality of their physical products. Just offering feedback.)

[Nato]

Originally posted by buzz
Where are you getting $37k from? Are you saying color adds $100/page for a small print run? That's nuts! (Though it may be true; I have no clue.)

Yes, earlier in the thread we talked about the high cost of color film separations. And yes, for any page that has four-color process stuff on it, you'll need to make those separations. And yes, the estimated $100 for an 8.5"x11" is pretty accurate.

[buzz]

Originally posted by Nato
And yes, the estimated $100 for an 8.5"x11" is pretty accurate.

Hate to throw in a non-HERO refernce here, but I think I just failed my Sanity check. :eek:

[Monolith]

Originally posted by buzz
Anyway, I just hope to see DOJ continue onward and upward, improving their production values as much as is reasonable along the way. If this precludes color or slick paper, I can live with it. Also, I'd be happy to pay more for HERO products, as I'm a firm believer in the "under-pricedness" of RPGs in general.
I want to see them expand their production techniques as well. I would not mind seeing some less generic layouts tried in a few of the products. Maybe some borders and then putting sidebar information in offset boxes. There are many times when I see that 1.5" of empty space on a page and think about how much more information could have been added to the book in those empty spaces. But I do feel as though I have been getting my money's worth from the books.

I just assume that DOJ has decided that their generic layout style helps to offset the complexity of the game. :)

[Storn]

Trust an artist to bring this up:

Art costs more EVEN BEFORE printing, when in color.

I charge more as does all artists. Why? Because color is harder, takes longer no matter what the medium and calls upon a much wider range of skill and education. It also has more cache... meaning we can charge more because it is PERCEIVED to be worthier than b&w. Whether it is or not, is not the issue at hand.

So, bottom line: its expensive.

Having said that, could I forsee a 4 page insert with color pics of characters in a DOJ product... yup.

Coould I forsee a digital product in color? Yup.

[Crimson-Hawk]

Originally posted by buzz
Also, I'd be happy to pay more for HERO products, as I'm a firm believer in the "under-pricedness" of RPGs in general.

Under-pricedness of RPGs??? What do you do for a living and can I get a job at your company???? Seriously, I could use a better job than the $300+ per week job I have if I'm going to pay $50+ for an RPG supplement.

I respect you in that you're mearly giving feedback and are not berating the current system. God bless the First Amendment. But I firmly believe everyone else should be following Hero Games' lead in RPG production, not the other way around. I'd buy more WotC and GOO books if they were more reasonably priced.

Originally posted by Storn
Could I forsee a digital product in color? Yup.

Even here I have to shake my head. Yes, I could too. And for an extremely reasonable price. If Meriquai Falls came out in full color, I'd consider myself honored beyond mortal comprehension. But then, color digital products take up more hard drive space than do B&W digital productions. I'd still beg for B&W so that I could fit more Hero Plus products onto my hard drive.

Again, just my two-cents' worth.

[buzz]

Originally posted by Crimson-Hawk
Under-pricedness of RPGs??? What do you do for a living and can I get a job at your company???? Seriously, I could use a better job than the $300+ per week job I have if I'm going to pay $50+ for an RPG supplement.

It's a simple fact. Adjusting for inflation, RPGs today offer more content, better content, and higher production values for *exactly* the same money as they did in 1978. This even ignores that RPGs have a great price-to-utility ratio, as well the availability of free RPGs on the 'Net, which were non-existent back then. I've read a lot of discussions where people in the industry have said that most RPGs products could jump $10 in price and the market woulnd't blink.

I can sympathise that such a jump would make you, personally, blink, but you have to look at this with some perspective for the market as a whole; RPGs are luxury items, and as luxury items go, are dang cheap. Lowering prices might be good for you, but, as I've heard from many peole in the industry, it will not generate more sales. In fact it would hurt more than help.

[Steve Long]

A few replies to various posts...

I've noticed that, e.g., Star HERO seems to be printed on better paper than FREd and UMA. The art (and the quality of its reproduction) and general layout of newer books seems to be improving as well. IMHO, Ninja HERO is pretty much the best-looking cover to date. Seeing more of Chris Stevens' work in the newer books is also a Good Thing(tm).

Well, that's experience showing. The more we do, the better we get at it. ;)

How far do you think this will go? Will we see more hardcover releases? Slicker, higher-grade paper?

Highly unlikely. Definitely no further hardcovers anticipated at this time. Slicker paper we've never even bothered discussing.

Would DOJ consider a color product if was marketed as a "limited edition" at a premium price? Ryan Dancey has talked about there being an untapped market for "prestige" RPG products. I, for one, would be happy to pay $65 or so for a full-color, leatherette copy of FREd.

I'm quite familiar with Ryan's thinking on this; I think I was one of the people to first discuss it with him as a sort of theory.

I have three or four nifty "prestige" type editions of the rules in mind that I'd love to do. Unfortunately, given the economics of it, we'd have to charge at least $200-250 for them, which generally speaking makes it unfeasible.

Even something less grandiose -- like the Rawhide edition of Deadlands -- would cost at least $100, and probably more.

if Decipher had printed the LORD RPG in B&W and shaved $10-$15 off of the asking price of the book, I would've bought two copies by now. As it stands, I'm still waiting to decide if it's worth $35-$40 bucks simply to buy a licensed book.

You should buy it simply for the quality of the writing, Dale. ;)

See more below on RPG pricing.

WotC's Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting is 320pp at $39.95. GoO's SAS deulxe ed. is 324pp or so at $44.95. FREd is 384pp at $39.95. Now, I realize that WotC is printing in much larger quantities, but I don't know that GoO is. Forgetting the leatherette cover for now, would it really require DOJ to more than *double* the cost of these examples to do a deluxe edition?

Damn straight it would. Far more than double.

You're overlooking or dis-counting a couple of factors. First, as you observe, WOTC prints in huge numbers compared to Hero. Their print runs are, based on what I know or can surmise, easily at least 5-10 times ours, if not more. That leads to economies of scale that make color printing cheaper. We don't have that luxury.

Second, as someone else pointed out, the SAS color thing was essentially a loss-leader. If they actually broke even on it, I'd be surprised. Pleased, because they're cool guys, but surprised. ;)

Third, even if it weren't a loss-leader, GOO is now about 5 years old, IIRC, and has its economic feet firmly beneath it. Among other things, they've sold buttloads of those Sailor Moon books, giving them a bankroll for nifty things like SAS color. Hero simply doesn't have that kind of cash. Even in four or five years, we probably won't, unless we have some breakaway hit like Sailor Moon -- and even then, I can think of lots better things to do with the money than print books in color.

Under-pricedness of RPGs??? What do you do for a living and can I get a job at your company????

Forgive me for pickin' on you, Dale -- no offense intended -- but you're completely off-base here. ;)

Buzz is right that RPGs in general are underpriced, for a whole bunch of reasons: the "hobbyist" presence in the manufacturing tier; poor business sense on the part of many publishers; a fear of driving away consumers who share your attitude; plenty of other reasons. Given the amount of work that goes into producing many RPG books, and their tiny print runs, they should cost a lot more. If they were more reasonably priced, you'd see a lot more companies thriving that deserve to be thriving.

Moving to specifics, Hero's books are more grievously underpriced than many. To take just one example, AEG (which prints in much higher runs than we do, I think) charges $24.95 for books as short as 104 pages. We charge $24.99 for books as long as 240 pages -- over twice the size -- and our print density per page is at least equal to if not greater than their's. More than one person in various tiers of the industry has criticized Darren and myself for not pricing our books higher.

I think by any reasonable standard, the least the customers should be doing is not complaining about RPG prices. In many cases they ought to be thankful for the cheapness of RPGs -- particularly given that once bought, an RPG can be enjoyed repeatedly for no further investment. Compare that to dinner and a movie for two these days, and it stacks up pretty darn well for your entertainment dollar. ;)

[Crimson-Hawk]

Originally posted by Steve Long
You should buy it simply for the quality of the writing, Dale. ;)

But... but, Daddy! :) I mean, come on! Just because some silly guy named Stephen Long wrote it.

Wait a minute. "Stephen Long"? Oh, I was looking at my copy of Dark Champions, not LORD. Sorry. ;)

Originally posted by Steve Long
Buzz is right that RPGs in general are underpriced, for a whole bunch of reasons: the "hobbyist" presence in the manufacturing tier; poor business sense on the part of many publishers; a fear of driving away consumers who share your attitude; plenty of other reasons. Given the amount of work that goes into producing many RPG books, and their tiny print runs, they should cost a lot more. If they were more reasonably priced, you'd see a lot more companies thriving that deserve to be thriving.

And it is this bit of information, or rather the lack of knowledge thereof, that my opinion is armed with. I had made the mistake of assuming that RPG supplements were priced simply and fairly solely on the cost of the print run and the desired profit margin per unit sold. I was not aware that RPG companies were actually undercutting the RMRP because a lot of people like me were expecting the costs to be cheaper.

For that, I apologize.

[Steve Long]

Nothing to apologize for. :) It goes on in every industry -- even WalMart has to consider what the customers are thinkin'. ;)

[GradonSilverton]

There are many posibilities for Upper End products in the industry...the problem is breaking even on them (NOTE : NOT MAKING PROFIT)....

There is a small studio that has been around since 1998 that has attempted to produce a Fantasy game...A friend and a relative did some work for them for a time (the friend failed to get paid...well...ever really and had to leave, while the relative help with initial product launch and early marketing). The studio took and idea given to them by my relative and apparently (Rpgnet posts, etc.) are still planning on doing the run....

Their core book will be printed in a Aluminum Cover that has a locking mechanism for closure....

Great idea if you ask me....they are looking at a $55 to $60 price right now...the problem is since they are so small, and their runs are so small...the cost will never be less than th sales on the Speciality Version....

If a Gaming Company could get the financial backing, along with the product demand, then that sort of Product could be pulled off....

Right now, I'd be suprised if WOTC could even pull it off and break even....

[buzz]

Originally posted by GradonSilverton
Right now, I'd be suprised if WOTC could even pull it off and break even....

I could swear that I read somewhere that WotC was planning/considering a "deluxe" edition of the PHB... though that was before the announcement of D&D3.5.

Originally posted by Steve Long
Buzz is right...

DID EVERYONE CATCH THAT? :D

[tomd1969]

Yeah, I caught it. Can't quite believe it, but I caught it. ;)