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PST posted:On the other hand, this is $500 This is kind of a neat idea, if it were a much more interesting game/setting. And I'm not someone who would pay 500 dollars for it, but I am someone who would wish I could.
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Aug 16, 2018 16:37
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I would pay $500 for an extremely deluxe version of Kingdom, Microscope, Dread, The Skeletons, or dogs in the vineyard. But those are actually good games and they have $10 copies so
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Aug 16, 2018 16:40
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I am unsure what a deluxe version of Microscope, a game played entirely with index cards you write on, would even look like.
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Aug 16, 2018 16:43
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The business cards scene from American Psycho, but with index cards. Look at that subtle off-white coloring!
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Aug 16, 2018 16:48
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Mors Rattus posted:I am unsure what a deluxe version of Microscope, a game played entirely with index cards you write on, would even look like.
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Aug 16, 2018 16:52
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Mors Rattus posted:I am unsure what a deluxe version of Microscope, a game played entirely with index cards you write on, would even look like. Gold-leaf index cards TRUMP!!!
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Aug 16, 2018 16:52
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Comrade Gorbash posted:Hand copied and illuminated by monks. Holy gently caress gimme the kickstarter
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Aug 16, 2018 17:05
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If you play the deluxe version of microscope, the world you created becomes real.
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Aug 16, 2018 17:12
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Has anyone done the math on paying a per word rate of say $.20/word would end up costing for different game lines? What is the going rate for a full page artwork look like? I want to say $1K but I’m not sure. I’m just curious what a “fair” price point for an RPG would be given most people agree that a 300 page core book for $25 is too low.
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Aug 16, 2018 18:18
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:I feel like if Bugatti released some 350k supercar and called it "the future of automobiles" we would all rightly realize that this is just marketing claptrap about how ~amazingly advanced~ it is without making the leap to "they're saying everyone should be paying 350k for a supercar". It scrambles some circuits because MCG is basically the Apple of RPGs - their products are more Shiny than Good, and they're all fairly overpriced for what you get. There's nothing actually wrong with this, Apple sells well, and Monte runs a business and if he can make money off of it, that's his call. Jimbozig posted:If Bugatti released a 1998 Dodge Neon, sold it for $350,000, and called it the future of automobiles, it would certainly scramble some people's circuits. It shouldn't. Ads are ads, and Monte Cook uses the Apple marketing strategy. Revolutionary, Mind blowing, amazing, innovative, etc are all buzzwords he uses to describe his somewhat okay Cypher system(I hate it) and he has high prices and Shiny production values. quote:Has anyone done the math on paying a per word rate of say $.20/word would end up costing for different game lines? I dunno, it seems to depend on things. It's not really as easy to calculate. I like the model of giving people a % of each sale. For example, if Satyr Press isn't lying, the author Patrick Stewart gets 21% of each sale of the book he wrote. The book is 50$, and the reprint is 2k. If all 2k books sell out, that's.....100,000 dollars gross. 21% of that is: 21,000. I think that's a pretty reasonable price point and a decent compensation for the sales of that book. I dunno how many the first printing had, but if it's the same, that's 42,000 dollars. Now, at the same time, he doesn't receive that as a major lump sum, though, obviously. The current reprint of that book is sitting at 1821 copies left, so until those books sell out, he's making much less. Additionally, if those books never sell out, he's never seeing a dime of that work. Also, that book took four years to write. As far as I know, he didn't work on it Full Time, but that's a pretty small compensation considering how much time went into the book. But it still seems much more fair than paying people a nickel a word to grunt out poorly-playtested, lovely rules and pay them like...3k for nine months of full time work. TheDiceMustRoll fucked around with this message at 18:55 on Aug 16, 2018 |
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Aug 16, 2018 18:47
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It seems like pricing on the basis of word count penalizes the amount of thought and effort that needs to go into making something simple and powerful. I’d never pay a programmer by the line, because the hard part is the thinking and not the typing, and all else equal I’d rather have the simplest piece of software that accomplishes my task. Why would you want to punish the developer who wakes up one morning and says “oh! if I redo it I can get rid of one attribute and cut 25% of the explanatory text but have it work just as well”? Are artists paid by the pencil-stroke? As a consumer, I would pay more for a more concise expression that’s equally clear and playable. It is a strictly more valuable thing to me in that case.
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Aug 16, 2018 19:31
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:I feel like if Bugatti released some 350k supercar and called it "the future of automobiles" we would all rightly realize that this is just marketing claptrap about how ~amazingly advanced~ it is without making the leap to "they're saying everyone should be paying 350k for a supercar". The cost of hybrid and electric cars have come down, but when first developed there were definitely echoes of people doing exactly that. Treating people as morally lacking if they didn't get a $100,000 Tesla.
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Aug 16, 2018 19:42
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Mors Rattus posted:I am unsure what a deluxe version of Microscope, a game played entirely with index cards you write on, would even look like. Comes with an actual microscope and a miniature etching robot. Now you can really start drilling down.
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Aug 16, 2018 19:51
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Subjunctive posted:It seems like pricing on the basis of word count penalizes the amount of thought and effort that needs to go into making something simple and powerful. If you're really doing a good job with the rules aspect of an RPG and really making it simple and powerful, that same concision gives you more space in the same page count for examples, explanations, definitions, and the world-building portion of the book. The book ends up being the same total number of words, but ends up being a better product.
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Aug 16, 2018 19:59
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homullus posted:If you're really doing a good job with the rules aspect of an RPG and really making it simple and powerful, that same concision gives you more space in the same page count for examples, explanations, definitions, and the world-building portion of the book. The book ends up being the same total number of words, but ends up being a better product. It's a matter of incentives, though. Speaking as a game editor, I've seen looooots of really bloated text, and I'm sure the per-word rate that many pubs use contributes to that behavior. Under that payment structure, it's simpler for the writer to just shovel in a bunch of extra words than to create something clean and use the extra words for examples.
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Aug 16, 2018 20:24
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homullus posted:If you're really doing a good job with the rules aspect of an RPG and really making it simple and powerful, that same concision gives you more space in the same page count for examples, explanations, definitions, and the world-building portion of the book. The book ends up being the same total number of words, but ends up being a better product. Sure, which means that for the same number of words you should pay more, which in turn means that pricing by the word isn’t what you want. I think we’re agreeing?
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Aug 16, 2018 20:49
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Caedar posted:It's a matter of incentives, though. Speaking as a game editor, I've seen looooots of really bloated text, and I'm sure the per-word rate that many pubs use contributes to that behavior. Under that payment structure, it's simpler for the writer to just shovel in a bunch of extra words than to create something clean and use the extra words for examples. My experience in editing has been that if the writer is the game creator, they will use the extra space editing gives them to make a better game, and if it's a game company producing "products," the mechanical content and fluff bits were written by different people, and any savings will just be something the layout people deal with. Most of the RPGs that exist in the world are the single-creator ones, most of the ones that people have heard of are the "products."
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Aug 16, 2018 20:54
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homullus posted:My experience in editing has been that if the writer is the game creator, they will use the extra space editing gives them to make a better game Do solo practitioners really work from a word budget? I figured that was well downstream of writing whatever needed to be written, so I’m surprised that a designer would say “I carved 500 words out of the encumbrance rules, so I can finally add that example I wanted”. Have you heard a solo designer say “I wanted to add a better example and knew what it would be, but I didn’t have words to spare”? Especially given the prevalence of PDF delivery, it would be a sad surprise to me.
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Aug 16, 2018 21:00
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It should be noted that 'paid by the word' is generally not literal. Writers are given a wordcount they're expected to give something in the rough vicinity of, and a dollar amount to do that writing. You can divide the one by the other, but it is not literally 'you wrote 500 words, have 5000 cents.'
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Aug 16, 2018 21:05
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Subjunctive posted:Do solo practitioners really work from a word budget? I figured that was well downstream of writing whatever needed to be written, so I’m surprised that a designer would say “I carved 500 words out of the encumbrance rules, so I can finally add that example I wanted”. Have you heard a solo designer say “I wanted to add a better example and knew what it would be, but I didn’t have words to spare”? Especially given the prevalence of PDF delivery, it would be a sad surprise to me. My experience is that people work from a page budget if there's going to be a print version.
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Aug 16, 2018 21:05
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homullus posted:My experience is that people work from a page budget if there's going to be a print version. Yeah, I'll generally think, like, 'this is going to be a 120 page book, so I want 20 pages on character types and 30 on rules and...'.
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Aug 16, 2018 21:09
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Subjunctive posted:Do solo practitioners really work from a word budget? I figured that was well downstream of writing whatever needed to be written, so I’m surprised that a designer would say “I carved 500 words out of the encumbrance rules, so I can finally add that example I wanted”. Have you heard a solo designer say “I wanted to add a better example and knew what it would be, but I didn’t have words to spare”? Especially given the prevalence of PDF delivery, it would be a sad surprise to me. It's a truism that good writing comes from working within restrictions. Writing without a word budget is a quick way to get bloated text. You wouldn't be getting more good stuff, you'd be getting the same stuff spread out over more text.
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Aug 16, 2018 21:21
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LatwPIAT posted:It's a truism that good writing comes from working within restrictions. Writing without a word budget is a quick way to get bloated text. You wouldn't be getting more good stuff, you'd be getting the same stuff spread out over more text. 
canyoneer fucked around with this message at 22:12 on Aug 16, 2018 |
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Aug 16, 2018 21:35
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Bruceski posted:The cost of hybrid and electric cars have come down, but when first developed there were definitely echoes of people doing exactly that. Treating people as morally lacking if they didn't get a $100,000 Tesla. Yeah and 99.9% of the population treated and thought of people like that like the smug, arrogant toolboxes they were. It's a bad comparison amyway because IS isn't necessarily better for the environment than a regular RPG.
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Aug 16, 2018 21:56
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Liquid Communism posted:This. You're looking at $300+ just to get all the core books for Shadowrun's current edition, for example, and that's not including any of the sundries for play. Don't even ask about anything in the miniatures gaming space, or TCGs. But do you really need all of it especially to start playing? Or really at all? And will any of it even get used? The answer is pretty much no 99% of the time. Especially if you aren't playing dnd, 40k, or Magic. And those have sub new videogame price introduction sets that at least ease you in and honestly you won't need that much more long term and can buy in piecemeal. Plus you know most people play them and little else anyhow.
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Aug 17, 2018 02:08
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Caveat loving Emptor
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Aug 17, 2018 02:11
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LatwPIAT posted:It's a truism that good writing comes from working within restrictions. Writing without a word budget is a quick way to get bloated text. You wouldn't be getting more good stuff, you'd be getting the same stuff spread out over more text. The restrictions I work under, as a well-paid writer, are deadlines. I'm often told to keep things concise, but I have the authority (and the skill and experience and have established trust) to dictate how long a piece of content I'm preparing needs to be, in order to be complete, focused, accurate, accessible, etc. But I'm a software technical writer, so instead of being paid a few pennies a word, I'm paid a comfortable salary. My colleagues who work as contractors typically negotiate a daily or weekly fee, and provide time estimates and content length estimates during the initial specification and evaluation stages. (Hourly rates pretty much work out to around $35 to $120/hr, give or take, depending a lot on the type of work, btw... but nobody contracts for like, exactly 25 hours of work or something. More like a three-week project, or perhaps three months or even six months, really depends on the work.) Practically nobody still bothers to print such ephemeral content as software documentation, which often has a lifespan of maybe two to five years at the most, and is expected to be updated regularly in the interim. This is clearly different (still, although I suspect not for a whole lot longer) than the RPG scene, where a publisher has to plan for page counts long before content is complete. Nevertheless, even if there is a specific page or word count limit, I do not feel it is necessarily or even usually the case that word count is the most important restriction, without which writers necessarily produce bloated text. To put it another way: writing is never perfect. My constraints of calendar and budget invariably limit quality. I've told more than one manager who asked me "how long will it take to do this" that I can do it in anything from an hour to a year... because quality and scope are both variables. Tell your contract RPG writer that you need some content about X by next Tuesday and they should be able to do that, constraining scope and quality depending on what you care to prioritize for them. Of course, their capabilities may be commensurate with the compensation you're offering... publishers should not be surprised to get poo poo bloated wordy product when they pay by the word and that pay is something in the vicinity of minimum wage, once you account for a reasonable amount of working time. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Aug 17, 2018 |
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Aug 17, 2018 02:23
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You probably shouldn't spend $300 on Shadowrun either tbh.
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Aug 17, 2018 02:38
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Kai Tave posted:You probably shouldn't spend $300 on Shadowrun either tbh. *Looks at collection* Too late.
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Aug 17, 2018 02:58
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Lemon-Lime posted:The ability to spend it on something that isn't strictly necessary for your survival absolutely is privilege You know who agrees with you? Right wing conservative freaks who shriek "BUT YOU HAVE A SMARTPHONE!!!!" to anyone who complains about anything. That's the demo that loves the way you're framing this.
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Aug 17, 2018 03:43
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:You know who agrees with you? Right wing conservative freaks who shriek "BUT YOU HAVE A SMARTPHONE!!!!" to anyone who complains about anything. That's the demo that loves the way you're framing this. The difference is that phones are in fact necessary for survival in the modern world, which is why that particular talking point has always been bunk. e; like once upon a time smartphones were maybe a high end luxury good but these days service providers will just give you a fairly nice smartphone just for signing on with their service. Conservatives have never been very good at things like keeping up with the times of course. Kai Tave fucked around with this message at 03:55 on Aug 17, 2018 |
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Aug 17, 2018 03:53
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:You know who agrees with you? Right wing conservative freaks who shriek "BUT YOU HAVE A SMARTPHONE!!!!" to anyone who complains about anything. That's the demo that loves the way you're framing this. You're an idiot who quite literally does not have a clue what the word "privilege" means in the context it is being used in in this conversation. If you could please make the absolute bare minimum effort required to read up on the concept before trying to post about it, that would be lovely. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 04:18 on Aug 17, 2018 |
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Aug 17, 2018 04:01
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Lemon-Lime posted:You're an idiot who quite literally does not have a clue what the word "privilege" means in the context it is being used in in this conversation. You're literally using it to describe "anything beyond survival stuff", that's broad to the point of uselessness. Look, if you think people are dumb because they bought a bad RPG for 500 bucks just say that, you don't actually have to take a useful word that describes important stuff and reduce it to the level of "mansplaining" (another formerly useful word that now means absolutely nothing because everyone just used it to mean "a male I dislike is talking")
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Aug 17, 2018 04:23
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Kai Tave posted:The difference is that phones are in fact necessary for survival in the modern world, which is why that particular talking point has always been bunk. Eh, smartphones are useful, but I use a clamshell and I get by just fine. Captain Rufus posted:But do you really need all of it especially to start playing? Or really at all? And will any of it even get used? The answer is pretty much no 99% of the time. Especially if you aren't playing dnd, 40k, or Magic. Pretty much. Starter sets are dirt cheap, they usually bring out their "A" game and let you demo the game without pirating it. Even the indies do it. Hell, Goodman Games gives away quickstart rules.
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Aug 17, 2018 04:25
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:Eh, smartphones are useful, but I use a clamshell and I get by just fine. The only reason that "smartphone" hasn't just become "phone" the way people gradually stopped using "cellphone" is because some people still manufacture flip-phones and burners, but otherwise the idea of the smartphone as being this excessive symbol of decadence the way the original cell phone was when it was the province of high-priced corporate executives and cocaine dealers has long since passed (just like it did for cellphones in fact), and to be frank the sort of conservative who points to smartphones as an example of someone living beyond their means is probably the sort of person to do the same thing when someone just has a flip-phone. In fact I've seen numerous instances of people doing just that whenever they come across a homeless person with a phone of any sort. "Well how come they have a phone if they're homeless then? Shouldn't they just spend that money on food?" It's a dumb example no matter how you slice it because phones aren't luxury goods the same way that cars aren't (if you live in America anyway), you can buy more expensive luxury models of those things but simply having one doesn't mean you're in any way privileged, and in fact it would be more of a privilege to be able to not have to own one to participate in the necessities of modern living.
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Aug 17, 2018 04:34
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Kai Tave posted:The only reason that "smartphone" hasn't just become "phone" the way people gradually stopped using "cellphone" is because some people still manufacture flip-phones and burners, but otherwise the idea of the smartphone as being this excessive symbol of decadence the way the original cell phone was when it was the province of high-priced corporate executives and cocaine dealers has long since passed (just like it did for cellphones in fact), and to be frank the sort of conservative who points to smartphones as an example of someone living beyond their means is probably the sort of person to do the same thing when someone just has a flip-phone. In fact I've seen numerous instances of people doing just that whenever they come across a homeless person with a phone of any sort. "Well how come they have a phone if they're homeless then? Shouldn't they just spend that money on food?" It's a dumb example no matter how you slice it because phones aren't luxury goods the same way that cars aren't (if you live in America anyway), you can buy more expensive luxury models of those things but simply having one doesn't mean you're in any way privileged, and in fact it would be more of a privilege to be able to not have to own one to participate in the necessities of modern living. Oh I agree. The people that demand that you can't argue for better wealth and resource equality are the same people going "hey um actually tho how can you say that???? you're not literally a buddhist monk eating bland rice every day and living off donations????" It's really stupid. It's also wildly off-topic. I still have yet to see someone explain to me why a 500$ RPG is a badwrongthing.
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Aug 17, 2018 04:46
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:Oh I agree. The people that demand that you can't argue for better wealth and resource equality are the same people going "hey um actually tho how can you say that???? you're not literally a buddhist monk eating bland rice every day and living off donations????" It's really stupid. It's also wildly off-topic. I still have yet to see someone explain to me why a 500$ RPG is a badwrongthing. I've sort of avoided engaging with this particular side of the argument but I guess that's the coward's way so I'll dive in belly first and say that, to me, there's a point where spending money crosses a threshold from "getting what you pay for" to "conspicuous consumption." I can fully understand paying for a $50 steak dinner, I've done it myself a time or two. I don't particularly see that a $500 steak dinner is somehow going to be ten times as worthwhile as a $50 steak. I don't think anybody is morally wrong for giving Monte Cook five hundred funbucks, but I think it's vanishingly unlikely that they're actually going to get $500 worth of value for whatever definition of value you care to apply to a self-published RPG, so I suppose the argument is that there's a degree of privilege in being able to drop that kind of scratch on a game that's probably going to be underwhelming and most of the time your group is just going to want to play D&D anyway. I say this as someone who fully believes that creators should make a fair wage for their work, and if Monte Cook can sell boxes full of plastic hands to people for $200-500 a pop then more power to him, he's well within his rights to do so and isn't even engaging in the sort of shady behavior that other game producers are happy to participate in these days like lootboxes. I think there's definitely an element of "paying for bragging rights" that goes on with a lot of higher-level vanity pledge tiers in Kickstarters though, the same way that you'll see people get into competitions with one another to be at the top of a streamer's donation list.
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Aug 17, 2018 05:11
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This is reminding me of that one show where they try first the very cheap version of something and then the very expensive version, like maybe a slice of pizza from a hole-in-the-wall place and then those abominations with caviar and gold filings. It's not like the latter is significantly better than the former because it's full of luxury foods (and not-foods) that don't even go well together, it's just luxury for the sake of luxury.
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Aug 17, 2018 09:08
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There's also a distinct difference, at least to me, between having the ability to gradually build up a collection of things over time that in total comes out to a significant sum of money and being able to drop that lump sum all at once. I own probably an excessive number of X-Wing miniatures and I'm sure the overall total value of everything I own is in the multi-hundred dollars range, but the difference there is that I bought it $12 here and $20 there over a period of years. I would not have bought into X-Wing with a $500 up front investment (or however much my collection is worth) even though technically in the long run it wouldn't really come out any differently because I had the financial freedom and reassurance to drop $12 on occasion, I did not have the wherewithal to decide to drop multiple hundreds of dollars at a time on something that isn't an actual necessity like medical expenses or car repair.
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Aug 17, 2018 09:16
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paradoxGentleman posted:This is reminding me of that one show where they try first the very cheap version of something and then the very expensive version, like maybe a slice of pizza from a hole-in-the-wall place and then those abominations with caviar and gold filings. It's not like the latter is significantly better than the former because it's full of luxury foods (and not-foods) that don't even go well together, it's just luxury for the sake of luxury. Well, and demonstration of status, group affiliation, etc. etc. Part of the problem in the larger conversation going on here, struggling around "why/how do people spend $500 bucks for something when they could get by with a $50 book?" is that the concept of privilege is a clumsy way to try to frame it. It informs elements of the discussion sure, but this is all centered on the purchasing of non-essentials where both ends of the price point are within the budgetary means of the economic middle class. Of course, the alternative take involves having to read stuff like Lacan or Bourdieu, so I don't fault anyone for not wanting to do that. To me at least, the interesting question here isn't "is spending $500 bucks on a game excessive?", its more "what are people trying to do when they buy a $500 game?". Are they attempting to "distinguish themselves from the poors", like people buying forgeworld products in wargaming are sometimes accused of doing? Does it make them feel higher in the class ladder than they might otherwise, by acting as an "investor" rather than just a customer? Or are they calculating value in a different way altogether here? There's a whole lot that can be described there with how value is perceived and tastes formed, how aspirations to climbing the social ladder are tied to consumption in capitalism, and how groups define their boundaries, but you're not going to get there with privilege. Or, at least not in the way the internet has latched on to the concept, and tries to pound round pegs into square holes with it.
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Aug 17, 2018 11:25
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