The increasing cost of the classic geek pasttime

Yeah, unless you played D&D as a kid, you might want to skip this one.

When I was a kid it was only through a friend and SSI computer games that I discovered Dungeons and Dragons. By the time I stumbled onto it Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition had been in print for a couple years or so. I thought it was great. I didn't play it nearly enough considering my fondness for it. Part of that had to do with time constraints and part with my somewhat limited social scope. Sure, the books were expensive for a kid, but I managed to accumulate enough money to get the core books, the Player's Hand Book, the Dungeon Master's Guide, and the loose-leaf edition of the Monstrous Compendium. This was everything an enterprising player needed.

TSR, AD&D's publisher, was, at the time was pushing heavily into book publishing. No, not rule books, but fiction. The Dragonlance novels were selling like hotcakes and the company was eager to tie the novels into the game and vice versa. Campaign settings (basically fictional worlds in a box meant to be used in combination with the core rule books) started coming out all over the place. Some were great quality but others should never have been put on the market. The rules were expanded, too. A softcover book with advanced, optional rules and gimmicks was published for every single character class and character race. You had the book of Warrior, Dwarves, Elves, Thieves, Priests, and so on, all additional purchases. There were some interesting ideas in these books, but not enough that each needed an entire volume.

Basically, TSR wanted money, and their way of making money was releasing product. This tactic clearly worked as then president Lorraine Williams sold the company with $30 million in debt to Wizards of the Coast. But what effect did this have on the players? Suddenly trying to role-play was paralyzing. You had the core rules, sure, but did you want to create your own setting and background for gaming or did you want to throw some money at one of ten or more pre-made settings, with their own published adventures and additional supplements? And if a player came to the game with one of the optional rule books and the DM didn't have that book, they risked seeming closed-minded by not allowing the Elven Blade Singer kit, even if they later discovered that particular kit was horribly unbalanced and in desperate need of nerfing.

People felt obligated to buy these books, because that was the cost of staying on top of the game. So what if the core 3 books gave you enough to start and you could just create your own? Someone else went and created something cool for you! TSR folded because the hobby was getting too expensive and confusing for the people who wanted to play.

That same thing is happening again. When WoTC released D&D 3rd edition there was a hubbub because people don't like change. I was one of those. It was probably just as much that I didn't want to spend more money. And with this 3rd edition, once again there were the 3 core books. They were all you needed. But they did publish more, of course, though they simplified the available campaign settings. They made some moves to open the rules, but it got the best of them, and by the time the 3.5 edition was released they were headed full-steam into releasing tons more books, none of which anybody truly needed but which their financial bottom line demanded.

The insanity is happening yet again, believe it or not. 4th edition was released not long ago, and again you can buy 3 core books. But there will be more core books. The current Monster Manual has a careful selection of monsters, with old stalwarts, like frost giants, left out. Why? So that when they release Monster Manual II it's not seen as an optional Monster Manual book, but rather another core book. D&D 4th edition doesn't have 3 core books; it has 3 core book lines. As Player's Handbook II and Dungeon Master's Guide II are released, as they were with 3.5, they will no longer be optional rules and expanded play styles. They will contain core mechanics and core character options deliberately left out of the first release core books. Dungeons and Dragons is now, more than ever, a subscription game. You don't buy the books and go play. You subscribe to the game, pay your yearly fees for the right to get new rules revisions and content, and come back every year to pay your dues unless you want to be left behind and cursed with not only the label "role-playing dork" or "gamer", you'll be an outdated "gamer". WoTC, and now Hasbro, who bought WoTC, have also put increasing focus on tactical battle rules with miniatures and the like. That also increases the cost. D&D is less about role-playing now than it ever was. It's more about tactical battles strung together by story segments.

If you want to get an idea of what it can cost to play D&D, check out this picture I found from WikiMedia. The books, die, mechanical pencils, and VERY faux velvet die bags are all standard fare going back many years, but what's with all the plastic on the table? I wonder what it cost them to play that single battle.



I have nothing against releasing new product or wanting to sell to make money, but none of this behavior expands the market. In fact, this transforming of a creative, social, imagination-reliant game into a book mill puts the game out of reach of some of the young folks who should be making up a good portion of the future of the game. Instead of producing new fans they are simply trying to milk everything they can out of the old fans. But when the old fans are squeezed dry the company will be hard pressed to find anyone else, because they haven't offered a reasonable entry point to role playing.

The key to a healthy role-playing environment is thus the distinction of a reasonable, essential core of books from an ever growing base of interesting but clearly optional expansion books. As expansions introduce new rules and content worthy of being included in the core, core supplements can be released, and once enough core changes are made, release a new edition. Hey, change ain't all bad. That way someone new to role-playing can just pick up the latest edition of the core books and possibly a supplement and be ready to go. The optional books? Each group or player can decide what they want, but as they're clearly optional they will have to petition the DM and other players and lay out the case for the optional rules.

I still love role-playing, even though I have less time now than ever to do it. I wish I could play more; I wish I knew more people to play with. I still buy a book occasionally and read it, though it's been a long time since I purchased a D&D book. It's nice to see what other ways of playing are out there and what ideas others have brought to this social enterprise. Other companies have managed to grasp that pricing out your players does not a healthy market make, except that they have to compete with the 800 lb gorilla of D&D for market share. D&D is no longer the best game on the market. It's not even the most approachable. It's certainly one of the more expensive, but now that Hasbro owns D&D what can you do?