Quote from: RPGPundit;963437Could you theoretically see yourself paying for a very small PDF product, 1-4 pages? Even if it was just a dollar or two? I know there have been products like this on OBS, and some of them seem to have done rather well. I wonder who the audience for them would be?

I once bought a game called ADVENTURERS! It's a 4 page game - 2 for the players, 2 for the GM. I even bought more 4-page supplements for it. The price was $1 or less IIRC. It's quite neat, a very tight, functional, trad little system.

I'll also add that "my game is only 2 pages long!!" will grab my attention WAY quicker than "My game is a complete universe in a 600 page TOME" these days.

I am more likely to 1 page pdf than a 300 page one. I have no interested in complicated rule and detailed settings.

Yes.

In computer game design, I call this the "Go Problem".  Go is an incredibly good game, and the rules can be taught in five minutes.  They don't look interesting on paper, and certainly don't look like something you should pay for.

I would absolutely pay for the RPG equivalent of Go.  The amount of work to get an RPG to the point where it can effectively be described in a single page?  That's a hell of an achievement.

It'd have to be some pretty impressive top level passwords.

Not a fan of buying 1-page adventure hooks. Too LITE, no matter the price.

0.50CDN no more.

No.

There is far too much A grade free stuff available.

But the caveat is I love creating my own stuff so between me & the free, its hard to justify why I'd pay for stuff. Yeah, its a buck, and I really shouldn't be a cheapass, but I would pay $10 for a POD of 10 really cool dungeons, but not $1 for 1.

And I know this is a me thing, but I have a hard time paying for PDF. I have done so, but its more about tossing cash at somebody I like, that any sense I am getting value. Yes, I know that doesn't make sense.

Also, I am FAR more likely to toss cash for a PDF on Kickstarter than anywhere else. Yes, I know that doesn't make sense either.

Quote from: RPGPundit;963437Could you theoretically see yourself paying for a very small PDF product, 1-4 pages? Even if it was just a dollar or two? I know there have been products like this on OBS, and some of them seem to have done rather well. I wonder who the audience for them would be?

Depends entirely on what it is, both type of content and quality (there's a lot of cheap and free crap on OBS). Assuming I think it's something I'd actually use, for 1-4 pages my cap would likely be a buck, maybe two.

If it's good, absolutely.

1-4 pages to do what?

If it were an expansion to a game, perhaps. Let's say you made an Arrows of Indra or Dark Albion expansion, Age of Sail, that told a DM everything important about shifting the timeline forward a bit, and added naval warfare rules*. That's the kind of thing I'd see put into a 4 page pdf.

*I have no idea if this example would be pertinent to your games, just using them as an example

Probably not, because I'd have to do a lot of wading through a pile of PDFs to find the ones I wanted. And something that small is unlikely to get reviewed or otherwise grab my attention if I don't do the wading.  But getting me to even look at any PDF has to overcome a lot of inertia.  

Now, something more in the range of, say, 16-32 pages, is more likely to grab my interest.  That's small enough to still be focused and cheap to print.  I'm seriously considering buying a few PDFs in that range right now, after reading some reviews.

Well, the question here was regardless of the subject, so I guess part of the question would be "what kind of product could you imagine paying $1-2 for a 1-4 page PDF of"?

Quote from: RPGPundit;963867Well, the question here was regardless of the subject, so I guess part of the question would be "what kind of product could you imagine paying $1-2 for a 1-4 page PDF of"?

For me, mostly:

* Useful tables
* Sub- or alternative game systems for established games
* Microsettings like towns, adventure sites, dungeons, etc.

The magic section of Dark Albion would be a good example, even though that's more pages. There was a guy who made a PDF for "Goetic Magick", which I liked.

If it's a simple system that only takes a few pages, I will drop a dollar or two on it. An adventure, absolutely. But if I'm paying for content, I expect content. If I pay for a 4 pages class document, and even 25% is art, I'll get irritated. When you have a very small page count, it should be very sparing on the decoration and focus on the actual meat of what the author wants to convey.

If you want to release something like a regular digest of useful ideas, rules, classes, adventures, etc., then you need to keep that content excellent, and begin (slowly) reducing the price of older works, to keep interested consumers as subscribers.

This is, in essence, what gaming magazines used to be though, right? Pay a fee, get some articles, micro-adventures and content.

If theres some thing that interests me and enough of an idea / content I can see it but not over a buck or 2