Quote from: Ravenswing;893676Suggesting that the pay-for-play model be applied to tabletop doesn't draw from much of a parallel.  For one thing, we already get the service for free.

Bollocks.  There are tons of services and entertainments that people gladly pay money for.  There's nothing special about RPG sessions.

Sure, your sessions are free.  So's screwing around with your friends in the backyard with Nerf guns and SuperSoakers, and yet somehow Laser Tag is still a thing you can pay money for, and people do.

QuoteAny one of us -- good GM or bad, superbly prepared or unprepared -- could put a shingle out.  Barring Yelp reviews from a customer base of a half-dozen (and how would you know that they were actually current players, as opposed to the GM's ex-, intent on doing him or her down?), you've no way of knowing.

Yes, you're absolutely right.  In six thousand years of human beings exchanging goods for services, this is still an unsolved problem which no one has ever developed any workable response to.  It's a marvel commerce functions at all, frankly.

QuoteFor a third, a lot of games already have incurred costs.  Take my Saturday group; it meets twice a month.[...]

I suggest that your group of friends willing to travel hours to your games are getting together more for the social bonding between long-time compatriots and less because they want to play a game per se.  Which is fine, but is not much of a counter-argument to "people might pay money for a good tabletop gaming experience".

As a point in favour, I should point out that many people do the con circuit regularly for the express purpose of playing in pickup games with strangers, and they're spending far in excess of $15/month to do so.

Quote from: daniel_ream;893697Bollocks.  There are tons of services and entertainments that people gladly pay money for.  There's nothing special about RPG sessions.

Sure, your sessions are free.  So's screwing around with your friends in the backyard with Nerf guns and SuperSoakers, and yet somehow Laser Tag is still a thing you can pay money for, and people do.

Except there nothing about a RPG session that lends itself to a subscription service. There are things that support running a RPG session that people have proven willing to pay a subscription for. But none of them revolve around paying a subscription just to access the rules themselves.

What has worked was access to the official rules implemented as a series of references and utility. I.e. a VTT ruleset. The closest example is Fantasy Ground's support of D&D 5e. However that is in addition to buying D&D 5e normally.

I suppose one could have a situation where there is a set of trusted referee of a series of campaign. Your subscriptions will allow you to reserve a time slot in a periodic campaign (weekly, bi-weekly, etc). You may not get a particular person but since the website vets all of its referees (and assuming you had a good first experience) you trust that the person you get knows what they are doing and what the campaign is about.

I payed a total of $20.00 for my B/X sets. I continue to enjoy them today for no additional cost. That is $20.00 spent once almost 36 years ago. How is $15.00 for a single month a better value?

Quote from: Exploderwizard;893720I payed a total of $20.00 for my B/X sets. I continue to enjoy them today for no additional cost. That is $20.00 spent once almost 36 years ago. How is $15.00 for a single month a better value?

Well $15.00/month is $180/year per subscriber. So if there were 500 subscribers, that would be....

Oh, wait. You meant a better value for you....


...I got nothing.

$15 a month for an MMO is a different experience from $15 a month for D&D, the paper and pencil edition.

I'd pay $15 a month if I could get the sort of experience that an MMO provides, but with the mechanics of D&D, sure (Hear that WotC? Not that crap Neverwinter game).

But of course, as literally everyone has stated, it's a no-go in a world of competition where all prior editions of the game as well as clones and competitors are all buy-once-play-forever.

That said....4E's online subscription service came pretty close to doing exactly this, but did so by providing some robust tools to help run and play the game.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;893587I was thinking of WoW when I posted the question.

WOW isnt an RPG though. Neither is Neverwinter Online.

Quote from: Omega;893737WOW isnt an RPG though. Neither is Neverwinter Online.

Yes they are RPG just not tabletop RPG. Roleplaying Games branched out in a variety of forms from the D&D progenitor. One thread led to computer based RPG. Another led to Live-Action and so on.

Quote from: David Johansen;893688Sure it's terrible groups that would make Tangency weep with their levels of homophobia and sexism.

I like them already. Add some "slaughter orcs on sight" for that """""""""""""""racism""""""""""""""" Tangency abhors, and they can play at my table any time.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;893276What if it cost $15 a month to play D&D? The latest game rules could be read only electronically while logged into the D&D website. Would you pay to play the latest version? Or would you stay with 5e (or some other previous version) forever?

I would not regularly play a tabletop RPG that could only be read online while logged into a website even if it were free. DDI was one of the things that would have turned me off to 4e even if I had loved the rules. There are a couple of main reasons:

1) I see no reason to pay monthly for a tabletop RPG. I can write a playable version of D&D myself if every printed copy or pdf on the planet suddenly disappeared and a monthly sub was the only way to get it going forward.  I don't do monthly subscription games of any type (I have zero interest in MMO games, for example).

2) I want stable rules -- not rules that can be updated at the designer's whim that I'm forced to use because they updated the online copy. As GM, I may have already solved the problem they errataed my way and I have zero interest in changing the old rules to fit what they want to do in some new supplement. I'm obviously not a member of the "cult of the RAW".

Quote from: David Johansen;893364But let me ask this, would you pay $15 a session for a professional DM (I know they'll never allow this but bear with me) with a clean, comfortable place to play and well organized miniatures and terrain and an asshat screening system of some sort?

Definitely not as minis and terrain tell me that combat probably would be more common and take far longer to play out than I would be willing to tolerate for free -- let alone pay to play.  I probably would not pay to play even a game I liked, however -- I enjoy running campaigns as much as playing so I'd just start my own free-to-play game.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;893587I was thinking of WoW when I posted the question.

Getting away from the computer is one of the nice things about playing TT RPGs for me nowadays.

Quote from: Omega;893737WOW isnt an RPG though. Neither is Neverwinter Online.

Didn't have to be an RPG specifically. Just a game (or anything) with a monthly fee.

I'd pay $15 a month for a virtual table top but not for a game.  

I'd likely not pay a penny for yet another D&D.

I also despise the very idea of cloud-based software, which is what you are describing.

Those who think this is a good idea have very different internet providers than me.  Service going out is not a rare event.  Let alone if the game providers servers or site goes down.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;893276What if it cost $15 a month to play D&D? The latest game rules could be read only electronically while logged into the D&D website. Would you pay to play the latest version? Or would you stay with 5e (or some other previous version) forever?

No. I wouldn't pay $1 a month. The issue is not the money - I spent far more than $15 a month on rpgs at my peak, and could do so now - it's that when I buy something, I expect to own it. With things like movies this doesn't matter as much, since you usually watch them once and then forget about them, this is why I'll pay for online TV. But rpgs are used ongoing. So I'll pay for my copy and that's that.

I also prefer a paper to electronic copy, though I understand that if sales are low, bound books may not be an option. Thus my own involvement in pdf games. So I'd accept, for example, you buy the rulebooks and then pay a monthly fee for an online magazine with adventure modules, etc.

We'll pay for new content. We won't pay for continued access to old content, even Microsquash with their "you don't own it, you license it" bullshit figured that out.