Quote from: Ravenswing;894509... let me get this straight.  You're inferring that this forum is more representative of the RPG base than TBP is?  I'm thinking myself that if I draw conclusions, I'm going to go with the site that has fifty times the traffic this one does, whatever TBP's other bumps and warts.

No online forum is likely truly representative of the entire tabletop RPG player base as most tabletop RPG players are not active in any forum on the Internet. All you can really say is that some forums are more representative of those players who participate in online forums than other forums. The relatively low numbers of tabletop RPG players who actually participate in forums makes trying to base what tabletop RPG players as a whole want from online forum posts a pretty bad idea.  All you find out is what those willing to participate in internet forums think with no idea if that is also representative of the majority of players who do not read, let alone post, in online forums.

Quote from: Ravenswing;894509... let me get this straight.  You're inferring that this forum is more representative of the RPG base than TBP is?  I'm thinking myself that if I draw conclusions, I'm going to go with the site that has fifty times the traffic this one does, whatever TBP's other bumps and warts.

I inferred no such thing.  I outright stated that asking how much people spend on games in a year is going to be a much more effective way of establishing how "cheap" they are than how much they complain on forums.  Is basic logical argument that hard for you?

QuoteIn any event, judging from the overwhelming hostility to the premise in this thread, I've got a whole lot more reason to think that tabletop gamers aren't going to pony up to a pay-for-play model than you have any evidence to the contrary.

That may well be.  But since it's a boutique service that's being described (and let's be clear I'm talking about David Johansen's concierge GM model, not the pay-to-access-the-rules-text model), it really doesn't matter how many people on this board hate it.  It only matters that enough people out in the real world are willing to pay for it.  Based on my observations of the crowd down the local hobby shop, I think there's a potential market there.

I hear there are a few posters over at rpg.net who happen to play rpgs, but that's probably just a rumor.

Quote from: Teazia;894201Just some info: 4e had the disaster of the virtual table, and the DDI in general.  Wotc is well known for being stingy in pay (about 1/3 of industry average IIRC) and somewhat shortsighted with their digital offerings, even with products that are a literal printing press like MTGO.  Their support is atrocious and they never got 4e Digital off the ground.  I recall an interview with some of the staff e-developers that lamented that they were always two steps back on platform selection: .net and a platform that was abandoned by MS half way through.  By about 2009 or so (or whenever the iPad was released), they stated they could not have tablet support as they were still tied to MS even after they switched development platforms right before mobile took over.   They even shut off access to the free portions of DDI right when the "evergreen" new player friendly 4e Red Box and Essentials line was released.  All the people involved in that decision should have been immediately fired.

Their bad practices go all the way back to the out of house developed 2e Tools collection that was generally functional and is still useful to lots of folks.  Of course, Wotc kicked that team to the curb with their 3e Tools and they have never gotten back up to speed.  IIRC MTGO was developed out of house, but Wotc folded it back in and it has never been as stable as it was before.  

Wotc seems to have spun off D&D digital development again so maybe there is hope yet.

The mistake seems to be those who believe that there's got to be some way to make table top more like MMORPGs, with either a subscription or a microtransaction model to play. Which is a demonstration of a fundamental misunderstanding of what rpgs are.

Clubs, places to play, accessories, rulebooks, manuals, dice, etc, etc, etc, muh wallet! Are another thing entirely.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;894597I hear there are a few posters over at rpg.net who happen to play rpgs, but that's probably just a rumor.

Yes. The LARP supsection.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;894599The mistake seems to be those who believe that there's got to be some way to make table top more like MMORPGs, with either a subscription or a microtransaction model to play. Which is a demonstration of a fundamental misunderstanding of what rpgs are.

Clubs, places to play, accessories, rulebooks, manuals, dice, etc, etc, etc, muh wallet! Are another thing entirely.

And not just RPG as I noted somewhere above.

This is not new though. Also as noted somewhere above.

And yes everyone chipping in to rent a meeting room or buy new modules, dice etc is very different from the DM just charging the players some exorberant fee just to play the game or because the DM feels the players owe him him allowing them to mooch food.

Quote from: Omega;894662And yes everyone chipping in to rent a meeting room or buy new modules, dice etc is very different from the DM just charging the players some exorberant fee just to play the game or because the DM feels the players owe him him allowing them to mooch food.

Regardless of the merits or viability of table top pay-to-play, in the grand scheme of things in the Western world, $15/session is hardly exorbitant. Partner rates at the big four accounting firms on the other hand...

Quote from: David Johansen;893857Okay, sure, nice maps and character sheets and handouts and props, whatever.

But let's flip it around, would you like to be able to charge $15 a session per player?  People who want it monthly at that rate are being a bit silly.  The GM's probably spending $15 per session.

I wouldn't GM for people who'd pay me $15 a month, being that they are clearly missing the point of the hobby. This would be a killer to the social element of RPGs, brutal and swift, if someone tried to institute this as norm.

Quote from: daniel_ream;894059No, they aren't.  (You too, OG).  At least not as a universal.  You guys are clearly cheap, and I have no doubt that most of the people you play with are cheap.  But I live in an upper-middle-class, whitebread suburban city where the median gamer age is about mid-30's.  Spending multiple thousands of dollars a year on miniatures games, Pathfinder hardbacks, and board games is not unusual here for tabletop gamers.

One of the most rapidly expanding business models around here is board game cafes, where people pay a $5 cover to get into a cafe with tables, tons of games you can play, and light snacks you can buy.  Go once a week and you're paying more than $20/month just for a place to play and a game to play there. And these places are doing booming business.

Maybe, just maybe, a bunch of crusty old grognards with mediocre incomes isn't a good general description of tabletop gamers.  It isn't the 1980's any more.

Not cheap here, but I am still careful to make sure I get value for my buck.

Paying $5 for access to a comfortabe area for gaming is certainly doable (attempts to do so locally failed, but NM is a depressed market for this sort of stuff, and I couldn't be bothered when all the other FLGSs in town offered the same space for free). They are not, however, paying for the game, but for the space. That's very different, and has value to it. For a game to have value, it has to provide something that is more significant and impressive than what you can get with friends at home using the dinner table for free.

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?

Your thread title is misleading...I thought someone was offering to pay me $15/month to play D&D, to which my answer was "not enough unless that's for half an hour."

Quote from: David Johansen;893929I have just returned from GMing a roomful of screaming teenagers for six hours, I do this for free just about every week and have run a gaming store part time at a loss for four years.

What bothers me is the disproportionate expense and effort the GM puts in while the players often contribute nothing.

What I would like is not so much a financial return as the kind of player buy-in that creates a stable group.

And I find myself thinking about the old saw that people don't appreciate or respect anything they don't pay for.

I've been feeling that way a lot lately for some reason.

I want players who are invested I guess.

Oh I've thought about the usual methods, manacles, chains, cattle prods, and hot irons but in the end it's just more time and money out of the GM's pocket.

You must be doing it wrong. being a GM has never cost me a penny.

I just saw this thread and thought I'd chime in.

I don't have any sort of numbers or even guesses at the numbers, but I have been messaged or emailed by at least a few people who have suggested that we should offer an option to subscribe for a lower monthly fee to get access to all the D&D 5E content on Fantasy Grounds instead of only having the option to buy it at the listed price. I have so far assumed that it would probably only appeal to a small fraction of the market and would end up just causing confusion on the different options available.

I generally don't like subscriptions as a consumer and yet I find that I have a couple now for things like Adobe products. I would much rather have the option to buy it once, even if it meant that I might have to turn around and buy an upgrade at a later date. With that said, not everyone can afford to buy everything up front and a lower monthly cost lets them get into it sooner without having to save up a bunch of money first. It has an added benefit that you don't end up dropping $300 on something that you decide isn't for you 2 months later. With a subscription service, it would have only cost you 2 months worth of the sub.

From the business side, having a base of monthly subscribers is a big benefit and it helps with budgeting and projections. Even if all your subscribers could theoretically cancel their subs in one month, it's still much easier to look at that and decide that you can safely hire another person or invest in some new . Pricing a sub correctly can be tricky. For the Fantasy Grounds Ultimate license subscription, we decided to go with a 15 month comparison. If you subscribe for more than 15 months, you would have been better off buying it outright. We do see some people who stop and start their subs though, so they probably go longer. We have still more people that sub merely as a means to support a company that they like. They have plenty of money to buy whatever they need outright but they like the idea of providing us with money each month to ensure that we are still here working on making things better years down the road. I've been told this by a good number of our subscribers.

-Doug

I would not.