It certainly can be. But if you game often, and share books, then at cost/hour the price dramatically drops. And books don't suddenly become useless when a new edition comes out.
Yes, you could amass a few thousand dollars worth of games and associated paraphernalia (dice, tokens, character sheets, published adventures, etc). Or you can buy a game book, or a rule book and supplements, and run it for years. One of my friends still runs from the Talislanta book he bought in the late 1980s.
Are there trends and fashions in tabletop rpgs? Yes. And keeping up with the latest does get expensive. And if you're a completist, it's expensive. With recent budgetary constraints, I've had to drastically slow my game purchases (& if things get worse, I'll have to stop). But I can still play.
most gaming by it's very nature is a comunal event, which means it is a comunal cost. This means that if one person buys 90% of the materials, it is cheap for everyone else (this is true in a board game group I participate in). While it can seem exploitive to rely on somebody like this, I've found the heavy investers seem to recieve added bennifits, such as ensuring exposure to new product, or focusing availibility of games in s direction they prefer. Some of these people just like beig 'the game guy.' I've also seen game groups where 90% of the mateial cost may come to be aroung $100 based on the focus of the group and type of game played.
I agree with Chris Tregenza , especially when it comes to pen-paper RPGs. Sure, there are the visible "whales" who buy lots of stuff, but the truth is that most players don't even have to buy a single book at all. That has been a problem for the economic viability of RPG publishers. You're selling a product where there only needs to be a single purchase to keep a large group of players playing for months or years.
I clicked "Yes" because there isn't a "it depends".
You can lead a full life with free / open PDFs. Talislanta and Eclipse Phase have their entire output available online under a CC license for no charge. Fate Core is available as well. SRDs for many game systems exist.
And you can pick and choose systems that can last for decades without you picking up another physical artifact from the publisher.
But...
You have many opportunities to spend money in certain gaming lines.
Gaming is social, so there is an expectation of travel and other food costs. More-so if you're hosting.
With some discipline you can game for little or no cost. But I'm sure the creaking shelves of games that many of us have attest to discipline giving out to desires. :)
Also, expensive is a relative term. Expensive relative to what? Ballroom dancing is a hobby that can easily cost $5k a year. I have coworkers with children in little-league hockey, that can get all kinds of expensive. Some people collect/restore antique cars as a hobby.
Regardless of what you compare it to, gaming can be cheap. There are excellent free/PWYW RPGs, and places like bundle of holding and humble bundle can set you up with hundreds of hours of gaming for $10 to $20.
Conversely, gaming can be really expensive if you have surplus cash you want to burn. Spending $2000 on a gaming PC is easy, not including monitors/keyboards/etc. I know a guy with an entire chapter of space marines. That's not cheap. Etc.
After lunch, time for my opinion. Which is mostly from my experiences.
tl-dr -- 1. gaming as a hobby is effectively free, 2. travel is expensive, 3. collecting is expensive, 4. somebody has to do the travel and collecting, and aggregate costs are low within a community.
Here's my experience: For half a decade, I ran an open to the public meetup group with 500 members. It still exists, I just don't do it anymore.
The premier event was monthly potlock-style gaming at local libraries. We accepted donations at these events, which covered all costs for everything, and a whole lot more. Food and games were both potluck style: bring things you think others will enjoy, play/eat what you wish to. You brought some oreos? nom nom nom. You brought 7 wonders? Cool, I'm gonna play that while you play Carc. You want us to babysit your 7 year old while you wander the stacks? Um ... maybe, it depends, what's the libraries policy? oh crap.
Maybe 50 to 100 people showed up to each of those monthly sessions, with a rotating cast of hundreds. The organization was minimal, and arranged for space, wrote checks, and did a little policing. For ex, a couple of times a woman mentioned to me that a dude was touching her hair and could I please make him stop. Polite conversation later, no more hair touching. Once or twice that conversation wasn't so polite, but it always ended acceptably.
Cost to people: whatever they wanted to pay. Zero dollars or Twenty, whatever. Its all anonymous, and two people who weren't related would count the money. We made so much money we stopped putting out the donation hat for years, and never put a hat out at other events. The event was usually metro accessible, so car ownership wasn't required. Go city planning! If we brought in $100 at an event with 60 people that ran for 6 hours? That's, what, about a quarter per person per hour?
Some people showed up with two dozen games and a granny cart to carry them. A bunch more would bring one or two. Some people brought none, and relied upon the community. Some didn't want to share their games. We didn't bring the expensive stuff -- like Drakon when it was out of print. The same thousand dollars worth of games would be at a dozen events -- call it $100 of new game per month for 60 people, at 6 hours a person. That's again, what, an average of a quarter per person per hour?
And, sure, absolutely, this little event brings with it a whole lot of unspoken assumptions. Safety, mass transit, time and energy to play games, metro, people with the time and emotional energy to book events, people in the community willing to pay more than their share for a few hours of gaming, people with a bunch of games they don't mind strangers using, libraries, meetup. Those're all basically true of any large social gathering -- we need an infrastructure to get people together. Metro costs might be $6 per person, so that's what, $1 per person per hour in commuting costs to play games?
That is to say: gaming isn't expensive. Getting to places and owning games sure can be.
It depends on how you engage. There are very cheap options, and there are expensive ones. So I voted no. But it is an expensive hobby from an opportunity cost perspective. The time spent playing (and, in many cases, preparing and learning) games is lavish.
Arlene Medder Right, you'd have to stop buying new games. And that sucks and I'm sorry. But, it takes a lot to wear out a copy of Catan or Dungeon World or whatever.
Note: We absolutely did wear out our copy of Catan. It is with the neice and nephew now. I don't think they've touched it.
Cameron Mount Agreed that comparing it to other hobbies is reasonable. Its a lot cheaper than, say, flying planes for fun. Or collecting stampls. And, again, I think it is as cheap as you want it to be.
I think any hobby can be expensive if you devote enough time and resources to it. Even running, which is theoretically free, can realy add up when you start buying specialty running shoes, clothes, fitness watches, and entering races. To me asking if somebody asking if it is possible to spend a lot on an activity should always be answered yes, but the same is not true for spending small amounts of money (it's hard to be into sailing on a budget).
Robert Bohl Levi Kornelsen You're both right about that. I do spend more time talking about games, reading games, and writing games than I do playing games. And I'm not in the "industry".
Any hobby can be cheap if you are willing to spend time and effort to keep the price down. There is enough good stuff out there (regardless of if we're talking Board/RPG/video/other games) that it can easily end up costing a pretty penny, and it's not a trivial task to play for free (or cheaply).
As hobbies go, it doesn't seem especially expensive to me. Like other hobbies, you can spend a ton on getting the latest thing or being a "completionist". Or you can have a few favorites and do some DIY stuff and get the cheaper options when available. I've spent less on gaming than on my other hobbies - music, shopping, travel.
I was a gamer for five or six years on the purchase of one set of polyhedral dice that cost about £3 since a whole group of us got one of those "pound of dice" dealies. As I've got more disposable income, I've chosen to spend more of it on gaming, but I really don't need to in order to partake of the hobby.
The underlying claim is: There really is one thing that can coherently be called the gaming hobby.
ReplyDelete(We talk like there is, all the time, and I think it's quite a good shorthand, but... In cases like this, it shatters.)
Levi Kornelsen I have a concurring opinion, but I'll save it for a while.
ReplyDeleteIt certainly can be. But if you game often, and share books, then at cost/hour the price dramatically drops. And books don't suddenly become useless when a new edition comes out.
ReplyDeleteYes, you could amass a few thousand dollars worth of games and associated paraphernalia (dice, tokens, character sheets, published adventures, etc). Or you can buy a game book, or a rule book and supplements, and run it for years. One of my friends still runs from the Talislanta book he bought in the late 1980s.
Arlene Medder This is very much in line with my opinion. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteAre there trends and fashions in tabletop rpgs? Yes. And keeping up with the latest does get expensive. And if you're a completist, it's expensive. With recent budgetary constraints, I've had to drastically slow my game purchases (& if things get worse, I'll have to stop). But I can still play.
ReplyDeleteGaming is free. Windows Solitaire is a game, right?
ReplyDeleteJohn Hattan Requires a computer. Computers are expensive. What's a windows computer, like baseline $400?
ReplyDelete[ I haven't bought a computer in years. ]
ReplyDeleteWhat kind of gaming are we talking about. There are lots of types.
ReplyDeleteWant to play compeative CCGs, expect to spend a lot of money if you actually want to compete.
Want to play an RPG, you can get a ton for free, enough to last you a lifetime of RPG gaming.
Board games - some people buy one game and play the heck out of it, most people buy a game every month or so. Some buy 3 games a week.
I think on average it's an expensive hobby that can be done cheaply.
most gaming by it's very nature is a comunal event, which means it is a comunal cost. This means that if one person buys 90% of the materials, it is cheap for everyone else (this is true in a board game group I participate in). While it can seem exploitive to rely on somebody like this, I've found the heavy investers seem to recieve added bennifits, such as ensuring exposure to new product, or focusing availibility of games in s direction they prefer. Some of these people just like beig 'the game guy.' I've also seen game groups where 90% of the mateial cost may come to be aroung $100 based on the focus of the group and type of game played.
ReplyDeleteI've spent way more on tabletop gaming than most people have spent on Video gaming.
ReplyDeleteThe hobby of "playing games" doesn't have to be expensive. The hobby of "collecting games" can get expensive.
ReplyDeleteNo. The majority of players buy very few books and play the same game for years.
ReplyDeleteYes. Some people spend a lot money because that is how they engage with the hobby. As a publisher, I love these people.
I agree with Chris Tregenza , especially when it comes to pen-paper RPGs. Sure, there are the visible "whales" who buy lots of stuff, but the truth is that most players don't even have to buy a single book at all. That has been a problem for the economic viability of RPG publishers. You're selling a product where there only needs to be a single purchase to keep a large group of players playing for months or years.
ReplyDeleteI clicked "Yes" because there isn't a "it depends".
ReplyDeleteYou can lead a full life with free / open PDFs. Talislanta and Eclipse Phase have their entire output available online under a CC license for no charge. Fate Core is available as well. SRDs for many game systems exist.
And you can pick and choose systems that can last for decades without you picking up another physical artifact from the publisher.
But...
You have many opportunities to spend money in certain gaming lines.
Gaming is social, so there is an expectation of travel and other food costs. More-so if you're hosting.
With some discipline you can game for little or no cost. But I'm sure the creaking shelves of games that many of us have attest to discipline giving out to desires. :)
Also, expensive is a relative term. Expensive relative to what? Ballroom dancing is a hobby that can easily cost $5k a year. I have coworkers with children in little-league hockey, that can get all kinds of expensive. Some people collect/restore antique cars as a hobby.
ReplyDeleteRegardless of what you compare it to, gaming can be cheap. There are excellent free/PWYW RPGs, and places like bundle of holding and humble bundle can set you up with hundreds of hours of gaming for $10 to $20.
Conversely, gaming can be really expensive if you have surplus cash you want to burn. Spending $2000 on a gaming PC is easy, not including monitors/keyboards/etc. I know a guy with an entire chapter of space marines. That's not cheap. Etc.
After lunch, time for my opinion. Which is mostly from my experiences.
ReplyDeletetl-dr -- 1. gaming as a hobby is effectively free, 2. travel is expensive, 3. collecting is expensive, 4. somebody has to do the travel and collecting, and aggregate costs are low within a community.
Here's my experience: For half a decade, I ran an open to the public meetup group with 500 members. It still exists, I just don't do it anymore.
The premier event was monthly potlock-style gaming at local libraries. We accepted donations at these events, which covered all costs for everything, and a whole lot more. Food and games were both potluck style: bring things you think others will enjoy, play/eat what you wish to. You brought some oreos? nom nom nom. You brought 7 wonders? Cool, I'm gonna play that while you play Carc. You want us to babysit your 7 year old while you wander the stacks? Um ... maybe, it depends, what's the libraries policy? oh crap.
Maybe 50 to 100 people showed up to each of those monthly sessions, with a rotating cast of hundreds. The organization was minimal, and arranged for space, wrote checks, and did a little policing. For ex, a couple of times a woman mentioned to me that a dude was touching her hair and could I please make him stop. Polite conversation later, no more hair touching. Once or twice that conversation wasn't so polite, but it always ended acceptably.
Cost to people: whatever they wanted to pay. Zero dollars or Twenty, whatever. Its all anonymous, and two people who weren't related would count the money. We made so much money we stopped putting out the donation hat for years, and never put a hat out at other events. The event was usually metro accessible, so car ownership wasn't required. Go city planning! If we brought in $100 at an event with 60 people that ran for 6 hours? That's, what, about a quarter per person per hour?
Some people showed up with two dozen games and a granny cart to carry them. A bunch more would bring one or two. Some people brought none, and relied upon the community. Some didn't want to share their games. We didn't bring the expensive stuff -- like Drakon when it was out of print. The same thousand dollars worth of games would be at a dozen events -- call it $100 of new game per month for 60 people, at 6 hours a person. That's again, what, an average of a quarter per person per hour?
And, sure, absolutely, this little event brings with it a whole lot of unspoken assumptions. Safety, mass transit, time and energy to play games, metro, people with the time and emotional energy to book events, people in the community willing to pay more than their share for a few hours of gaming, people with a bunch of games they don't mind strangers using, libraries, meetup. Those're all basically true of any large social gathering -- we need an infrastructure to get people together. Metro costs might be $6 per person, so that's what, $1 per person per hour in commuting costs to play games?
That is to say: gaming isn't expensive. Getting to places and owning games sure can be.
It depends on how you engage. There are very cheap options, and there are expensive ones. So I voted no. But it is an expensive hobby from an opportunity cost perspective. The time spent playing (and, in many cases, preparing and learning) games is lavish.
ReplyDeleteRobert Bohl Sure, it can be expensive. If I was interested in, say, X-wing or Magic? That's expensive!
ReplyDeleteBut, I'm interested in writing sad things on index cards and board games like Catan. Those're cheap!
Arlene Medder Right, you'd have to stop buying new games. And that sucks and I'm sorry. But, it takes a lot to wear out a copy of Catan or Dungeon World or whatever.
ReplyDeleteNote: We absolutely did wear out our copy of Catan. It is with the neice and nephew now. I don't think they've touched it.
Moe Tousignant I disagree with the conclusion: i think its a cheap hobby that can be as expensive as you want it to be.
ReplyDeleteDavid Rothfeder i think that's all true, if incomplete.
ReplyDeleteCameron Mount Agreed that comparing it to other hobbies is reasonable. Its a lot cheaper than, say, flying planes for fun. Or collecting stampls. And, again, I think it is as cheap as you want it to be.
ReplyDeleteWilliam, I'd agree there are other activities that take more time than RPGs.
ReplyDeleteLike talking about RPGs.
ReplyDeleteI think any hobby can be expensive if you devote enough time and resources to it. Even running, which is theoretically free, can realy add up when you start buying specialty running shoes, clothes, fitness watches, and entering races. To me asking if somebody asking if it is possible to spend a lot on an activity should always be answered yes, but the same is not true for spending small amounts of money (it's hard to be into sailing on a budget).
ReplyDeleteRobert Bohl Levi Kornelsen You're both right about that. I do spend more time talking about games, reading games, and writing games than I do playing games. And I'm not in the "industry".
ReplyDeleteAny hobby can be cheap if you are willing to spend time and effort to keep the price down. There is enough good stuff out there (regardless of if we're talking Board/RPG/video/other games) that it can easily end up costing a pretty penny, and it's not a trivial task to play for free (or cheaply).
ReplyDeleteAs hobbies go, it doesn't seem especially expensive to me. Like other hobbies, you can spend a ton on getting the latest thing or being a "completionist". Or you can have a few favorites and do some DIY stuff and get the cheaper options when available. I've spent less on gaming than on my other hobbies - music, shopping, travel.
ReplyDeleteI was a gamer for five or six years on the purchase of one set of polyhedral dice that cost about £3 since a whole group of us got one of those "pound of dice" dealies. As I've got more disposable income, I've chosen to spend more of it on gaming, but I really don't need to in order to partake of the hobby.
ReplyDelete