For non-CA/US gamers, opinions on lowering D&D costs?

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Mon May 09, 2011 12:08 am

I'll certainly buy "time requirement" as a major entry barrier.

And, hrm, play-by-twitter RPGs would be an interesting exercise.

Wrathzog · Post by **Wrathzog** » Mon May 09, 2011 3:30 am

Penny Arcade and Something Awful both have forum sections for playing RPG's by posting. It's pretty much the same thing. Games are slow, but they're obviously playable.

JongWK · Post by **JongWK** » Mon May 09, 2011 4:44 am

Don't forget shipping costs. They split the overseas gaming community in two: those who can pay or bypass them, and those who will settle for a printed PDF.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Mon May 09, 2011 6:07 am

I find that play-by-post can't resolve combat in less than a week. For one combat. That would've normally taken twenty minutes in person, let alone the ones that are intended to be epic, drawn out battles. That seems like it would slow a game down too much for it to go anywhere.

Vnonymous · Post by **Vnonymous** » Mon May 09, 2011 8:32 am

IRC games can work, but combat still takes about three times as long as it would if you rolled it in real life.

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Mon May 09, 2011 8:38 am

It depends how complex combat is, and how fast people post. I've been running games by forum posts since years.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Mon May 09, 2011 1:20 pm

Chamomile wrote:I find that play-by-post can't resolve combat in less than a week. For one combat. That would've normally taken twenty minutes in person, let alone the ones that are intended to be epic, drawn out battles. That seems like it would slow a game down too much for it to go anywhere.

It's a different animal from tabletop gaming. It's much, much, much slower, but you can easily play four or five of them at once, if you like.

Among others, I'm playing in one play-by-post game that's about three years old and a play-by-email game that's about ten years old (although I've only been playing in it for five years).

theye1 · Post by **theye1** » Sat May 14, 2011 9:00 am

PhoneLobster wrote:One thing you may need to be aware of is that it isn't just D&D that is more expensive in other countries.

In some cases, like Australia, it's books in general.

Australia has for a VERY long time been dominated by an alliance of book importers that import the left overs and seconds of books from the USA and UK and do so late, and then charge premium extra high prices.

To the degree that recently two of our largest book retail chains basically declared bankruptcy because of it. Apparently they had been begging their suppliers to get their act together for years... and they just flat out refused to bother.

Then the Internet ate them.

Because here in Australia I can go on Amazon, which while reasonably priced is hardly the absolute bargain bin of the internet, find ANY book I want, find it SOONER, and INCLUDING postage cost AND postage time get it sooner AND cheaper than if I go to ANY bookstore, not just my local one just ANY in Australia (barring shady second hand bookstores and they won't have the book you are looking for, and it will be second hand).

International Internet retailers and the weakness of the US dollar (and in our case somewhat over inflated strength of the Australian one) is finally driving down prices for a lot of hobby products.

But you need to understand, we pay more for ALL this shit. Hell, for instance we pay MORE THAN TWICE AS MUCH per title for PC games than you do. And we get them late. And some of them are banned. And even if they aren't banned there are a bunch that just never turn up here for no reason at all.

D&D is still RELATIVELY cheap.

I saw a D&D book in the Local Bookshop (Dymocks, I think) for $90, last week.