Just one more excellent reason to switch from print to digital.
Ya know, on top of the deforestation issues. And the increased carbon emissions from all of these delivery trucks, compounding with the added carbon from the rest of traffic sitting at idle behind stop delivery trucks. And the fact that Mother Nature invented the greatest and most efficient carbon capture system of all time when she invented trees. Oh, and the toxic byproducts from inc and gloss paper. Plus the microplastics in the atmosphere from the tire particulates from the delivery trucks. And… well, you get the idea.
Whereas going fully digital means increased power consumption, which in many areas still means burning coal or methane, as well as increased need for rare earth elements that are mined in every environmentally unfriendly ways.
And, since there are no PDFs for 5E books, it means that you have to be online to access your material. DDB is not compatible with gaming somewhere you don't have a wifi signal.
Uhh, that’s what the app is for, gaming sans WiFi.
And if we would just, gee, I dunno, retrofit our power grid to not waste 70% of all generated electricty before it ever gets to a building, let alone an outlet…. Or perhaps rig every building that gets enough sun with solar panels and install batteries on sight it would reduce reliance on our crappy grid by storing the energy locally and taking advantage of mother nature’s clean energy source. Also tidal generators and wind power are things. We could almost eliminate humanity’s dependence on fossil fuels within a decade if the deep pockets who own the industry weren’t buying politicians wholesale to protect their fat, bloated interests.
And don’t forget, the shift not only reduces the footprint to print the books, but the footprint of the delivery network, the increased footprint of everyone else on those roads stuck in traffic behind stopped delivery vehicles, the plastics industry for all the math rocks, the water pollution caused by the print industry which affects ocean temps, ocean PH which is killing the coral reefs, and accelerating climate change because of the water retaining too much heat…. If digital is not a significant reduction overall because of the other stuff all getting affected, I’d be shocked.
The "technology will save us" is a false hope. Yes, trees die and gross things are byproducts of the making of books, then they go into container ships and zip around Amazon trucks because no one can wants to go to a building anymore to consolidate their gathering these days. These devices we're communicating on aren't made of biomass. They're the products of any arguably worse extractive resource process (plastics and toxic metals, plus the toxic extraction process of said metals) and go through the same shipping system and the technology refresh cycle folks participate in nulls things out further. Book owners aren't meat eaters and digerati aren't vegans in the virtue calculus. It'd be pretty to think so, but real systemic change requires a lot more transformation than what medium you. consume your hobby through, the idea of consumption period is what why we're on this precipice.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Just one more excellent reason to switch from print to digital.
Ya know, on top of the deforestation issues. And the increased carbon emissions from all of these delivery trucks, compounding with the added carbon from the rest of traffic sitting at idle behind stop delivery trucks. And the fact that Mother Nature invented the greatest and most efficient carbon capture system of all time when she invented trees. Oh, and the toxic byproducts from inc and gloss paper. Plus the microplastics in the atmosphere from the tire particulates from the delivery trucks. And… well, you get the idea.
Whereas going fully digital means increased power consumption, which in many areas still means burning coal or methane, as well as increased need for rare earth elements that are mined in every environmentally unfriendly ways.
And, since there are no PDFs for 5E books, it means that you have to be online to access your material. DDB is not compatible with gaming somewhere you don't have a wifi signal.
Uhh, that’s what the app is for, gaming sans WiFi.
And if we would just, gee, I dunno, retrofit our power grid to not waste 70% of all generated electricty before it ever gets to a building, let alone an outlet…. Or perhaps rig every building that gets enough sun with solar panels and install batteries on sight it would reduce reliance on our crappy grid by storing the energy locally and taking advantage of mother nature’s clean energy source. Also tidal generators and wind power are things. We could almost eliminate humanity’s dependence on fossil fuels within a decade if the deep pockets who own the industry weren’t buying politicians wholesale to protect their fat, bloated interests.
And don’t forget, the shift not only reduces the footprint to print the books, but the footprint of the delivery network, the increased footprint of everyone else on those roads stuck in traffic behind stopped delivery vehicles, the plastics industry for all the math rocks, the water pollution caused by the print industry which affects ocean temps, ocean PH which is killing the coral reefs, and accelerating climate change because of the water retaining too much heat…. If digital is not a significant reduction overall because of the other stuff all getting affected, I’d be shocked.
The "technology will save us" is a false hope. Yes, trees die and gross things are byproducts of the making of books, then they go into container ships and zip around Amazon trucks because no one can wants to go to a building anymore to consolidate their gathering these days. These devices we're communicating on aren't made of biomass. They're the products of any arguably worse extractive resource process (plastics and toxic metals, plus the toxic extraction process of said metals) and go through the same shipping system and the technology refresh cycle folks participate in nulls things out further. Book owners aren't meat eaters and digerati aren't vegans in the virtue calculus. It'd be pretty to think so, but real systemic change requires a lot more transformation than what medium you. consume your hobby through, the idea of consumption period is what why we're on this precipice.
And the real issue is that we're well past the point of individual consumer choices making a meaningful impact. But this is a conversation that's not really appropriate for this forum.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Just one more excellent reason to switch from print to digital.
Ya know, on top of the deforestation issues. And the increased carbon emissions from all of these delivery trucks, compounding with the added carbon from the rest of traffic sitting at idle behind stop delivery trucks. And the fact that Mother Nature invented the greatest and most efficient carbon capture system of all time when she invented trees. Oh, and the toxic byproducts from inc and gloss paper. Plus the microplastics in the atmosphere from the tire particulates from the delivery trucks. And… well, you get the idea.
Whereas going fully digital means increased power consumption, which in many areas still means burning coal or methane, as well as increased need for rare earth elements that are mined in every environmentally unfriendly ways.
And, since there are no PDFs for 5E books, it means that you have to be online to access your material. DDB is not compatible with gaming somewhere you don't have a wifi signal.
I would be shocked if the net difference in environmental impact from using digital copies outstripped the the carbon footprint and waste product of hardcopy. I've never bought a computing device to read DnD content. That relationship is the other way around—content was put online because that's where many people access content these days generally.
Overall, the difference is not actually significant.
If we were were to weigh the book industry as a whole, I would disagree. But D&D books specifically? Kind of a drop in the bucket, sure.
That kind of works both ways. What's the ecological cost of printing just D&D books, not all books ever?
Printing books is ecologically speaking not a big deal. It just isn't. Paper, for books especially, is absolutely a sustainable resource. Inks and energy consumption and pollution in the production and delivery chain come with a price, absolutely, but not necessarily a very large one. The main factor in this is technological innovation and proper (and properly enforced) regulation. There's certainly still room for improvement in that regard, I'm not saying it wouldn't help, but there's a hell of a lot more room for improvement in the production of electronic devices. That's the problem with the "every little bit helps" argument: it's technically correct, but often serves to obfuscate the simple fact that big bits help a lot more.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Just one more excellent reason to switch from print to digital.
Ya know, on top of the deforestation issues. And the increased carbon emissions from all of these delivery trucks, compounding with the added carbon from the rest of traffic sitting at idle behind stop delivery trucks. And the fact that Mother Nature invented the greatest and most efficient carbon capture system of all time when she invented trees. Oh, and the toxic byproducts from inc and gloss paper. Plus the microplastics in the atmosphere from the tire particulates from the delivery trucks. And… well, you get the idea.
Whereas going fully digital means increased power consumption, which in many areas still means burning coal or methane, as well as increased need for rare earth elements that are mined in every environmentally unfriendly ways.
And, since there are no PDFs for 5E books, it means that you have to be online to access your material. DDB is not compatible with gaming somewhere you don't have a wifi signal.
Now days paper used for books is sustainable, coming from sources that replace with fast growing trees, or that use recycled paper and I am one of these crazy people who likes owning the physical copy of rules because it makes life much easier at the table as a dm
The "technology will save us" is a false hope. Yes, trees die and gross things are byproducts of the making of books, then they go into container ships and zip around Amazon trucks because no one can wants to go to a building anymore to consolidate their gathering these days. These devices we're communicating on aren't made of biomass. They're the products of any arguably worse extractive resource process (plastics and toxic metals, plus the toxic extraction process of said metals) and go through the same shipping system and the technology refresh cycle folks participate in nulls things out further. Book owners aren't meat eaters and digerati aren't vegans in the virtue calculus. It'd be pretty to think so, but real systemic change requires a lot more transformation than what medium you. consume your hobby through, the idea of consumption period is what why we're on this precipice.
I’m not saying books are evil or anything, I love my paperback collection like you have no idea. But chopping up a living creature just to print a PHB weighs a little more heavily on my conscience than the alternative. It’s been studied and proven that plants can feel fear and pain. You know that fresh cut grass smell every time you mow the lawn? That’s the smell of grass screaming.
If they can plop a floating metal doohickey on the ocean and it goes up and down with the tides all by itself and that can generate electricity without having to burn anything, why not?
If we actually “recycled” things instead of “downcycling” them, or lying about it and just burning the stuff or shipping it off somewhere for poor people to dig through and end up dying from cancer, the plastics and rare minerals would be less of a problem too.
There are smarter, better ways to do things. We just have to choose them.
It’s been studied and proven that plants can feel fear and pain. You know that fresh cut grass smell every time you mow the lawn? That’s the smell of grass screaming.
No, it hasn't. And no, that's not that. Plants are alive and can thus react to stimuli, but that's not the same as having emotions. It's just not, just like a robot with built in self defense or repair tools doesn't experience fear or pain - just inputs it reacts to in whatever way it's programmed to react. Attributing any more than that to it is pseudoscience, and usually an attempt to elicit an emotional response in humans because that means attention and attention means funding.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
It’s been studied and proven that plants can feel fear and pain. You know that fresh cut grass smell every time you mow the lawn? That’s the smell of grass screaming.
No, it hasn't. And no, that's not that. Plants are alive and can thus react to stimuli, but that's not the same as having emotions. It's just not, just like a robot with built in self defense or repair tools doesn't experience fear or pain - just inputs it reacts to in whatever way it's programmed to react. Attributing any more than that to it is pseudoscience, and usually an attempt to elicit an emotional response in humans because that means attention and attention means funding.
The have in fact studied it. Specific humans harmed specific plants while others did not and while others still were nice to the plants. When the people who had harmed those plants were near, those plants reacted to those individuals while they did not react to the control humans who hadn’t harmed them and reacted differently to the humans who had been nice. What’s more, other plants that had been kept nearby had learned from the plants that had been harmed and had the same/similar reaction to the humans who had harmed their neighbors.
You wanna see that as a programmed response, go ahead. Of course, it’s a programmed response that I like or don’t like certain folks too, so…. I guess I’m a robot.
So maybe to bring things back to tangible effects. My FLGS has pre-orders available for Wild Beyond the Witchlight. Regular edition is 49.99, the game store exclusive is 54.99. This difference was out before the Hasbro call so I doubt it's tacked to shipping (but I don't know). I haven't seen anything like this elsewhere but I'm wondering whether 54.99 might be the new MSRP for future books in light of the announcement, which I guess would translate to around $35 on Amazon after release or whenever they drop their price below MSRP.
Shipping's actually too cheap. Certainly was pre-covid, but arguably still is. If it's cheaper to manufacture physical goods in China or wherever and ship them around the world to get to the customers than it is to produce more or less locally (at least on the same continent, let's say), that means shipping being too cheap is as much to blame for global economic issues as those countries where labour and the wellbeing of labourers (and people in general) isn't valued properly. But the simple fact that it matters is on us, the customers. Customers may complain over this price increase allegedly due to shipping (I say allegedly, but I'm pretty sure that's at least partially correct), but there'd also be an outcry if the price increase was because of ethical reasons. Nor from all the same people, there's plenty who do care about company ethics and are willing to pay more to support them, but from a whole lot nonetheless.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
This business model is more of a "modern" style of profit over all mentality. It used to be (as industrialist) "provide the best product possible for the most affordable price possible." I know that flies in the face of modern day mentality of "how much of the consumer's money can we get from them", but when D&D 3.0 came out, they purposefully and intentionally made their very good product available for $20 a book (DMG/PHB and MM). They publicized that they DIDN"T want to find out how high of a price they can charge for their product. This opened the game up to many more people that wouldn't have started to play based on the price point alone. I know I came from a family with limited financial resources and could only play using friend's book (and that was when they were $12 a book -AD&D). And I know for a fact, a couple of my friends had stolen those books because they couldn't afford to buy them. In the end, overpricing goods is min/max'ing and figuring a few people paying the most will make you a little more than everyone paying less (volume), based on research showing a minimum number of people that WILL buy at the higher price. It's a poor business practice based solely on greed (which the current business education teaches is what it's all about).
This business model is more of a "modern" style of profit over all mentality. It used to be (as industrialist) "provide the best product possible for the most affordable price possible." I know that flies in the face of modern day mentality of "how much of the consumer's money can we get from them", but when D&D 3.0 came out, they purposefully and intentionally made their very good product available for $20 a book (DMG/PHB and MM). They publicized that they DIDN"T want to find out how high of a price they can charge for their product. This opened the game up to many more people that wouldn't have started to play based on the price point alone. I know I came from a family with limited financial resources and could only play using friend's book (and that was when they were $12 a book -AD&D). And I know for a fact, a couple of my friends had stolen those books because they couldn't afford to buy them. In the end, overpricing goods is min/max'ing and figuring a few people paying the most will make you a little more than everyone paying less (volume), based on research showing a minimum number of people that WILL buy at the higher price. It's a poor business practice based solely on greed (which the current business education teaches is what it's all about).
This line of reasoning is pretty much nonsense. Profit motive have not changed in the last two decades. There seems to be some misconception on how business and the economy works.
Business has always been motivated by the bottom line and quality in the past is definitely not overwhelmingly better than today. The simple fact that people today rather play 5e more than any previous edition highlights that 5e's quality is at least the same or better than the predecessors. If there was really a dip in quality or some kind of failure in the business, then we would have seen 5e suffering from more popularity and market share issues that 4e showed. Wizards has always been greedy, but that is like saying employees are greedy for wanting a better wage to keep up with inflation.
And speaking of inflation, that is also a thing, which is flat out completely ignored. That alone is sufficient to explain the price increase between 2000 and 2014, where $20 in 2000 is about the same as $27.50 in 2014, and $27.50 is not that far off from $30.00 that Wizards were charging. There are also huge supply chain issues right now from the lack of manpower to increasing price of resources across all sectors of the economy, and Wizards charging consumers more to stay in business to feed its employees and give back to shareholders is completely reasonsable. Business cannot keep on absorbing higher costs forever and will need to pass those costs onto consumers eventually.
Just a bit more on the shipping allegation or whatever you want to call the actual claim made during the investors call. The price hike isn't just WotC stuff, it's Hasbro's Toy portfolio across the board, again citing shipping and inflation concerns, Hasbro's expected to have a single digit % price increase on MSRP in time for holiday shopping:
I'd also say a quality product when you're talking about goods is not necessarily the rules themselves, but the physical product. So the question is whether prior editions physically stand up over time. It's the adage "they don't make them like they use to", whether it's true or not is debatable, but it's still folk wisdom and something popularly held. Maybe said wisdom has always been delusional, nostaglia is rarely accurate. At the same time I"m sure you could rewrite Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance's deliberations of "quality" and not see a lot change for the better.
In terms of physical quality, several of my D&D 5e books are a little, erm, vulnerable-looking in the binding and I have been babying them to make sure nothing unpleasant happens. Meanwhile my much older 3.5e products do not feel quite as fragile. To be fair, my Savage Worlds book, which is even newer, is also fragile and looks like it's about to start losing pages.
On the other hand, my Call of Cthulhu products are rock-solid in terms of binding and production quality. I'd say of all the hard copies I own, the sturdiest and most likely to hold up to heavy use are Chaosium's and, ironically, the POD stuff from Drive Through RPG.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I think my hardcover 5e books are about as solid as my 3.5e and 4e ones. The older ones might be slightly sturdier, but if they are, it's barely a difference. The special edition covers don't hold up as well, but I feel like that's expected.
I don't have anything older than that. But go much further back than that and they're soft cover, so then you can't really make a direct comparison.
I think my hardcover 5e books are about as solid as my 3.5e and 4e ones. The older ones might be slightly sturdier, but if they are, it's barely a difference. The special edition covers don't hold up as well, but I feel like that's expected.
I don't have anything older than that. But go much further back than that and they're soft cover, so then you can't really make a direct comparison.
?
AD&D Core books, rule books and monster books were all hardcover. Adventures came as softcover, sometimes boxed sets as did setting supplements. 2nd Edition PHB and DMG were hardcover books. Instead of Monster Manual, at least initially, they put out a three ring binder with a Monster Manual sized collection of monsters on loose leaf paper (so you organize it as you saw fit) and put out monster supplements in that loose leaf format for the binder ... it was probably picking up on the fact that campaigns used binders all the time for their homebrew lore and stuff, but I thought it didn't work well in execution, a lot of the pages tore at the hole like day one for me). Anycase AD&D I think had sturdier production values to 2nd edition. I've yet to recover my AD&D books from a basement on the other side of the country, I'm curious how they've held up.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
2nd edition had a whole series of "complete X handbook" softcovers.
There's a lot more to production value than hardcover vs softcover and general sturdiness though. TSR's layout, editing and general style were pretty poor for a good number of products (not to mention the actual rules themselves, but let's not dwell on that) and while I absolutely adore a lot of the art from that period I think overall the art direction and quality of later editions is better. And all of that costs money. Professionalism doesn't come free, and neither do skill, expertise and simply pouring in work hours. It certainly wasn't all bad in the TSR days (the Planescape boxed set is in my opinion still the best D&D product ever), but WotC definitely stepped it up - because they had to, as D&D was moribund in the late '90s.
In terms of physical quality, several of my D&D 5e books are a little, erm, vulnerable-looking in the binding and I have been babying them to make sure nothing unpleasant happens. Meanwhile my much older 3.5e products do not feel quite as fragile. To be fair, my Savage Worlds book, which is even newer, is also fragile and looks like it's about to start losing pages.
On the other hand, my Call of Cthulhu products are rock-solid in terms of binding and production quality. I'd say of all the hard copies I own, the sturdiest and most likely to hold up to heavy use are Chaosium's and, ironically, the POD stuff from Drive Through RPG.
I found 3.5 edition to be all over the board in that regard: stuff like the PHB and MM were very good. Others, especially late in 3.5's run, were not- I had a few books that had the binding coming apart within less than 24 hours. And 4th Edition was kind of infamous for the ink smearing in at least the first run of the core books.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
To be fair... I only have 2 original 3.5e books and I have 8 for 5e, 2 or 3 of which look like they're liable to separate at the binding and lose some pages if I'm not careful. So I have very different sample sizes. It's possible that if I had bought 6 more 3.5e books, a couple of them would have also had binding issues. It happens, in publishing. There's a reason why several companies, if you contact them and tell them their binding fell apart, just send you a new book, often with no questions asked, and little if any proof required. Publishers know this happens sometimes. It's just a fact of the binding process.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
The "technology will save us" is a false hope. Yes, trees die and gross things are byproducts of the making of books, then they go into container ships and zip around Amazon trucks because no one can wants to go to a building anymore to consolidate their gathering these days. These devices we're communicating on aren't made of biomass. They're the products of any arguably worse extractive resource process (plastics and toxic metals, plus the toxic extraction process of said metals) and go through the same shipping system and the technology refresh cycle folks participate in nulls things out further. Book owners aren't meat eaters and digerati aren't vegans in the virtue calculus. It'd be pretty to think so, but real systemic change requires a lot more transformation than what medium you. consume your hobby through, the idea of consumption period is what why we're on this precipice.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
And the real issue is that we're well past the point of individual consumer choices making a meaningful impact. But this is a conversation that's not really appropriate for this forum.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
That kind of works both ways. What's the ecological cost of printing just D&D books, not all books ever?
Printing books is ecologically speaking not a big deal. It just isn't. Paper, for books especially, is absolutely a sustainable resource. Inks and energy consumption and pollution in the production and delivery chain come with a price, absolutely, but not necessarily a very large one. The main factor in this is technological innovation and proper (and properly enforced) regulation. There's certainly still room for improvement in that regard, I'm not saying it wouldn't help, but there's a hell of a lot more room for improvement in the production of electronic devices. That's the problem with the "every little bit helps" argument: it's technically correct, but often serves to obfuscate the simple fact that big bits help a lot more.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Now days paper used for books is sustainable, coming from sources that replace with fast growing trees, or that use recycled paper and I am one of these crazy people who likes owning the physical copy of rules because it makes life much easier at the table as a dm
I’m not saying books are evil or anything, I love my paperback collection like you have no idea. But chopping up a living creature just to print a PHB weighs a little more heavily on my conscience than the alternative. It’s been studied and proven that plants can feel fear and pain. You know that fresh cut grass smell every time you mow the lawn? That’s the smell of grass screaming.
If they can plop a floating metal doohickey on the ocean and it goes up and down with the tides all by itself and that can generate electricity without having to burn anything, why not?
If we actually “recycled” things instead of “downcycling” them, or lying about it and just burning the stuff or shipping it off somewhere for poor people to dig through and end up dying from cancer, the plastics and rare minerals would be less of a problem too.
There are smarter, better ways to do things. We just have to choose them.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
No, it hasn't. And no, that's not that. Plants are alive and can thus react to stimuli, but that's not the same as having emotions. It's just not, just like a robot with built in self defense or repair tools doesn't experience fear or pain - just inputs it reacts to in whatever way it's programmed to react. Attributing any more than that to it is pseudoscience, and usually an attempt to elicit an emotional response in humans because that means attention and attention means funding.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Hey, guys? Are we ok in here?
The have in fact studied it. Specific humans harmed specific plants while others did not and while others still were nice to the plants. When the people who had harmed those plants were near, those plants reacted to those individuals while they did not react to the control humans who hadn’t harmed them and reacted differently to the humans who had been nice. What’s more, other plants that had been kept nearby had learned from the plants that had been harmed and had the same/similar reaction to the humans who had harmed their neighbors.
You wanna see that as a programmed response, go ahead. Of course, it’s a programmed response that I like or don’t like certain folks too, so…. I guess I’m a robot.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
These are fantastic items for Private Messages or the off-topic board. For this thread though, let us bring it back on-topic.
Thank you!
So maybe to bring things back to tangible effects. My FLGS has pre-orders available for Wild Beyond the Witchlight. Regular edition is 49.99, the game store exclusive is 54.99. This difference was out before the Hasbro call so I doubt it's tacked to shipping (but I don't know). I haven't seen anything like this elsewhere but I'm wondering whether 54.99 might be the new MSRP for future books in light of the announcement, which I guess would translate to around $35 on Amazon after release or whenever they drop their price below MSRP.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Shipping's actually too cheap. Certainly was pre-covid, but arguably still is. If it's cheaper to manufacture physical goods in China or wherever and ship them around the world to get to the customers than it is to produce more or less locally (at least on the same continent, let's say), that means shipping being too cheap is as much to blame for global economic issues as those countries where labour and the wellbeing of labourers (and people in general) isn't valued properly. But the simple fact that it matters is on us, the customers. Customers may complain over this price increase allegedly due to shipping (I say allegedly, but I'm pretty sure that's at least partially correct), but there'd also be an outcry if the price increase was because of ethical reasons. Nor from all the same people, there's plenty who do care about company ethics and are willing to pay more to support them, but from a whole lot nonetheless.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
This business model is more of a "modern" style of profit over all mentality. It used to be (as industrialist) "provide the best product possible for the most affordable price possible." I know that flies in the face of modern day mentality of "how much of the consumer's money can we get from them", but when D&D 3.0 came out, they purposefully and intentionally made their very good product available for $20 a book (DMG/PHB and MM). They publicized that they DIDN"T want to find out how high of a price they can charge for their product. This opened the game up to many more people that wouldn't have started to play based on the price point alone. I know I came from a family with limited financial resources and could only play using friend's book (and that was when they were $12 a book -AD&D). And I know for a fact, a couple of my friends had stolen those books because they couldn't afford to buy them. In the end, overpricing goods is min/max'ing and figuring a few people paying the most will make you a little more than everyone paying less (volume), based on research showing a minimum number of people that WILL buy at the higher price. It's a poor business practice based solely on greed (which the current business education teaches is what it's all about).
Pallutus
This line of reasoning is pretty much nonsense. Profit motive have not changed in the last two decades. There seems to be some misconception on how business and the economy works.
Business has always been motivated by the bottom line and quality in the past is definitely not overwhelmingly better than today. The simple fact that people today rather play 5e more than any previous edition highlights that 5e's quality is at least the same or better than the predecessors. If there was really a dip in quality or some kind of failure in the business, then we would have seen 5e suffering from more popularity and market share issues that 4e showed. Wizards has always been greedy, but that is like saying employees are greedy for wanting a better wage to keep up with inflation.
And speaking of inflation, that is also a thing, which is flat out completely ignored. That alone is sufficient to explain the price increase between 2000 and 2014, where $20 in 2000 is about the same as $27.50 in 2014, and $27.50 is not that far off from $30.00 that Wizards were charging. There are also huge supply chain issues right now from the lack of manpower to increasing price of resources across all sectors of the economy, and Wizards charging consumers more to stay in business to feed its employees and give back to shareholders is completely reasonsable. Business cannot keep on absorbing higher costs forever and will need to pass those costs onto consumers eventually.
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Just a bit more on the shipping allegation or whatever you want to call the actual claim made during the investors call. The price hike isn't just WotC stuff, it's Hasbro's Toy portfolio across the board, again citing shipping and inflation concerns, Hasbro's expected to have a single digit % price increase on MSRP in time for holiday shopping:
https://www.businessinsider.com/hasbro-toy-prices-rising-third-quarter-holiday-season-shipping-inflation-2021-7
I'd also say a quality product when you're talking about goods is not necessarily the rules themselves, but the physical product. So the question is whether prior editions physically stand up over time. It's the adage "they don't make them like they use to", whether it's true or not is debatable, but it's still folk wisdom and something popularly held. Maybe said wisdom has always been delusional, nostaglia is rarely accurate. At the same time I"m sure you could rewrite Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance's deliberations of "quality" and not see a lot change for the better.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
In terms of physical quality, several of my D&D 5e books are a little, erm, vulnerable-looking in the binding and I have been babying them to make sure nothing unpleasant happens. Meanwhile my much older 3.5e products do not feel quite as fragile. To be fair, my Savage Worlds book, which is even newer, is also fragile and looks like it's about to start losing pages.
On the other hand, my Call of Cthulhu products are rock-solid in terms of binding and production quality. I'd say of all the hard copies I own, the sturdiest and most likely to hold up to heavy use are Chaosium's and, ironically, the POD stuff from Drive Through RPG.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I think my hardcover 5e books are about as solid as my 3.5e and 4e ones. The older ones might be slightly sturdier, but if they are, it's barely a difference. The special edition covers don't hold up as well, but I feel like that's expected.
I don't have anything older than that. But go much further back than that and they're soft cover, so then you can't really make a direct comparison.
?
AD&D Core books, rule books and monster books were all hardcover. Adventures came as softcover, sometimes boxed sets as did setting supplements. 2nd Edition PHB and DMG were hardcover books. Instead of Monster Manual, at least initially, they put out a three ring binder with a Monster Manual sized collection of monsters on loose leaf paper (so you organize it as you saw fit) and put out monster supplements in that loose leaf format for the binder ... it was probably picking up on the fact that campaigns used binders all the time for their homebrew lore and stuff, but I thought it didn't work well in execution, a lot of the pages tore at the hole like day one for me). Anycase AD&D I think had sturdier production values to 2nd edition. I've yet to recover my AD&D books from a basement on the other side of the country, I'm curious how they've held up.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
2nd edition had a whole series of "complete X handbook" softcovers.
There's a lot more to production value than hardcover vs softcover and general sturdiness though. TSR's layout, editing and general style were pretty poor for a good number of products (not to mention the actual rules themselves, but let's not dwell on that) and while I absolutely adore a lot of the art from that period I think overall the art direction and quality of later editions is better. And all of that costs money. Professionalism doesn't come free, and neither do skill, expertise and simply pouring in work hours. It certainly wasn't all bad in the TSR days (the Planescape boxed set is in my opinion still the best D&D product ever), but WotC definitely stepped it up - because they had to, as D&D was moribund in the late '90s.
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I found 3.5 edition to be all over the board in that regard: stuff like the PHB and MM were very good. Others, especially late in 3.5's run, were not- I had a few books that had the binding coming apart within less than 24 hours. And 4th Edition was kind of infamous for the ink smearing in at least the first run of the core books.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
To be fair... I only have 2 original 3.5e books and I have 8 for 5e, 2 or 3 of which look like they're liable to separate at the binding and lose some pages if I'm not careful. So I have very different sample sizes. It's possible that if I had bought 6 more 3.5e books, a couple of them would have also had binding issues. It happens, in publishing. There's a reason why several companies, if you contact them and tell them their binding fell apart, just send you a new book, often with no questions asked, and little if any proof required. Publishers know this happens sometimes. It's just a fact of the binding process.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.