The link you posted had all three books for about $60. 2/3 * $60 is $40. Sorry for the confusion. =)
Good luck with the spouse persuasion!
Oh, all three books together were that much. Sorry for the confusion on MY end.
Fred, it's true that the big publishers would face additional obstacles in lowering their prices, and that small publishers do face a cyclical up/down that they simply can't handle as well as the big guys. And yes, WotC is sort of the gold standard for potential employees in many ways. I also agree that 4e is a fine product considering its intent and its targeted audience (I've never given them less than their due for accomplishing precisely what they set out to accomplish). And finally, I don't have any conclusive answers regarding the difference in feel between that standard and what's put out by indie/small publishers (other than to say that my general impression is that the indie/small productions just feel more... loved, for lack of a better term, the same way original D&D seems painfully obviously a labor of love [I chose poorly when I said "craftsmanship"; it's like deciding between store-bought and handmade jewelry as a gift for one's wife]), other than reiterating that my original point about the whole price-point issue was intended to support the somewhat higher price of indie/small products.
*shrug* I wish it were simpler and that my feelings towards WotC were less disappointed. I don't know the industry backwards and forward; heck, I hardly know it forward. All I do know is what I, as a purely small-time player of a few RPGs, have encountered over the past three decades and how the trends of those three decades have appeared to me (with strong emphasis on "appeared"). It's probably a selfish viewpoint, focusing on how much bang for the buck I get as a consumer alone; I admit it. But there it is, all the same.
... heh. I just realized a rough parallel in everyday life. Our grocery store offers a few self-checkout lanes, where you scan the items yourself without a checkout person doing it and without a bagger. My wife argues that she's not doing all the work herself if she's not getting a discount, whereas I point out that the lines are always shorter and faster at the self-checkouts, so you get "paid" for your effort by cutting your wait time significantly. We're looking at different things. Unfortunately, she has an irrefutable response: that store DID cut down on staff when they installed the self-checkout system. Not much, to be sure, but self-checkout meant that some part-time checkers were no longer employed there. From the point of view of the informed consumer, it's a tough decision: double your time in the store to support the checkers or not? All things being roughly equal, I choose yes. But when the weather's horrible, I'm tired from a long, difficult day at work and I don't have much time to get all the stuff home before having to hurry back out again to pick my wife up at her train, and I see lines 5-6 people deep at the regular checkouts but one self-checkout that's empty, I make that choice in the other direction. It's crass, self-serving and not at all socially conscious, and I do feel a bit of remorse for deciding that way. But sometimes people simply can't
afford to make the "right" choice; the
workable choice is the one that presents itself when times are tougher. And when that decision coincides with getting a product or service that better matches one's personal preferences... it's hard not to see the other choice as a bad idea all around; when times are better, on the other hand, people tend to get what they LIKE, even if the price is higher.
*shrug* All I know is this: looking at the bits I've seen of DFRPG and comparing it to D&D 4e, it seems obvious to me (YMMV, naturally) that DFRPG is a labor of love, which is something I can't see with 4e. Oh, I bought the 4e PHB because I couldn't help it
; I'm such a fan of D&D that I'm naturally inclined to give any shortcomings a free pass. But it doesn't
feel to me that it had the same kind of loving craftsmanship that something like DFRPG so obviously had, and that kind of thing is a strong motivator in deciding what I think is worth spending hard-earned money for. The intangibles motivate far more strongly than do points of logic, no matter how much I evidently rationalize it after the fact
.
When it comes down to it, I trust indie/small companies more than big companies as a general rule. Silly and wrong-headed, I know (a small company is certainly not exempt from human jackassery, not by a long shot, and a big company is not automatically Big Ebul Corporate Devil, either). But there it is.
