http://www.catalystgamelabs.com/2014/06/18...y-street-dates/

And the Intro Boxed Set is still nowhere in site...oi.

[Insert obligatory acidic "no errata, no buy" comment here]

Must....resist....buying.....LE cover......shiiiiinyyyy


one thing... no mention of added codes to unlock perk items for the online game ?

This is not going to be a thing then?

Oh, hey, they finally got around to printing.

Wonder if they bothered to fix any of the issues that were identified in the .pdf releases.

My money is on Not Fixed.

My money is ... actually elsewhere.

GW sells shiny plastic crack these days.

Haven't they always?

Plus ça change plus c'est la même chose

50 (US-) bucks for the weapon book? Am I imagining things, or did 35 $ use to be the MSRP for the (physical) core expansions?

I thought it wasn't even the gun book really. Certainly not in the vein of SSC, FoF, CC, or Arsenal.

For better or worse the trend in printed RPGs (especially for bigger titles) is toward higher production value, hard covers, glossy pages, color spreads, etc. That, along with an increasingly niche market in some cases, is causing price creep. Our hobby is getting more expensive.

How that factors into what you are willing to pay for this or any other SR book, I will leave up to you.

At least the hardcovers are more resilient than older RPG splatbooks. Unless they screw up the binding. Poor binding will ruin any book.

I can see price creep, but we're looking at damn near a 50% price hike since 4th edition. I'm wondering where the Guatemalan hooker is going to fit in the slip cover, because that's what I expect with a poorly edited splat book for $50...

Feels like it's been forever since I've linked this one

Printing also got a whole lot more automated during the last 20 years, which dropped the cost for color printing and other extras considerably.

The flipside to increased cost (and quality one hopes) are digital editions often sold for a fraction of the cost of print editions. This can also be more convenient for carrying tons of books to games than packing up everything and lugging it to game night.

yes, but a couple years ago the shadowrun PDFs were the same price as they are now, while the physical books were like 2/3 the price they are now.

cheaper PDFs is not a new thing. it's been around for quite a while. it doesn't explain in the slightest why the new books are suddenly 50% more expensive.

I don't buy the "better production" reasoning. I used to run a press, and the difference in coated versus non coated is very small. Hardcovers, even good ones, are cardboard wrapped in paper. The most expensive part to print is the cover itself (they're run on better machines that run much slower). Added up, it doesn't justify, to me, a $50-$75 price tag. I'm not even certain the $50 book is even hardcover. I love me some books, and am willing to pay for them, but I don't see the value in these books. I might change my mind if I see one for real, but I doubt it.

Yeah, while hardcover does last a lot longer, I certainly wouldn't mind if they offered up the option to print softcover books.

By the way, Pegasus priced the core book at 19.95 €. Certainly a price calculated to aggressively bait future expansion buyers, and probably also a consequence of local regulations (you cannot sell a PDF cheaper than the physical book), but it shows that "increased print cost" does not really float. The volumes are getting smaller and the production value goes up, but obtaining such fancy printing at medium volumes has also become far cheaper. Back in 1989, people considered it a miracle that digital files could be printed directly to film (which would then be used to expose the actual printing plates)...

Hell, it's not like they're paying for better art, like they did in the SR5 core. A bunch of Run & Gun's stuff was found to be Wikipedia pictures with a bit of photoshop, wasn't it?

I thought that was Gun H(e)aven 3?

Yep, or at least in R&G it's not so terribly obvious. Though I still loathe the fork gauss rifle.

Gee from the title I thought it was campaign settings a guy could take me.

Sign me up for the "I don't get it" category. I was under the impression that printing costs have gone down in recent years, or at least stayed flat. And since I recall that they don't even use a US-based printing company, prices should be even lower.

I suspect the price point is based on other factors. Other gaming companies are putting out core books for $40-50; Pinnacle has their Deluxe book going for $30, and the Explorer's Edition sells for $10. It's entirely possible that this is a sign CGL is abandoning print books; I haven't bought a print Shadowrun product since 4e came out, so if this is a trend, maybe they're treating hard copies as a niche product.

Domestic print costs over the last 4 or so years are so are pretty stable. Shipping costs are going up.

$50 for a 216 page full-color RPG book is pretty normal these days.

You can't compare a core book price to a supplement and come to any sort of reasonable conclusion. Core books are underpriced compared to their size and utility.

And distribution accounts for how much of the total, 15% if I'm generous?


...which is probably the main reason: It's the price people expect, and also a price which in turn raises expectations for the product (it's more expensive, therefore it must be more valuable)

Are you sure about that?

I went to the Pinnacle website to do some price comparison. The Deadlands setting supplement, which is full-color and hardcover, retails for approximately $40. It weighs in at 260 pages, all in color with art. (R&G, in comparison, is mostly text with a few color accents. Every page of Deadlands is colored to look like weathered paper.) The most expensive product I could find was the Deadlands plot point campaign, The Last Sons. It costs $50 for a hardcopy, but has over 300 pages.

Okay, but Pinnacle is known for low price points. So, let's look at another company: Paizo. I went on Amazon to look up the cover price on their supplements. All the Advanced books, except one, cost $40 and have 256 pages. The one exception was the Ultimate Equipment Guide, which costs $45, but has about 400 pages.

I actually had to do a fair amount of digging to find a supplement that cost $50 and no more than 200 pages. I did find some, though. The 3.5 reprints, Premium Edition, are being offered on WotC's site for $50. Technically, however, they're classified as core rulebooks; and the 4e stuff is all about $40. So, I'm inclined to say it's something of a fluke.

The point of all this is, $50 for a supplement isn't normal. $40 is more like it, and that's for books with a higher page count. I'm headed to my FLGS soon, so I'll look on the shelves and see what the retail price is on a few other products; however, I'll wager that most of them are $40 or less for comparable books.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. 15% of a typical RPG company's sales in terms of units, or what?

Yup. $40 was the norm a few years ago, but $50 is the new norm. Just like $50 was the core book norm for about five years, and now it's $60.

You can run around cherry-picking numbers all you like.

I don't appreciate the cherry-picking accusation, especially since you're not actually providing any counter-examples.

But hey, I'm here at my FLGS, why not shoot down your argument conclusively? There are literally hundreds of books here, but to be fair to you, I'll only price books that are hard cover, full color, recent, new, and over 200 pages. I'm also ignoring modules; supplements and core books only.

13th Age core book, $45.
A Song Of Ice and Fire core book, $50.
ASOIF campaign guide, $50.
Arcanis core book, $50.
Anima core book $60.
Anima Exxet: Secrets of the Supernatural, $40.
Anima exxet: The Supernatural Artifacts, $40.
Anima Gaia, $60
Anima, Dominus Exxet, $40.
Atlantis the 2nd Age core book, $50.
Ashen Stars core book, $45
Amethyst Foundations, $35.
Alpha Omega core book, $35
Airship Pirates core book, $50
Barbarians of the Aftermath, $45.
Broken Rooms core book, $50.
Bulldogs! $40.
Ports of Call, $20.
Corporation, $40.
Castles and Crusades Player's Handbook, $30:
Castles and Crusades The Book of Familiars, $30.
Conspiracy X (they have 3 sourcebooks in stock, all $35.)
Call of Cthulu, Shadows over Scotland, $40.
Eternal Lies core book, $50.
Cthulu Tech core book $50.
Asst. Cthulu Tech supplements, all $40.
Clockwork Chivalry 2e, $50.
Dr. Who Limited Edition Rulebook, $50.


Next is the D&D section, which is too massive to list. However, I cannot find a 4e book on the shelves that goes for over $40, be it core book or supplement.

DC Adventures, Heroes Handbook, $40.
Dr Who, various sourcebooks, $35-40.
Dresden Files, various sourcebooks, $40-50
Shadows of Esteren- Travels, $40.
Transhuman, $50
Eclipse Phase core book, $50
Various Eclipse Phase supplements, $45.
Elric of Melinbone, $40.
Ragnarok, $65.
Glorantha, core rulebook and various supplements, $40.
Ghosts of Albion, $40.
Hero System, various supplements, $35-50.

My phone is about to die, so I'll stop there. Looking at the numbers, of the 18 core rulebooks, only two cost $60 or more. Supplements tend to be between $30-40. So, the Shadowrun price points are definitely on the high side.

Next time you want to accuse me of cherry picking, check your numbers first.

An impressive list of books that mostly weren't published in 2014 and that ignores several important publishers and games.

There are hundreds of books here. I'm not about to price the entire store's inventory.

Besides which, I was very specific about the books I used for comparison. Some important games, like GURPS, were left out because they didn't meet the criteria you laid out-- GURPS doesn't put out full color books, for example, If you don't like it, why don't you try an equally-impressive list of counter examples? For example, we could use the latest edition of D&D. Despite the rise of Pathfinder, D&D remains the centerpiece of the industry, so its price point will set the example for just about every other RPG book coming out.

So, if you look on Amazon again, you's see that the cover price is $50 for the core books, and $30 for supplements. Sorry, but $60 is still high.

The total price of a book, which is what we were talking about

Even if we assume that 10 $ of the store price for every copy of Arsenal (or if you want full color, the 4A BBB) sold went into shipping&handling, and those costs have now increased by 50%, we'd still be a _few_ dollars short of the new prices.

Wow this is ridiculous. A physical book carries production costs, an extra copy of a pdf costs exactly nothing to produce.


I am sorry, is that a hypothetical attempt at cherry-picking, except without finding the actual supporting sample?

Oh! You say "distribution" and mean "shipping and handling" whereas to me distribution means "the companies that handle selling stuff to game stores."

Remember that most game books are still sold through distribution (my version of the word), and publishers only get a portion of the cover price. Games go Publisher -> Distributor -> Retailer -> Customer.

So for a $50 book, the publisher will see roughly $17 (this will vary based on a handful of factors). So a shipping increase of even $0.10 per book can bite into their take. And then the distributors end up paying that $0.10 to ship the book as well (And maybe after a few years of shipping increases they have to pass some of that cost onto publishers and/or stores), and the stores have to foot the bill as well (unless they're getting free shipping, which they often do ... which just means that the distributor is paying for it.)

Bear in mind that's covering only books that go through the system. Ones that the publisher sells directly (although those are usually fulfilled by the same distributor) incur other costs and different levels of profit, which are a lot more variable, but usually account for a much smaller percentage of sales overall.

That would be "the wholesaler" to me, apologies if that strikes some sense of correct terminology


My point is: Author royalties, editing (tehehehe...), layout, printing, shipping, and other links in the chain each receive only a tiny percentage of the price. So if one of those links doubles their price, the effect on the total price (even assuming it gets fully passed on) is still "meh". Or conversely, paying $15 extra in retail can't be explained by higher printing, shipping, or another "supply" cost alone, since each of them contributes maybe 10% to what I'm paying at the store.

At least that would be the figures here in Germany...our system of fixed prices obviously is different from elsewhere. I can't imagine your printers or haulers make more, but feel free to correct my imagination



Speaking of the Buchpreisbindungsgesetz (awfully short name for a law):

You're telling me...the idea of "one book edition, one price, for the corner store and Amazon" has its merits, but extending it to digital formats...

"One book edition, one price, one Nation, one State", was it how it went?

Shadowrun writers don't get royalties. They're freelancers, they get a fixed payment.

IMO, CGL doesn't work with its Shadowrun talent the way they should. There's a curious amount of neglect that happens.

By the way, Adam, I looked up a few more important core books.

The Mutants and Masterminds core book has a cover price of $40. It's full color and over 300 pages, and it came out within the last year.

On the Paizo site, they list the Pathfinder core rulebook for $50. It's almost 600 pages. You might want to argue that it came out a while ago; however, this is for a new book, meaning it's the most recent printing, as of 2013. You can't get away with trying to say that it's an old price.

Margaret Weis Productions is listing the new Firefly core book at $50. It's over 300 pages, and it's new this year.

So, I've listed dozens of examples, and I can't find more than three games with core books of $60 and above, and I'm having a hard time finding a lot of full-color, hardcover supplements for more than $40. Do you have any specific examples you'd like to offer?

You're right; based on one of those factors alone changing, the price of a book likely wouldn't change. It's more likely that that lessened profit will be absorbed for a few books, and then the price will be raised on a future book. This is partially because constant small prices raises -- 44.99, 45.99, 46.99 -- are viewed as finicky for both the customer and retailer.

The price for the SR4-era core supplements was set in 2006/2007. That's eight years of raised costs to accommodate; inflation alone counts for over $5 by itself. Then add in color printing, color artwork, raised shipping costs, etc. and it's really easy to see how the cover price raises $15 (which the publisher only sees about a third of.)

I'm not debating the quality of the new books, because I have absolutely no idea what that quality is. They, individually, may well not be worth $50. But it's no surprise that that's the price; RPGs are a small press boutique item.

I think the outcry about the price is actually a little surprising; when we announced we were raising the price of Transhuman from 44.99 to 49.99 last year, not a single person -- fan or retailer -- complained. And with SR5 priced at $60, it was obvious what the core supplements would be priced at.

It's somewhat bewildering that Pegasus publishes books at half the cost of the American books (core at €19,95 ($27.12), core expansions set at the same price). The books aren't even printed in some low-wage country, but a German printing company (360 Grad Mediendesign). I suppose they just print larger volume and hope to gain more as they sell.

I suppose the outcry has more to do with the previous instances of outcry, haha: "Sixty bux for this piece of sloppy drek?!" Transhuman is a book put together much better than the recent SR releases.


Strange, it'd make sense to expect a book to be printed in a language that billions speak in larger volumes than in a language that a hundred million people speak.

I suspect it's a result of business decisions. As I demonstrated uptrend, many (most?) gaming companies can put out comparable products at roughly 20% cheaper. In some cases, even much cheaper than that; Pinnacle has core rulebooks available for half the price of SR5.

It's not that the price has gone up in relation to SR4.5 books. It's that the prices are $10-$20higher than comparable products on the market.

A few years ago, I would have balked at paying $50 for a full color hardcover core book. Now,i accept it as the standard price. CGL's price point is higher than that, though. Their Shadorun products are definitely priced than comparable games out there.

Am I the only one who, after reading the topic name, at first wondered what the book Street Dates might contain?

Sooo... a dating app for Shadowrunners?

All the stripper elf lesbian ninjas swipe left.

And to add to Cain's list...

The only other. notable TRPG core rulebook that goes for $60 at retail, is Fantasy Flight Games' Star Wars RPG: both Edge of the Empire and the just-released Age of Rebellion. Keep on mind that, for whatever reason, FFG doesn't have any official digital version of their Star Wars releases, outside of some free stuff and their errata. The Edge book has a page count comparable to the SR5 core book, and yet when I flipped through it, was at a higher production values then the SR5 book.

Isn't a pile of money being paid to an outside company just for Shadowrun to be published? Do other RPGs have that disadvantage?