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Or... maybe... "Fantassyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy~!" *shakes fist*
Either, way, Deekin thinking...
Easy come... Easy go...
... whichever way the wind blow...
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Only if they were originally priced that way. When I used to be able to get Kindle books for cheaper than paperbacks, and then suddenly someone decided to start charging more - That's really the part that induces anger.If each paperback you bought came with the option of spending an extra $5 to acquire enough extradimensional space to carry them all with the same amount of weight/space usage as a single book, would you pay for that?
Okay, yeah, that's different. I'll share your displeasure on that one.
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RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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A large part of the price of buying a book is because of printing costs. With e-books, they don't have that whatsoever. It quite literally costs them mere cents (if that) to make another copy of the e-book. Yet they charge you MORE than for a physical book. That is simply indecent.
Yes, once you already have your template/original all laid out and ready, producing an additional copy is more expensive in paper than electronic. However, is it possible that reaching that point in the first place is costs more time/money for an e-book than for paper books?
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Why would it? If we aren't talking about audio books, the difference between a paper book template and an e-book is the amount of copy protection and other DRM crap they put into the e-book, isn't it? That doesn't exactly add consumer value...
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Why would it? If we aren't talking about audio books, the difference between a paper book template and an e-book is the amount of copy protection and other DRM crap they put into the e-book, isn't it? That doesn't exactly add consumer value...
There is additional formatting/layout cost, because the needs for ebooks are different than what you already have done for a print version.
But basically, yeah, ebook production doesn't have to pay for the printing, shipping, or warehousing, so they should be cheaper. And in fact, lots of ebooks are cheaper, but those are typically self-published, indie, and small press books.
The big publishers jack up the prices on ebooks because they don't want people to buy them. They're frantically trying to prop up old-fashioned brick-and-mortar stores, because that's where they reigned supreme as gatekeepers. If they have to compete in an ebook market alongside indie and small presses who don't have the same corporate overhead, they can't stay competitive.
Brilliant customer value, innit?
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Okay, yeah, that's different. I'll share your displeasure on that one.
And ye, let the heralds document, on this thirteenth day of April, in the year two-thousand and sixteen, Jiggy agreed with Tormsskull on something.
Let us hope this is a sign of things to come :P
But basically, yeah, ebook production doesn't have to pay for the printing, shipping, or warehousing, so they should be cheaper. And in fact, lots of ebooks are cheaper, but those are typically self-published, indie, and small press books.
Yeah - that's what has actually encouraged me to buy books of authors I have never heard of. So I guess the optimistic way of looking at it is that unknown authors might get more opportunities due to this shake-down pricing policy.
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A large part of the price of buying a book is because of printing costs. With e-books, they don't have that whatsoever. It quite literally costs them mere cents (if that) to make another copy of the e-book. Yet they charge you MORE than for a physical book. That is simply indecent.Yes, once you already have your template/original all laid out and ready, producing an additional copy is more expensive in paper than electronic. However, is it possible that reaching that point in the first place is costs more time/money for an e-book than for paper books?
not really, any book published within the last 20 years probably started out as an electronic manuscript, which is easy enough to convert. the whole process only needs to be set up once, after that you may tweak it every couple of months but those will be relatively minor amounts of work.
there is an open source (aka free) library manager that i use called calibre library that will convert any text format to any other text format for freeeee and basically instantaneously.
when i think of how much profit amazon or similar e-book publishers make on each e-book it is absolutely mind boggling. with the profit percentage on every e-book getting up as stratosphericly high as they do its amazing to me that they have shown even this much restraint honestly. its free money, plain and simple
an average computer in the US uses about 250 watts of power in an hour (obviously amazon is not using an average computer for their server, so the real number could be lower or higher)
1 kilowatt hour (4 real hours of average computer use) costs an average of 12 cents in the US, meaning an average computer's average hour of use costs around 3 cents to power
lets say it takes around 5 seconds to make a copy of any given text file (probably on the slow side for most book sized files, but i could easily be wrong)
5 seconds is .138% of an hour, so it costs roughly .414 cents to make a copy (in power costs)
so, the cost of making an electronic copy of a book is roughly .0828% of that extra 5 dollars they are charging. this is only talking about the actual cost of physically making a copy, does not include royalties or licensing or whatever else happens per copy
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Exactly. And if the five dollars correspond to a cost, that is only for DRMing it. Simply put: It is the entire difference. It may be that it is only greed and doesn't correspond to a cost, of course.
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Presumably there's computing infrastructure costs in hosting and distribution of electronic product which isn't there for books?
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I hate when players call out to the healer how much health they have lost. There isn't a freaking health bar bouncing over your character!
I hate it when players go 'Oh, I'm fine'
Then take a massive hit. One shifts gears to give them healing because that damage just looked hideously bad.
'Oh, I'm fine, just attack'
Then take a pinprick for a point or two of damage...
'Down, bleeding out'.
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I recently had a situation somewhat similar to that with my (late) fighter. The only difference was I was actually fine. The Oracle asked me if I was doing okay on health and I told her to keep buffing us. A stray crit from an Adult Blue Dragon killed me and I had no Hero Points to save myself. I'm sure it looked like a bad decision on my part from the outside however.
Edit: Hilariously after I died, it was the sentient Rod of Wonder that we stole from the Dragon Horde who saved the day by dispelling a force wall that the Blue Dragon was using to keep a Silver Dragon trapped. Willy the Wonder is the true MVP.
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Presumably there's computing infrastructure costs in hosting and distribution of electronic product which isn't there for books?
Undoubtedly, but i think the profit margin still out scales those costs pretty quickly or they wouldn't be releasing new kindle products every year. When you pair the evidence of new kindle hardware with the continued free-ness of the smartphone app that does all the same things (as far as the books go anyway) it seems like a large portion of the profit has to be coming from the ebooks themselves to support it all.
I'd love to back it up with a figure for number of kindle ebooks sold in 2015 but my google fu has failed me
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I hate when players call out to the healer how much health they have lost. There isn't a freaking health bar bouncing over your character!
I know this is Air your Grievances, and I'm not trying to invalidate your grievance, but I'm curious as to what your preferred method is?
Is role-playing the pain and having your character demand/request/plead/beg (as appropriate for the character's personality) for healing what you're after?
I'm DMing a 5e roll20 campaign and use the red health bars above icons as a means of providing a visual indicator to others as to the health of a character. Seems reasonable to me that a character in the game world would be able to tell that another character has suffered wounds (but not the exact # of hp.)
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How much is a life worth? 25k gp in diamond dust.
Presumably there's computing infrastructure costs in hosting and distribution of electronic product which isn't there for books?Undoubtedly, but i think the profit margin still out scales those costs pretty quickly or they wouldn't be releasing new kindle products every year. When you pair the evidence of new kindle hardware with the continued free-ness of the smartphone app that does all the same things (as far as the books go anyway) it seems like a large portion of the profit has to be coming from the ebooks themselves to support it all.
I'd love to back it up with a figure for number of kindle ebooks sold in 2015 but my google fu has failed me
Yeah, I'm sure it's very profitable. I just figure it's probably not true that Electronic Books are "just like books but without printing costs". Businesses are always more complicated than they appear from the outside, in my experience.
I don't really disagree with the point, I was just hoping someone in the industry would tell me something I don't know. :)
Executive costs. That's where the money goes. That's where the money always goes. One of those thieves is running for president.
You need a greater restoration too or the adventure path is ruined.
Maybe if the player has a half were wolf, half vampire lined up.
When in doubt, I choose to believe it's simple corporate greed.
I'm usually not wrong.
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This wasn't so much in game as during a game. There's Dollar General next to our game store. There's also, as I have lamented on other threads, many a stinky player in it.
Player in group gets tired of the funk. Runs next door, grabs deodorant, slams it on the table of stinky players, says "Put it on, or I'm putting it on you."
Sadly, this never happened. He threatened to do it, but in the end realized there were too many tables and the funk was more deep seeded than deodorant alone would cover. You can't cover a week or more of not bathing with a stick of deodorant. We just switched locations.
The new location is closer to my house, but I liked the old one better. It had more space and better prices.
Stupid lazy funk ridden bastards. Showering takes five minutes. Infecting the air of those around them with their laziness....*grumble, grumble*
I air the grievance of how I grieve for the air.
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Unless you cast Status.
Or deathwatch
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I miss dungeon crawls. There I said it. I primarily GM and love running dungeon crawls when the plot calls for it. Even as a player I like them.
My players hate them with a passion. They would rather have an open sandbox. That's fine, I like those too, but what if we sprinkle in a few dungeons to explore? No way say my players, we will ragequit or be hostile no-fun doo doo heads about it.
It cannot be my presentation of dungeon crawls because the times when one of the others GM (God forbid they have to GM) there is not a dungeon to be found.
Oh and while we are at it, why can't one of you others GM for a while? I have been GMing for going on six years straight. When one of you GM something it last 3 or 4 sessions. How is it I can run a campaign for over a year and you guys can't last a month?
*shouts at the heavens, shakes fist*
Whew. Thanks.
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I feel your pain, M.D. I love playing dungeon crawls. That's how I started out and would love to play in one again. My players aren't fond of them, however. I've also been the primary DM/GM for 30 years now, and get to be a player maybe 4 times a year, though that has picked up a *little* this year.
So shake your fist and rail at the heavens. I'm right there with you in solidarity.
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I feel your pain, M.D. I love playing dungeon crawls. That's how I started out and would love to play in one again. My players aren't fond of them, however. I've also been the primary DM/GM for 30 years now, and get to be a player maybe 4 times a year, though that has picked up a *little* this year.
I would be interested in seeing a dungeon crawl (assuming it made plot sense), with the right group. I've been having a lot of fun with a shadowrun group that is organised, logical and very disciplined. I would want to run in a dungeon crawl with such serious operators. I would not want to play a dungeon crawl with a bunch of murderhoboes (and the groups I have played with were just messes).
Actually, I do have some ideas for an entire dungeon-crawl campaign... but I would rather play than run that to be honest.
Thinking about dungeon crawls, there's an interesting manga series that is uniquely about that called Dungeon Meshi, in case anybody is interested.
If the seventh level party gets energy sucked back to forth level, you can either give up the adventure path, or have some good old dungeon crawls. :)
Yeah, that aren't enough complicated unique dungeon crawls with a focus on survival that really emulate roguelikes. For example, I would love to play something similar to Goblins Maze of the Many in difficulty and creativity.
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I miss dungeon crawls. There I said it. I primarily GM and love running dungeon crawls when the plot calls for it. Even as a player I like them.
My players hate them with a passion. They would rather have an open sandbox. That's fine, I like those too, but what if we sprinkle in a few dungeons to explore? No way say my players, we will ragequit or be hostile no-fun doo doo heads about it.
It cannot be my presentation of dungeon crawls because the times when one of the others GM (God forbid they have to GM) there is not a dungeon to be found.
Oh and while we are at it, why can't one of you others GM for a while? I have been GMing for going on six years straight. When one of you GM something it last 3 or 4 sessions. How is it I can run a campaign for over a year and you guys can't last a month?
*shouts at the heavens, shakes fist*
Whew. Thanks.
My group and I love dungeon crawls. We also love sandboxy wilderness exploration as well. The only type of play I don't like are political intrigue and urban campaigns. I work in government so just the mention of politics in an rpg makes me projectile vomit.
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This wasn't so much in game as during a game. There's Dollar General next to our game store. There's also, as I have lamented on other threads, many a stinky player in it.
Player in group gets tired of the funk. Runs next door, grabs deodorant, slams it on the table of stinky players, says "Put it on, or I'm putting it on you."
Sadly, this never happened. He threatened to do it, but in the end realized there were too many tables and the funk was more deep seeded than deodorant alone would cover. You can't cover a week or more of not bathing with a stick of deodorant. We just switched locations.
The new location is closer to my house, but I liked the old one better. It had more space and better prices.
Stupid lazy funk ridden bastards. Showering takes five minutes. Infecting the air of those around them with their laziness....*grumble, grumble*
I air the grievance of how I grieve for the air.
This makes me so happy that I play with my friends in their homes.
The big publishers jack up the prices on ebooks because they don't want people to buy them. They're frantically trying to prop up old-fashioned brick-and-mortar stores, because that's where they reigned supreme as gatekeepers.
Nope. They dont "jack up prices" for one. Here's what happens- price wars. People shop around a LOT for the lowest price on a paperback. But not on a e-book. So, the price on both editions often start the same, but then various wholesalers and retailers begin dropping the price on the paperback to compete.
Here's what happened.
There used to be bookstores.
Discount book warehouses opened. Books online and in readers appeared.
Almost all the bookstores closed. The last chain B.Dalton had to close most of it's stores.
Uncanny opened gamestores in almost every mall. Now I can buy Pathfinder rulebooks.
Draw your own conclusions.
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I used to want to go to game shops to "support the industry" and keep the little guy in business, but the little guy doesn't really exist anymore.
They're mostly chain stores, and the few "little guy" shops I've seen are run by people who ignore the customer and just play their own tabletop games until you get fed up and walk out the door - I do NOT lament the four stores I've seen close in my town. Get off your fat ass, put your d20 down, and f$*@ing help the customer! Sorry - it's just almost every shop I've been in that ISN'T a chain, that's been the case.
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I have to say the two FLGS' I frequent are nothing like this. The owners and staff are right there for the customers as soon as they walk in the door. The other two that I know of but haven't visited have the same level of customer service from what I've been told by friends who patronize them. I guess we just got lucky in that department.
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I like our stores, one has more pathfinder, but the other is friendlier to kids, with a lot more space to roam. So we go there. :-)
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They're mostly chain stores, and the few "little guy" shops I've seen are run by people who ignore the customer and just play their own tabletop games until you get fed up and walk out the door - I do NOT lament the four stores I've seen close in my town. Get off your fat ass, put your d20 down, and f$$$ing help the customer! Sorry - it's just almost every shop I've been in that ISN'T a chain, that's been the case.
I wish I could disagree with the above but I can't. Between one of them getting new owners who will only take used Pathfinder/D&D products. To them also not updating their website. I get that the new owners want to push board games more and less rpgs. For love of god at least make sure new Pathfinder stuff is clearly shown on the new releases site of the website. The other one same problem with the staff. One of them was playing 40K with his buddies and was really loud. The DM politely told him to not speak so loudly and the guy became offended. So he made a big deal of telling his buddies that we were too loud over and over. Even his buddies after awhile you could see on their faces todl him to knock it off. As it stopped being funny.
Which did anger the DM and we went from holding our games at the store. To holding them at his place. As the DM said "if they are not interested in keeping my business I'm going elsewhere". Too many gaming stores are run like a hobby not a business. Bottom line as well it's getting hard to justify supporting game stores when it's cheaper online as well.
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I have to say the two FLGS' I frequent are nothing like this. The owners and staff are right there for the customers as soon as they walk in the door. The other two that I know of but haven't visited have the same level of customer service from what I've been told by friends who patronize them. I guess we just got lucky in that department.
Sadly I had a friend who ran a gaming shop this way - though replace tabletop game with "Minecraft." Ironically he was so lazy some days he'd let his roommate run it (1PM is just TOO early for some people I guess) and those were typically the only days anything was sold.
Was very sad to see it go as none of us, at the time, had a very good setup for hosting games.
There was one several years ago nearby where the guy who owned was just a rude bastard. I went in more than once and had to wait for him to stop farting around on AOL chat before he'd pay me or any of the other customers any attention. When "The Book of Vile Darkness" came out I went in to buy 2 copies (one for me and a friend). He didn't even look up from his chat and told me the boxes had just arrived and I could open them myself and look for the books on my own. I left and never went back.
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There was one several years ago nearby where the guy who owned was just a rude bastard. I went in more than once and had to wait for him to stop farting around on AOL chat before he'd pay me or any of the other customers any attention. When "The Book of Vile Darkness" came out I went in to buy 2 copies (one for me and a friend). He didn't even look up from his chat and told me the boxes had just arrived and I could open them myself and look for the books on my own. I left and never went back.
Obviously that was the unmentioned Circle 4.5 of Retail Hell...
You did well to escape with your consumer dollars and soul intact.
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Tired of home games that are just over glorified dungeon crawls. I've been beating on monsters since 1983, I want more political intrigue and character interaction, but most of the players in my home groups just want to go kill the next monster, and most of the GMs don't want to role play the opposite gender characters in a social situation.
Yes: I've run several of the games. Even when presented with various forms of social intrigue most of the party wants to just crash in and kill. I used to have a GM that was great and mixing up social and combat action, but he lives in Texas and I live in Ohio now. :(
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My grievance today: we don't have any Pathfinder sessions scheduled for the rest of this month. Our Mummy's Mask GM, who's also a player in our group's Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous campaigns, will be GMing PFS games at several conventions and just doesn't have time to run his own game or play in anyone else's. And if he doesn't come his wife doesn't come, and she's also a player in all those campaigns. So, no Pathfinder in May.
=(
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We had no games from early March until this past Saturday April 30th. I feel your pain.
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I'm in a rarely seen grievance-free state. Tired of not being able to find a group, a couple weeks ago I hit the internets at four or five different sites, recruited players, and founded my own group.
Third week coming up. It's been great! Everyone gets along well, and the only drama we had was from a player who couldn't make it twice in a row and will not be coming back.
You can do it, people. You can overcome.
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I feel like s~#~.
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/rant
I don't have a RPG campaign to play in.
I'm reffing Skull & Shackles, which is great... but I'm not playing.
Crimson Throne has been on hold for the best part of a year because we can't get the players together.
Mummy's Mask just crashed in a TPK and the other player doesn't like the Pathfinder ruleset anyway.
I'm not even going to speculatte on a couple of other RPG campaigns that haven't been officially declared dead, but are hitting the '2 years since last session' timer.
That leaves PFS, which is very hit and miss. It's difficult to enjoy playing an adventure when the other people at the table have already read/played/run it it and are blase about the plot as a result.
/rant off