Why do all our wargames rules have to cost the bomb?

[commodorerob 11076xp 3]

Honestly I think it actually depends on what you are looking for. I can point you in the direction of rule sets that don’t cost the earth. Look at the Osprey rules… ( Gas lands of Billion Suns) They are well made and cost between £10-£15 thats the equivalent of the chespo rulesets back in the day.. There’s also still lots if companies that produce rule sets that follow the traditional formats. However like all things inflation plays a part. If you look at the average hardback ruleset from my view it’s around £25-£30 for most of them, however I am happy to pay that as a rule set because it’s the price of printing etc and they are competing with an online content. My current favourite set of Rules is Mortem et Glorium, which I actually spent £50 on the compendium which included dice and tickets a bag and also Quick reference sheets. The rules in their own as re about £25 it’s a great set of rules and all the 600 plus army lists are available on line for free which in my view is the correct way to do it.

[torros 23820xp 2]

I can’t think of too many historical sets now that don’t have free army lists or their included in the rule book itself . Only 2 that come to mind are  Bolt Action and FoW now but there were more in the past

[limburger 21775xp 1]

I must admit that while I do like Stargrave … I miss the fluff.
The more things a rule set has to inspire me the better.

The only downside to lots of fluff is that you end up with fans who can’t think outside of the box (it says on page x that these units must be this colour and have that many buttons).

I’d argue that giving away armylists for ‘free’ devalues the work that goes into creating them.
Yes … it is nice for us as consumers/players, because we’re not spending more money.

[commodorerob 11076xp 1]

I have to say fluff for me is ok in a sci-fi/fantasy game which gives you an introduction to a new ” universe” to provide context. But in general I would rather less fluff in my rules…but equally I prefer historical to sci-fi or fantasy because the fluff is something I can actually get outside the rules.

[pagan8thParticipant 11218xp 0]

I have mixed feeling regarding ‘fluff text’.

Some games it’s good… Warmachine and Hordes fluff is interesting. Some of Age of Sigmar is good (Daughters of Khaine, Free Cities)…

but a lot of AoS is boring crap (the dwarves, stormcast, undead, orks).

40k is appalling. the entire universe is full of nazis, racists and xenophobic scum… it needs erasing and rebooting.

[admiralandy 1649xp 4]

My 2 cents:

1/ Why do all our wargames rules have to cost the bomb?

They don’t. You can get pdfs from Wargames Vault for just about any period, some even cheaper than the ye olde £6 you mentioned.

You don’t like PDFs fair enough, think cheap equals dodgy quality, either reading of a screen or printing yourself isn’t everyones cup of tea.

Well Wargame magazines, especially Miniatures Wargames have there own inhouse rules for games presented in an article. They can be restricted to a particular period or campaign, but I believe they’ve often used a Version of By Crom? That costs £6 or less unless over 1 or two issues and there’s some generally still some supplemenatary support on the website.

The Osprey Blue Books are comfortably under £15 and to take one of there more successful titles Lions Rampant, you had everything you needed in that one book. Same with most of the others like Ronin, and Honours of War.

You can still get some A5 rule sets of the sort you mention from Tumbling Dice for there air war. Although there quite short but there starter sets of rules and a handful of aircraft I think are a tenner or there about.

Going 1 better then that there are the Peter Dennis & Andy Callan Paper Army Rulebooks. You get not only the rules but the participatent armies for under £20.

 

2/ When it happened? Well the first instance I can think of would be the September 1987 40K Rogue Trader, and Fire and Fury a year or two later also being of the moving away from A5 stock cover and B&W illustrations. Also around the time you got A4 Glossy cover and B/W interior such as Frank Chadwicks Wargames and Star Wars Miniatures Battles by West End Games. Like 40K they had toes in the RPG world, so probably not toally unrelated to how they started to produce some wargames with others following and enhanced shiny production. Also probably not unrelated to late 80s early 90s computers were becoming more of a feature in the publishing world.

Also perhaps, those rule makers were from a time they used old Hardbacks of H G Wells, Grant and Donaldson and wanted to catch a more meaty feel in there hands rulebook.

 

But to be competitive with the other companies, glossy and coffee table book rulesets certainly dominate, but there are still small fish in the shallows. I think It depends what you want, and what you and your friends can settle on.

 

 

[limburger 21775xp 2]

yep … going digital is probably the only way to really save money (and storage space).
However a good quality hardcopy simply can’t compare to digital (the Blood&Plunder deluxe rulebooks were worth every penny)

@commodorerob I can understand historical games not needing as much fluff as fantasy/scifi, but at the very least I’d like to have the basics and a decent reference list of books the authors used to continue further down the rabbit hole of history should I want to. As a result the latest iteration of the Flames of war books have dissappointed me as they were 90% army list and barely had any good background info.

[collins 16359xp 3]

Has anybody stopped to think about the age (or rather, quantity of disposable income) that might be the driving factor of some opinions on this topic.

I certainly can remember a time where I would do my utmost not to buy a rulebook to play a game so that I could buy models instead. Same with Codexes too. I would sponge off my mates and do dodgy photocopying of relevant pages all the way up to hoping Santa Claus or the magical birthday fairy sorted me out… and even then the preference was still models.

Now, as I have reached an age where I have a fair portion of disposable income I wouldn’t bat an eyelid at throwing an absolute wad of cash at a boxed game or rulebook. I’m not so interested in having loads of models, I’d rather spend time building environments (terrain) so I can vary the visual spectacle more than the list, I’ve also decided I prefer a certain type of game and am happy to hunt around till I find it.

[osbad 4279xp 5]

I too would challenge the premise that somehow “all our wargames rules” cost a lot of money.  Leaving aside the issue that £30 may or may not be “the bomb” depending on personal opinion, the simple reality is that the market is massively diverse now.  There are high cost/high presentation value rules at one end, and low cost/low presentation at the other end. And of course, quite literally nothing ever published has ceased to exist.  Those typed monochrome A5 rulesets of the ’70s are just a click away …. if you want a copy.  And probably free.

However, the nature of the free market is such that no one is forcing anyone to buy anything.  The words “have to” implies a sense of force that simply isn’t there.  Wargames rules can and do cost anything from £nil to £100 or more.  And the second-hand market on eBay and the like makes that even more granular.

I think the premise is therefore false.  Clearly, all our rules do NOT have to cost the bomb.  They simply cost what people are prepared to pay.

In my view, the more correct premise judging by the interpretation in the OP is “why do many publishers choose to publish ‘expensive’ sets of rules rather than cheaper ones?”

The answer is simple – because they believe they are making a more attractive product that will have more impact – whether that be profit or just personal satisfaction.

This of course begs the question – why people may prefer to spend (say) £100 on a new copy of (say) the 40k core rules and a codex of 2, rather than downloading the One Page Rules equivalent for free?  And that is a matter of personal choice in a free world.  Part of that is the perception of value, part of that is peer pressure, part of it is that a lot of the value of a ruleset comes from inspiration via art, fluff etc, rather than simply imparting the methodology of play.

It doesn’t have to be that way, but this is a diverse hobby, and for an awful lot of people the actual gameplay is a minor element of the whole hobby experience.  For others of course it is the be-all and end-all.

For me, I am quite open to buying a ruleset for a game I will never likely play simply because it may be beautiful or acquire an obsolete set for a game no longer commonly played to satisfy my curiosity.  The number of rules I have bought simply because it is the cheapest and most efficient way of playing out a period or genre I am interested in I can probably count on the fingers of one hand, our of a collection spanning many dozens, if not hundreds of rulesets from 4 decades of gaming.  After all, if I’m unlikely to play the game (I have a queue, exacerbated by lockdown, of dozens of games I am ready to, and just waiting for the opportunity to get to the table) then factors like “eye candy” make a set something I might buy just out of interest, whereas a purely functional presentation may get passed over as having no appeal outside of that likelihood of getting played.

[ced1106Participant 6224xp 0]

> when, how, why did rules become bloated with non rules stuff

Osban and Admiral summed up my thoughts, but I’ll add that, about the time GW was adding fluff (1980’s for me), so was White Wolf in their RPG splatbooks. At least with RPG’s, many players weren’t playing the game, they were reading the books. Dunno if this was the case with wargaming (although many people paint wargame models without playing them).

Trees don’t grow on trees (: so, of course, if you want physical product, you have to pay for it. Otherwise, you can certainly find a dice-based wargame for free, such as the previously mentioned One-Page Rules (which, interesting, because it is free, has supporters who are willing to pay as Patreons), and Mantic’s Kings of War.

Of course, some companies also try to get you to buy their proprietary miniatures (eg. GW), and some have a card-based combat system (eg. FFG) that requires you to buy proprietary physical components (eg. cards and models sold together). I blame the boardgamers for the latter. 😛 Personally, I like PDF’s (and no fluff) so I can print out only the parts I want (eg. rules, army list for my army, and a scenario), although I never play and do nothing but paint the miniatures. 😛

[blinky465 17028xp 5]

Just something some of you aspiring rules writers might like to bear in mind: Viking Direct UK now do on-demand hardback printing at a really reasonable price. We just had ten A5 hardback books printed (it was a family project where we all read stories for the younger kids to read along to, like audio books) for the grand sum of £58.

That’s less than six quid a book for a glossy-covered, A5, 150 page book – just upload a PDF and a bitmap for a book jacket and six days later, they turn up in the post.

If anyone has a ruleset they’d like to see turned into “something real” (ahem, @warzan ‘s Scooby-Doo game) even a single copy can be had for less than twenty of your English pounds.

Fancy self-publishing your own ruleset and seeing how it fairs in the marketplace? At six quid for a professionally bound hardback book, the production costs aren’t extortionate (produced in the UK, not in China). But as an exercise it’d be pretty interesting: add in your art costs, marketing/advertising and promotion, distribution, 50% cut for the retailer etc. and see how much you get to bank at £25-£30 retail price a copy. Suddenly not so unreasonable…… 😉

https://viking-virtualprinthouse.co.uk

 

[jamescutts 6932xp 1]

Been following this topic and it is interesting to seeing the various responses. I’d sort of agree with the initial topic that the costs of rules at first glance do seem expensive. There are some cases of this out there where you see rules costing £40 or up, (I’m excluding special editions bound in reindeer bollocks as there a special case for collectors). Equally, there are some very good free rulesets available and as mentioned the Osprey blue book series are excellent value-wise at £10-15 (even if sometimes the rules are patchy).

I think as hinted context is important, personally, I don’t like the “you can buy X Big Mac’s for £30” as an argument, in those cases, you mostly know what you are getting and I also dismisses those that may not have as much disposable income to treat £30 trivially. That £30 on rules might get you something that lasts years of enjoyment or it might be something that is garbage and ends in the proverbial bin. Some people being in the hobby long enough for inflation to affect that £5 – £15 isn’t that bad, it’s mostly perception. Equally the depth of the game impacts the size of the books, and ultimately the cost.

Sadly I can’t comment on any of the books from The Ministry of Gentlemanly Warfare as I don’t own them, though I would like to check them out someday, maybe at one of these show things we used to have.

What I would say is if I was looking for a new ruleset in a genre I don’t have the price of £30 for a rulebook puts me off somewhat compared to other offerings. I recently picked up Dead Mans Hand from Great Escape Games, All the metal minis you need (literally you only need 7 a side) for two gangs, dice cards, a piece of terrain from 4Ground, and a rulebook, which is the same soft cover A4 version all for £40. Admittedly that rulebook is under 50 pages but the games no less fun for it. Similarly, I picked up the starter set for Victory at Sea for £32.

If your buying at that price makes a big impact, you don’t just need a book you need miniatures (in most cases) and you also need an active community to pay the game with.

In no way am I devaluing those books in that £30 range, but the market is competitive particularly from companies with miniatures to sell too. I also like to see rules authors justly compensated (but not take the piss) for their efforts. I wouldn’t class £30 in the context of an independent hardback rulebook with fluff as expensive, (would I prefer it at £20 direct, yes) but there are just potentially more attractive offerings for somebody casually shopping around for new rules/games.

There’s also tradeoffs when creating a rulebook, personally, I’d find one of those booklets all black and white and walls of text a bit boring even it was cheap unless the rule were good and demoed well. Equally, I think having a hardback isn’t that necessary and sometimes production values on these books can possibly be their own enemy and some rules authors can be a bit snobby about why their rules are costing so much because of X and Y etc. while its reasonable to justify costs lets not forget we should also keep the hobby accessiable to those without as much disposable income and sometimes rulesbook do just have extra stuff that increases the cost. As for fluff alongside rules I’m divided, sometimes it really draws me in, in other cases, you don’t need it, particularly historicals. As for PDF’s their a mixed bag, personally, I like a searchable digital copy (I hate PDFs that are just images, make the text text!), £10 I class as very reasonable and worth a punt, get to £20 and I then start questioning its value more, over that I’d probably avoid it. I wouldn’t normally say that digital goods shouldn’t be undervalued but i think in this hobby that so physically an actual book does have more practical value in most cases.

A good community and a well-supported game are also valuable as are playthroughs, reviews, etc., and reduce the risk of buying into an unknown.

Outside of the Ospreys, I’d class The Barons’ War Rulebook as an example of what I think is an attractive offering, A5, softbound, solid set of fun rules, great illustrations, clear depictions of the rules, a reasonable amount of fluff in terms of fancy images but not walls of text either. All for just £15 or £10 for the PDF.

In summary, I don’t think rules have to cost the bomb, you’ve possibly just seen the impact of inflation and cost of production. You’ve also got the choice of game systems from manufacturers which will tend to (mostly) be cheaper, blue book style compact rules, or larger hardbound books usually from independents. The cost varies depending on what you want and are looking for.

[jamescutts 6932xp 1]

A5 simple rulebook thats reasonably cheap (£8) summon @panzerkaput and mention Very British Civil War 😀

[osbad 4279xp 1]

That’s a really interesting link.  I’ve got access to cheap colour printing, but not binding, so there are a few books (mainly stuff that is older and OOP) that I have as PDF which I have printed off and spiral bound, but would love to have as “proper” printed book.  I shall investigate further.  Thanks for posting!

[torros 23820xp 0]

These guys are meant to be good

PDF printing

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