Re: Charging for rules

From: jonmmorris@aol.comnospam (John Morris)

Date: Sat, 02 Sep 2000 03:35:20 +0000

Mark Wardell wrote:

>Anyway, back to the subject at hand. Is it wrong to charge for rulebooks
(either printed or electronic)? Of course not! Even an electronic version
available for download costs something to produce
and supply. Just because it's on the internet doesn't mean it's free.  Someone
is paying the bill somewhere, and if that someone wants to cover their costs by
charging then more power to them. Of course by charging for rules you will turn
some potential players away, I know I
think twice before laying out money to look at the rules of a game I'm not
already sure I'm going to play. On the flip side some people I know look at
free rules the same way and wrongly assume that if you're
giving it away it must not be worth anything. Pick your poison.

Good point.

I run a closed-ended conquer-the-world type game.  Too many inactive players
can harm that type of game so I do all that I can to weed out the
marginally-interested players before they join.
I'd rather run one game full of interested players than many games half-filled
with dropouts.
I have found it helpful to post lots of free information (rules, sample
turnsheets, newsletters, game-in-progress information, prices, etc.) on the
website so prospective players can qualify themselves.

If I were running a role-playing game I might think differently.  There's much
less harm if someone pays for a bunch of turns they never use.

*** (AD) Gunboat Empires has moved from PBM to PBeM
     http://www.gunboatempires.com                      ***

References

Re: Charging for rules
Mark Wardell <PNMarkW2@aol.com>
Fri, 01 Sep 2000 06:48:10 +0000

Referenced By

Re: Charging for rules
Mark Wardell <PNMarkW2@aol.com>
Fri, 01 Sep 2000 06:48:10 +0000