Re: Charging for rules

From: madcentral@aol.com (MadCentral)

Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2000 00:00:00 +0000

>>I can see why folks would charge to print and mail a set of lengthy rules but
can anyone shed some light on today's practices?<<

The normal practice is that the email version of the rules is free, but a
printed hard copy costs money.  Makes perfectly good sense, if you think about
it.  Especially since printed hard copy may well be a very professional volume.
 For instance, our DungeonWorld game has downloadable free rules (as a PDF
file), a 'budget' rules which costs a fiver (formatted as an A5 booklet) and a
'Deluxe' rules which costs (�15.00) which is really very cool.  All three
versions have the same content, of course.

Some GMs feel that free email rules is unfair  to mail players, and so dont
publish their rules on the web at all, but this practice is pretty rare, I
think, since most people can get on the web these days for a brief period, even
if only from a Net Cafe.

Charging for hard copy rules, though, is quite normal, entirely fair and indeed
sensible.  Very few companies give away free rulebooks these days, except in
special offers and suchlike, because we all got sick of time-wasters costing us
a fortune in rulebooks because the word 'free' got them excited.

All of this is concerning commercial PBM and PBEM though.  I have no idea what
the free-guys do, and my comments should not be seen to refer to them.  I
expect most free games give away free rules, though.

Steve T.

References

Charging for rules
jonmmorris@aol.comnospam (JonMMorris)
Wed, 30 Aug 2000 03:29:37 +0000

Referenced By

Charging for rules
jonmmorris@aol.comnospam (JonMMorris)
Wed, 30 Aug 2000 03:29:37 +0000