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

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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.