[DL] Canada prices (Shane or John)

["travis lide" <sinisterdexter@mindspring.com>]

----- Original Message ----- >
> Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 13:51:19 -0400
> From: coburn@sympatico.ca
> Subject: Re: [DL] Canada prices (Shane or John)

Okay.. from my point of view, and I'm an annoying, opinionated American, so
bear with me here.. I also manage a game store, so I have retail prices
galore.. ;-)

Don't feel like I'm yelling at you here, but I think you're ranting yourself
into a corner..
Here are the US breakdowns on the items you mentioned..

> Firstly, I'll mention the new Wizards stuff.  D&D3 is cheaper of course,
but
> then they're selling the three rulebooks off at below market price.
> however, before that, most of the stuff they'd produced (plus the Marvel
> SAGA game, which I can speak of, and Alternity, which I have priced but
> never purchased) are perhaps 33% less expensive.

Alternity retails for $30. The Player's Guide retails for $25. I fail to see
how $5.00 more is 33% less??

(BTW - the D&D stuff is cheap now because they printed everything at once
apparently and printed a whole lot of it. As I understand, the price will
rise to be either $25 or $30 once this run sells out.)

> You can get a full-colour
> Alternity PH/'DMG' in hardcover for the price of Lost Angels, for example.

Lost Angels retails for $20.00. Again, PEG beats them by $10 straight up. If
your stores are charging more (and I know its more in Canada, but PEG
doesn't set those prices), try going to another store!

> White Wolf is, as far as I am concerned, the production value/price point
> leader in the industry.  Vampire Revised, a big ol' hardcover with
> (generally) far better art, indexing, layout and typography than anything
> PEG has produced goes for at least $10 less than a comparable PEG
hardcover.
> Their ~128 page softcovers are also a good $10 less each.

Vampire retails for $29.95. $4.95 more than either the Player's Guide or
Marshal's Guide. Their 128 page books retail at $19.95 to $21.95 - 5¢ less
to $1.95 more than any $20.00 book from PEG. Not a substantial savings or
expense.

> Chaosium is about the same price for older material, closer to PEG's
> price-point for newer stuff, but I have to hasten to add that their
quality
> level is so far above the rest of the industry that they're worth every
> penny.  Writing, editing, nifty stuff...  If the rest of the industry had
> half of Chaosium's quality standards you'd rarely if ever hear me
complain,
> esp. since in the last few years Chaosium has learned a few things about
> graphics in presentations.

I agree.
In all honesty, Chaosium produces some of the best products in the RPG
business. You're right - it's pricey, but almost without exception worth
every penny.

I don't think it's that PEG prices their books higher than any of these
companies. I think that because of the crappy exchange rate, and the freedom
distributors/retailers have outside of the US on US products, you end up
paying more for these products based on their ideas on what it should cost -
not PEGs.

Though I will admit that $15 for the Epitaph seems steep, even to a fanboy
like me. I know it's got 14-16 glossy full color pages, but I'd rather drop
the comic anyway. A good story just doesn't happen in 14 pages in a comic
book. I like the Epitaph, and will buy them as they come out (I'm one of the
few excited about the combined format), but it's the only product PEG
produces (aside from Boomtowns) that has given me buyer's remorse. I'd much
rather see new equipment/updates/fan submissions, etc.. in that space.

I'm not going into further detail, as this has been discussed and in a few
months it will be moot anyway... ;-)

Sinister Dexter
sinisterdexter@mindspring.com