Is TTRPGing an "Expensive Hobby"

[Thomas Shey]

Are TTRPGs more expensive than cooking/baking? (How do you price this? Solely on ingredients? On pans and mixers and pots? Do you factor in the oven/stove? The cost of renting/buying the house?)

I'd say the ingredients and the cooking implements. Most people aren't going to buy a custom stove just because they like to cook (though its not unknown). That said, you can dump some big money in those two components pretty fast. A single Hexclad pan goes for more than $120.

Are TTRPGs more expensive than pets? (Probably not. Pets plus food plus vet bills plus toys get expensive in a hurry).

Certainly not dogs and cats. And that's not assuming (as might well be with a serious hobby) that you get into show animals...

Are TTRPGs more expensive than outdoor activities? (Probably yes for hiking where the only costs are shoes, water, and maybe sticks. But probably not for anything else - skiing, boating, backpacking, camping, mountain biking - all of these will cost you a lot more).

Even hiking can have some serious ancillary costs if you live in a large city and want to get there.

Are TTRPGs more expensive than DIY Arts & Crafts? (Probably yes on an individual craft basis, but probably not if you're crafting weekly or biweekly).

The crafty people I know would laugh at this.

Are TTRPGs more expensive than Gardening and plants? (This one's a push depending on how much gardening you're doing and how expensive your plants are. If you get hardy perennials as a one-time expense and just keep them up, TTRPG is probably the more expensive bet. If you're re-planting your garden every season with flowers to match the holidays, it's gardening).

On the other hand, no one who's just doing the maintenance on perennials probably considers it their hobby.

So... I think the answer is "it depends on exactly what hobbies you substitute for TTPRGs... but TTRPGs are probably not really all that expensive a hobby." Of course there are some versions of hobbies that will obviously be cheaper than TTRPGs (Uno cards, jogging, reading), but most common hobbies look like they would be a push with TTRPGs (board games, baking, arts & crafts) if not wildly more expensive (especially travel and cars, but even playing poker with your buddies might be more financially stressful).

And like I said, seriously don't underestimate most crafts.

 

[Scribe]

I used to participate heavily (heavily!) in The Hobby, in which a single purchase could be so inconsequential to the total sum of the budget as to be a rounding error...yet would cover the cost of the main rules for a TTRPG.

No, its not an expensive hobby.

 

[The Sigil]

My two other hobbies are fast women and slow horses. I think I have a problem.

You, sir, owe me a new keyboard.

 

[overgeeked]

Are TTRPGs more expensive than video gaming? (Probably not. A $70 game is usually what, 50 hours of enjoyment... you're probably likely to get more than a dozen sessions out of a $70 TTRPG book; also you can share your PHB with your buddies and play collaboratively - with Call of Duty each of you has to shell out for his own copy).

Hang on. You're making some bad assumptions here.

We've already assumed the average person has a cell phone, even something like 90%+ of homeless people have cell phones (as cited earlier in the thread), and has access to a personal computer to use things like dice rollers and VTTs for RPGs.

Once you assume someone has a cell phone and a personal computer, that brings in all the legally free-to-play video games out there, which is wildly cheaper than buying even a single RPG book. Go to your phone's app store and look at the free games. Even if you start now, you'll never run out of games to play. You can also play that a lot more often than RPGs. Same with games for the personal computer. You can find all kinds of free online games, legally.

Two of the closest ones to RPGs would be World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14. WoW you can play free to level 20, which includes the core game and the first 8 expansions. Or, if you make enough gold in game, you can effectively purchase game time and/or the latest expansions with gold. The free-to-play "demo" of Final Fantasy 14 is legendary for the amount of content included free of charge.

 

[Malmuria]

Let's say you want a DM screen. Some options
Cardboard + Homemade cheat sheets = probably $0
Official DM screen or generic 4 poster screen = $10-$20 (based off a quick amazon search)
Wyrmwood screen = $500+

So let's say you game 100 hours a year--the Wrymwood screen is only $5/hour, and is helping to entertain a group of 4-5. That's cheaper than a movie! Or take the cost of the entire screen--still cheaper than an international flight, if your hobby is traveling!

But I don't think either of those comps say much about the value proposition here. In the context of what a typical DM screen setup, which costs between $0-$20, a $500++ custom screen is an expensive, luxury item. Maybe a person justifies that to themselves by breaking it down by hour and number players, etc, but it's orders of magnitude more expensive than the default option.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

A player (i.e. majority of participants) could in some games buy the player facing book. Lets get crazy and assume 45-50 bucks.

That might be about it.

Up until we played 3e, we made dm screens by copying tables from 1e books and gluing them onto poster board etc.

A few used books and a handful of dice is the price of admission…which is why when we were “poor 15 year olds” we were able to grab our books and play a whole weekend.

Cheap. Very cheap. Forget the buddies who were mooches…

 

[Professor Murder]

I will continue to advocate for tables to be willing to share economic burdens as evenly as everyone is comfortable with. A table of five players and 1 GM who each contribute $15 can be buying $120 worth of resources, which can really be stretched well.

In comparison to some other geek hobbies, such as MtG/CCGs, Warhammer/Minis, Comics, Premium toys, or other collectables, TTRPGs is very inexpensive when you take into account the cost burdens can and should be shared. It's majority cost is upfront, and that is what can be the stopping point.

 

[Hussar]

Is to me.

That said there are a few different definitions of expensive. One is how is it priced compared to similar items.

Another is how much of my budget does it take up.

The people worried that much about prices of 50 dollar d&d books are more worried about the later - how much of their budget is the purchase.

But the question is RPG gaming expensive. If fifty dollars is a major worry, then it’s not that gaming is expensive, it’s that any hobby is expensive at that point.

You can’t claim something is expensive when it’s as cheap or cheaper than many other options.

 

[SableWyvern]

Different than the hobby being expensive or not, I'd say a segment of the hobby is highly consumerist, in that they seem to buy things just for the sake of buying them whether or not they will actually use them. Kickstarter exacerbates this tendency with its extravagant stretch goals and sense of FOMO. I've done this too, though have more recently really tried to consider whether I'll get use out of a product before picking it up.

Yes, I've occasionally noticed people in OSR-sphere complaining about how frustrated they are at the volume of material being released and how they'll never get a chance to use it all, who don't seem to understand that they don't actually have to purchase every single OSR product released.

 

[SableWyvern]

Given the number of people I've known of over the years who's investment often was, well, some dice, I'm not so sure about that. They weren't GMs certainly, but neither are the majority of people in the hobby.

(This is not to say this has been typical for people I've played with, but it seems to be very common in some places).

I would say that a majority of the people I've gamed with over the better part of 40 years haven't spent money on anything more than transport and dice.

In my current group of myself plus seven, I'm the only significant spender. I have two players who will buy the core books for whatever game I run, and will occasionally purchase other systems of interest to themselves. Another doesn't spend money on the systems I run, but does have a bit of material for running games with his kids. That leaves three that have never bought an RPG rulebook in their lives, plus one who has bought a couple games of particular interest to himself. I think most of them have acquired their own dice at some point, although it's common for players to just grab from my giant pile.

Back in earlier days, when money was tighter, I didn't expect anyone at the table other than myself to have a copy of the rules -- you bought rules for games you planned to run, that was it. There are people who want to spend more money, and there are groups were the expectation is that everyone buys a copy of the rules, but it's certainly not the case that this is necessary.