Very recently I received an email about my PORTABLE WARGAME rules. It was from someone who wanted a copy of some of the rules. Not the whole book or books, just the rules.
Now I like to think that I am not an ungenerous person, but I am unwilling to give something away that other people have paid good money for. That somehow seems to be wrong ... and yet I can see why someone might just want a copy of the rules. So how can I make the rules available without forcing someone to buy a whole book?
One way would be to extract the rules from the various books and publish them separately in PDF format. This would not be too difficult to do as Lulu.com already sells PDF versions of THE PORTABLE NAPOLEONIC WARGAME online. At present I am thinking out loud about trying this as an option ... but I'd like some helpful responses from my regular blog readers and users of my PORTABLE WARGAME rules before I take thing further.
Any comments, anyone?
Now I like to think that I am not an ungenerous person, but I am unwilling to give something away that other people have paid good money for. That somehow seems to be wrong ... and yet I can see why someone might just want a copy of the rules. So how can I make the rules available without forcing someone to buy a whole book?
One way would be to extract the rules from the various books and publish them separately in PDF format. This would not be too difficult to do as Lulu.com already sells PDF versions of THE PORTABLE NAPOLEONIC WARGAME online. At present I am thinking out loud about trying this as an option ... but I'd like some helpful responses from my regular blog readers and users of my PORTABLE WARGAME rules before I take thing further.
Any comments, anyone?
Portable Wargame sells for what, £5.99? If you want the rules you pay the £5.99. If you’re not prepared to pay you clearly don’t really want them.
ReplyDeleteOr am I missing something?
Tim Gow,
DeleteThanks for your comment.
The electronic version sells for just under £3.00. If I did produce a PDF version of the rules, this is the price I would sell it for.
All the best,
Bob
The books ARE the rules, particularly as they are something of a toolkit.
ReplyDeleteI suppose you do some sort of QRS, but why bother? Neil Thomas manages perfectly well just selling the books. The NT fanclub writes all the QRS and rule summaries on the yahoo group.
Martin Rapier,
DeleteThanks for your comment,
A lot of the feedback I have had has included comments that the battle reports - which form an important part of the books - have helped players understand how the rules work. Not to include them in the rules would make them far less useful to players.
As to creating QRS ... well, I've tried, but they ended up almost as long as the rules, so I didn't develop them any further.
All the best,
Bob
I'm with Tim... the book is less than six quid... which is a about a third of the price of most rules these days...!
ReplyDeleteSteve-the-Wargamer,
DeleteThanks for your comment.
I deliberately set the price of the paperback version of the books so that they were about the amount someone would spend on a magazine or a pack of figures.
All the best,
Bob
If the book was £20, I might be inclined to side with your customer. But £6 for the book, I think he's taking the pi$$!
ReplyDeleteRay Rousell,
DeleteMany thanks for your comment.
At least the enquirer was expecting to pay from the extracted rules ... unlike the person who demanded a free copy because the illegal download they had obtained was incomplete!
All the best,
Bob
I would not bother to extract the rules and publish them separately. They are already available as a pdf with the rest of the book. Just print off what you want. £6 is not an unfair price for this.
ReplyDeleteIf there are people who genuinely struggle to find the £6 then you already have 20+ free downloads on your site they can choose from. I presume the 3 existing portable wargame downloads would give enough indication of the system to assist in making a decision about spending the £6.
Nope you're already generous enough, with your time.
John Preece,
DeleteThanks for your kind comments,
As I've stated in an earlier comment, the price was set in order to make buying the book attractive. I could have made it more expensive (and made more money!), but chose not to.
I must admit that I'd forgotten about the free downloads of the earlier versions of the rules that were available. Anyone reading them would have no difficulty fighting a battle.
All the best,
Bob
Bob
ReplyDeleteWhilst I agree that the rules are attractively priced and that the examples are useful within them, perhaps there's a place for a consolidated book(let)?
I've somewhat lost track of the various versions and amendments you have made but off the top of my head there are the rules; the rules as expanded in 'Developing...'; some Napoleonic rules; some Naval rules; rules to run the game at a battalion level; rules to run them at Brigade (or is it divisional?) level and the rules which have the SP reduction and those that do not. For a gamer to collect all those ideas would be a fair outlay, as they are spread over three or four books (including one you may not have written yet! See I'm getting lost).
I think it would be a bit of a project, perhaps more than you want to do and, furthermore, it might not be worth it, but there might be value in putting all those variants together into a single package, with the duplication stripped out, as a core set, with half a dozen appendices covering, what might be termed, advanced and optional rules. That would be the ultimate toolkit - which could be attractive to wargaming tinkerers (of which there are, I believe, one or two!)
Cheers
Andrew
Rumblestrip (Andrew),
DeleteThank you for your very interesting comment.
Creating a compendium of the various variants of the rules would be a mighty project indeed ... but doing so does make sense. I'm just not sure if I am up to it quite yet!
I know that your idea is going to whirr around in my head now it is there ... and it would give me the opportunity to publish some of the minor changes I have made, mainly to the wording. It is certainly something for me to think about for the future.
All the best,
Bob
I agree with the above gentlemen in that if anyone is interested in the rules then they should simply buy them in the way they are offered.
ReplyDeleteI also think it is damned cheeky of anyone to ask for a freebie, especially considering the price. And Bob, you already have some very playable rules available in the downloads section of this very blog.
Patrick Phillips,
DeleteThank you for your contribution.
The problem with writing wargame rules is that a lot of people naturally assumed that:
1. You have become immensely rich by doing so (I have been accused of being a wargaming fat cat sponging of the hard-earned money of ordinary wargamers!);
2. That having bought your rules, they have the god-given right to contact you to get clarifications about the minutiae of the rules.
On the latter point, I can remember Phil Barker telling me that someone telephoned him in the middle of the night to to get a ruling on a rule interpretation. I understand that Phil gave it, and then pointed out to the caller that it was the middle of the night in the UK. The caller - who was somewhere where it was the late evening - replied that he was in the middle of a game with a friend, and they could not finish it until they had Phil's answer!
All the best,
Bob
Personally, I think if someone wants to separate out the rules into some sort of QRS or playsheet that's down to them.
ReplyDeleteWargamers can be notoriously cheap at times or have this idea that a rules author has a personal responsibility to them individually, just because they have bought a copy of their rules!
People are reluctant to do much for themselves these days.
As to buying v giveaways, I think you commented that you were surprised at how many copies of Hexblitz were sold when they were available as a free set.
Some people (myself included) simply prefer a printed book over electronic or self printed hardcopy.
Neil Patterson,
DeleteMany thanks for your comment.
As I commented earlier, trying to create a QRS for the rules didn't seem to produce an end product that was much shorter than the original rules ... but some wargamers do seem to be reluctant to create their own.
It always amazes me how much some wargamers will spend on certain aspects of their hobby ('This figure only cost me £5.00 ... and it is a limited edition one; they are only going to cast a thousand of them.') but then expect freebies of things like rules that people may have spent years developing and testing.
As I have written elsewhere, the printed version of HEXBLITZ was a direct result of my desire to have a practical example of how to turn a manuscript into a book in order to illustrate a talk at COW2018. I never expected it to sell in the way that it has ... but it proves that there must be a lot of people who - like you - prefer to have a proper printed copy of a set of rules than an electronic or PDF version.
All the best,
Bob
Hi BOB,
ReplyDeleteYou'd be well within your rights to refuse the request outright- and have no qualms about this decision at all. I've met Wargamers who have had the nerve to offer you 20 cents for a cast figure- and a whole batch fo castings- when they know full well the standard price is $3 to $4 per figure. Certain individuals will try it on- and surprise surprise they are not necessarily the people short of a quid either!...Yes, you've put the work into your books Bob and deserve fully the right price to be paid. Regards. KEV.
Kev Robertson (Kev),
DeleteThanks for your contribution.
At least the person who requested a copy of the rules was willing to pay something for them ... unlike a lot of others.
I've met people like the ones you mention, who expect to get a lot for almost nothing. When I buy pre-owned figures, I expect to pay a reasonable price for them, not a tenth of their retail value ... which wouldn't cover the cost of the metal!
All the best,
Bob
As Hobbyists, Wargamers, in general, have the need to score a freebie for their hobby and we have all done it! But this request is beyond the pale. The Courier once sold a set of ACW rules called On to Richmond for $3, the author - Paul Koch- put on a game at a large hobby shop to demonstrate the rules and wargaming n particular. Told to bring their rules,8 of the 10 players had xeroxed copies!!!
ReplyDeleteDick Bryant,
DeleteThanks for your insightful comment. We all like freebies, but sometimes people go just a bit too far in their expectations of what is and is not 'free'.
I remember ON TO RICHMOND! when it appeared in THE COURIER, and actually bought a copy of the booklet when I managed to find a copy on sale in the UK. (As far as I can remember, it still resides on my bookshelves.) As to turning up to a game run by the author of the rules with a photocopy of them ... well, I'd like to say that I thought that it was untrue, but know that it is all far too believable! Do these people have no sense of shame at all?
All the best,
Bob
Bob,
ReplyDeleteI agree the rules in electronic form are already available at low cost so I would stick with that. Of course the hardback is very desirable, (cheers Bob), but if you just want the basic rules you can easily extract them from the download version.
I recently downloaded the DBN rules, just plain b/w text, about 50 pages, cost me £12.00 and I was happy to pay it considering the work that had gone into them.
'Lee,
DeleteAs usual, you've made a very useful and helpful comment.
£12.00 for a downloadable set of rules does not strike me as being very expensive, especially when compared to the price of a pack or two of 28mm-scale figures. The rules have been under development for a long time, and I doubt if the writers will recoup anything financially comparable to the investment in time and effort that they have put in.
All the best,
Bob
Bob,
ReplyDeleteIn your rules, there is absolutely no justification for selling a separate "rules" version, because they are primarily rule books, there isn't a lot of background information in there to cut out. There 'might' be a reason to sell such a version of (say) Black Powder or The Wargame or similar, since there is such a lot of background stuff in there, that they don't actually make good rulebooks.
JWH,
DeleteThank you very much for your contribution.
You are absolutely right about my books; they were intended to be primarily rule books, not background books with some rules included. That's probably a bit 'old school' but I'm a bit of an 'old school' wargamer ... well old anyway!
All the best,
Bob
Bob
ReplyDeleteYou already have , in your 'free downloadable rules ' the embryonic versions of your portable wargames rules are already available. Indeed those are the rules I experimented with before I bought my own copy, I like to think , as in fact you promote , that gamers are able to take the basic rule system and expand ,tweak, adapt to suit their needs. Sometimes that adaption may seem a bit strange, at the moment your Chaco war rules are in the middle of being adapted for the Chinese civil war.
Derek Moore,
DeleteThank you for your helpful comment.
Your point is very well made. I am getting the feeling that quite a few people bought my books having tried the free downloadable versions first ... something that I had not really considered before.
I do expect players to tweak my rules to suit their needs, and the simpler the rules are, the easier that should be. Also, by making the mechanisms as 'plug-in/unplug' as possible, players can change one aspect of the rules without the whole lot coming unravelled.
Good luck with your Chinese Civil War project. It sounds very interesting.
All the best,
Bob
Hi Bob,
ReplyDeleteI can't imagine enjoying your rules without the history behind them etc. It helps me as a gamer understand where you are coming from (Neil Thomas also does this admirably well). So a pared down version, if that were at all possible, would certainly not be a case of 'less is more'! As for the price, you can't go wrong for circa £6.
Steve J.,
DeleteThank your for your kind comment.
One of the problems that I find with many sets of modern wargame rules is that it is difficult for the players to understand where the writer is coming from ... hence the chapters in my books that explain how the rules evolved and how they work in practice.
A pared down version of the rules would lack that, and having looked at the cost, the price I would have to sell them at would not be a lot cheaper than the existing electronic version. As to the price of the printed editions ... well to date I don't think that I have had any purchasers complain that they were too expensive.
All the best,
Bob
I have your book and the present price is fine, but that may not be the issue?
ReplyDeleteRather perhaps it is mixed presentation of rules and background/philosophy (like Blackpowder)? This is something that can be quite annoying to navigate when you want to just play a game. For Blackpowder several people went through and just copied out the rules into a smaller consolidated document, but they would have bought this document if it was actually available. If you want to do this it would actually be extra work for you though so I would sell it for the same price or not too much lower.
By way of example of separating rules/background, I have a simple set of free set of rules on my site. The background/philosophy stuff is a blog post, and download is just the rules.
https://chasseuracheval.blogspot.com/p/321-fast-play-napoleonic-rules.html
Chasseur,
DeleteThank you for your very interesting contribution.
I actually like my wargame rule books to have that mixture of rules and background/philosophy, but I suspect that might not be what a lot of wargamers want ... hence the homemade 'cut and paste' copies that people might produce for their own use.
I must admit to coming round to the view that I'm going to leave things as they are for the moment ... but as you suggest, I might well produce a 'rules only' edition of my next book of rules for sale to those who only want that.
All the best,
Bob
Bob,
ReplyDeleteI don't see any need for you to accommodate someone who "just wants a copy" of part of your book. The idea seems to be that having done the work of putting it all together in the first place, you should now be expected to undertake the additional effort required to extract a specific slice of it. Why, exactly? Does this mean that if you were to receive, say, requests from 27 more people for copies of 27 different parts of your book, it would be your job to satisfy each person's particular preferences? Sure, why not? You have nothing else to do, I'll wager.
Is it a matter of cost? Has this person looked at how much is being charged for books these days?! Your books constitute some of the few genuine bargains around right now.
By the way, please don't ever feel you're "forcing" anybody to buy anything. If a person truly cannot afford even an electronic version of your book, he's probably in the wrong hobby.
Best regards as always,
Chris
Chris,
DeleteThank you for your contribution and comments.
There does seem to be a perception amongst some people these days that products - like books of wargame rules - can be tailored to their specific requirements. Whereas Henry Ford might have said 'You can have any colour, as long as it is black', people today want something to be exactly to their requirements. I understand that one motor manufacturer produces a car where there are over one million possible variants of colour, trim, engine size, etc.
(By the way, I understand that Henry Ford never made the comment about all his cars being black. I think that the colour was actually dark blue!)
Interestingly, Lulu.com suggest prices for the various editions of a book when I publish a new one ... and they are often quite a bit more than the price I set. This means that I barely make much more than 75p to £1.00 profit per book (and that is before 30% tax, which I pay in the US because Lulu.com is registered there), and is one reason why I am not writing this reply from my luxury yacht in the Mediterranean!
Seriously though, I never set out to make money from my books; I did them because I wanted to share my ideas with other wargamers in a way that was less ephemeral than the Internet ... and it seems to have worked.
All the best,
Bob
PS. Some years ago I had very little money, and wanted to create a new wargames army. I did it by producing my own paper soldiers using MS Paint and a colour printer. (To be honest, they were very crude in comparison to the ones produced by Peter Dennis ... but they were suitable for my needs.)
It showed me that I could wargame on a very tight budget, and that impact of a lack of funds can be circumvented if you apply a bit of lateral thinking.
I'm a little curious as to the background of the person making the enquiry. That MIGHT make a difference if there are constraints upon what he can buy. He might not have the means to print off a hard copy of a pdf book, say, and can't afford to get the paperback (I can imagine that being the situation of a schoolkid, say).
ReplyDeleteOn the whole, though, I am also of the opinion that the rule sets in the books are quite accessible - separate from the philosophy and supporting notes - such that a QRS seems redundant (unless you just want fewer pages to flip).
In general, though, I reckon your enquirer can fork out the slight cost of the pdf version. Good heavens, I'm not made of money, but I've gone the hardcover for the four books I've bought, without troubling the bank account!
Archduke Piccolo,
DeleteThanks for your excellent contribution and for being such a loyal purchasers and user of my rules!
I think that the enquiry came from someone who was quite willing to pay just for a copy of the rules, and who was not interested in having the rest of the book. Had it been a keen schoolkid, I would probably have sent them a free copy of the PDF or even one of the proof copies of the book that I have to hand. (I am still a school teacher at heart, and always want to encourage youngsters to take up wargaming.)
All the best,
Bob