Friday 30 March 2012

Role Play: Price Tag



So I got some positive feedback about my cost analysis of doubles so I thought I’d do another.


Our little circle of gamer has been lax with our hobby of late, partly due to money issues and partly due to the fact that we run a role-play group on a Saturday. I’ve mentioned the other blog before but you can find out what we do here. So let’s jump in.

Starting out.

We began with Death-watch, which at the time was the newest Fantasy Flight RPG. So we started out with:

Death-watch core rulebook - £40 (this is from the Fantasy Flight site, though if you shop around you can get it cheaper)
Mark of the Xenos – £25 (though this one’s not essential one copy for the GM means you’ll have more variety of enemies.)
Mechanical Pencils - £2 (Tesco)
D10’s - £4 for a pack of 10
Pizza - £3 for 3 (Asda)

Obviously you need a few print outs of character sheets and a GM screen is recommend for the GM but not essential. We took in in turns on the pizza front meaning each week costs less than a fiver. Once you’ve been playing for a while you may want some of the other books (Rites of battle, First Founding) these cost £25 but again shopping around they can be cheaper, then all that’s stopping is the scope of your GM’s imagination. There are several adventure books again each with a £25 ish price tag if your pushed for time as a GM but a homemade adventure is not only more satisfying but allows for more roleplaying freedom.

The evolution.

So after year or so we moved to Dark Heresy. The system was FF’s first system (well they bought it from black industries) so has more books out there, both adventures and rule books. Closer to the classic D&D style game your class and skills are what makes you a badass not power armour and being a powerhouse genetic freak. We bought a few more books for this one to open up some classes and add a few enemies in.

Core rulebook - £40
GM Screen - £15
Creatures Anathema - £25
Ascension – £25 (allows for higher level characters)
Inquisitors handbook - £25 (not 100% necessary but has a lot of extra equipment and started classes in)
Mechanical Pencils - £2 (Tesco)
D10’s - £4 for a pack of 10
Pizza - £3 for 3 (Asda)


We’ve gradually expanded the books we use as each class has a dedicated book for expansions and abilities, again not essential but leads to much more interesting characters I recommend buying the book for your character and scanning (or getting a not at all legal PDF copy) for the GM. So overall Dark Heresy is costing us more but again a few core books and some print outs and you’ll be fine.


Obviously there are other roleplaying systems, I myself have played D&D, Vampire – the masquerade, Serenity and dabbled in the Warhammer fantasy RPG. The joy of the FF 40k books is that they all work together; we’ve used Black Crusade and Rogue Trader (the other two FF RPG’s) in our campaigns so I rate them for this fact alone.

If you are really tight on cash then I suggest this:

Pdf’s of all books – easily found torrent
Mechanical Pencils - £2 (Tesco)
D10’s - £4 for a pack of 10
Pizza - £3 for 3 (Asda)
Beverage - £?? (I can’t recommend beer, I tried it and the mission got silly)
Friends – Free

This budget version will be a bit of a printer stress but use the works printer and you’ll be fine. So for the price of your food and a few dice, you can have a great day dicking about with mates.

My final point is three fold.
1) Find somewhere to play
2) Meet regularly, while it will slowly kill your GM it makes the campaign much more free flowing and dynamic.
3) Have Fun.  

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