Thursday 26 September 2019

Connoisseurs and Cost: A Compromise?

I wrote a slightly crotchety post about the cost of RPG books, particularly OSR ones, a while back, and then followed it up with another. Perhaps this one will reframe things in a slightly more positive light.

My other hobby after RPGs is drinking. That sounds worse than it is. Basically, I like good beer, fine spirits and dessert wines and I enjoy exploring the sensory experiences they offer - not drinking to get drunk but drinking for the palate.

You can think of me as a much less well-off and much less intelligent version of Fraiser Crane with a different job, who likes RPGs and doesn't live with his father and doesn't have a brother or a housekeeper. And isn't American.

The thing about liking fine spirits is - they're expensive. An entry level, probably-not-even-decent single malt is about as expensive as a hardback mainstream WotC book (say, £30).* A decent single malt will be closer to £40. You really have to spend £50 a bottle to get to the good stuff. And I have bought bottles of whisky for £70, £80, £100 in the past. (Of course, there are people who will pay much more than that.)

I am prepared to pay such amounts because, well, I like whisky and hence I think it's worth it. That's because (and I don't meant to sound like a complete twat here, although I'm aware that it's impossible for me not to do so given what I am about to say) I am a connoisseur, albeit of a very minor variety. I am in a position to know what I like, and I have drunk enough whisky to know what won't interest me. Buying two £30 entry-level single malts is therefore probably going to give me less pleasure than a single £50 or £60 bottle; once you can appreciate quality in something you like, quantity ceases to be a relevant measure. So does cost - although of course only within the limits of what you can actually afford.

I was reminded of this recently by doing something I never normally do - posting a comment on Reddit. I subscribe to various drinks-related reddits, including a cocktail one. I am not a massive cocktail fan but I do dabble here and there. Seeing a post by another user, who was using what I consider to be a rather nice single malt to make a cocktail with, I couldn't help myself suggesting that he use something a bit cheaper and a bit less nice with a similar flavour profile, so as not to waste the good stuff.

I should have known better. I was dealing with a cocktail buff, and hence (like me with whiskies) somebody who appreciates quality within the bounds of his hobby. For him, the better the ingredients, the better the cocktail. He's not bothered about being wasteful or spending money - except in the sense that he can obviously only spend what he can afford. What he's interested in is quality. Which is completely fair, and I was completely stupid to poke my nose in to suggest he do otherwise.

You can probably see where I am going with this. For people who are really into RPGs, and who have played a lot and read a lot about the subject - connoisseurs, if you will - price ceases to be an important consideration within the bounds of what they can afford. They want quality. And if that means spending a lot of money on something, on an artisan product like a Veins of the Earth or Stars Without Number, I think that is completely fine and, in its own way, laudable. And it would certainly be hypocritical of me to criticise it.

Where I worry is the occasions when I have sensed that people are not actually buying things because they want quality, but because they feel a compulsion to do it through the fear of missing out, a desire to be in with the in-crowd, or just sheer acquisitiveness and showing-off. I used to see that quite a bit on G+. There is a strand of modern geek culture which has embraced consumerism so wholeheartedly that it has almost come to associate the mere act of spending lots of money on nerd-artefacts as being in some sense sacramental. Clearly one has to be a bit judgmental to feel that way - but I still feel it.

(*You can get great deals which complicate this a bit. 12 year old Highland Park is available in my local supermarket for about £25 often on sale, and it's a perfectly nice whisky. The same is true of the 10 year old Glenmorangie, available in my local Costco at ridiculously low prices.)

28 comments:

  1. I think it's important to keep a balance - not just in the OSR as a whole, but even in a publisher or writer's offers. For example, Patrick Stuart hasn't just released large expensive products like Fire on the Velvet Horizon, but also smaller things like A Night at the Golden Duck and Deep Carbon Observatory.

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  2. "people are not actually buying things because they want quality . . . but [for various other reasons]."

    I think our society is so consumption-focused that it's nearly impossible to separate out whether you're buying for "quality" or because you're just driven to buy something.

    I don't think I agree that it's really a "geek culture" thing. Virtually every social group or activity these days involves a bunch of stuff you can buy and an incredible capacity for expensive "quality" things that supposedly make the activity better.

    Want to go hiking? Here's a bunch of hyper-specialized ultra-lite techie gear.

    Like baking? Check out the super-premium ovens and kitchen implements you can drool over.

    Like music? There is no limit to the amount of money you can spend on "audiophile" equipment.

    This is not to say I'm really against quality stuff or anything. I love a high quality "thing" as much as the next guy. But it is darn hard to determine when something will genuinely increase my quality of life, and when I'm basically just getting the thrill of acquisition/purchase.

    I somewhat collect rare/fine books. Why do I do this? Fuck knows. I very much enjoy holding a beautifully made book. But at times I wonder how it came to be that I'm paying all this attention to the packaging of that lovely copy of Moby Dick I just bought, when it has the exact same words as the version that I can get for free from my local library.

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    1. I agree. It's very complicated in exactly the way you describe.

      I think you can tell , though, when something HAS genuinely increased your quality of life or just given a momentary thrill of acquisition, riht? You can usually easily identify the difference after the fact.

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    2. "You can usually easily identify the difference after the fact."

      I think you can tell when something is actually *bad*--so whether you spend a lot or a little on something that's an unqualified bust (the poorly produced RPG book, the terrible bottle of booze)--though for something expensive I'm certainly more willing to try hard to understand its value and/or acquire a taste for it.

      But for things that are good, or at least not bad, it's much harder to determine how much the QoL increase is driven by the cost/difficulty-of-aquisition itself, rather than any intrinsic quality of the object.

      If the £50-£100 bottles of whiskey you've enjoyed were available at every corner store for £2 would you still savor and appreciate them as much?

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  3. This is an interesting post, and Ivan's reply raises another interesting point. I was reminded of Jack Vance's story, Green Magic, which I read recently on a mention in a different blog (princeofnothing).

    Wine is my vice / hobby. I love learning more and tasting surprising new bottles, but there is a sense that the more I enjoy the less space available there is before me until I reach my natural limit. In this case, cash. After that, I either need to reset my expectations or find a different hobby, at least for a time.

    Like Ivan, I'm not sure that the pleasure derived from interacting with a quality product can be separated from the pleasures of acquisition. I'm not sure that has to matter, though. It speaks to the number of different types of things that might be enjoyed if only one learns enough about them to appreciate them properly.

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    1. I think you're right. I think when it matters is when the pleasure of acquisition is clearly outweighing the pleasure of interacting with the product. For every person and every individual purchase that's a judgment call.

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  4. Mmm. Mm-mm-mm.

    This probably says something about MY gaming hobby, too...let’s see:

    I am more of a drunk than a connoisseur, but I like to drink alcohol. I’ve never developed the palate for whiskey or bourbon or scotch...the various brown liquors...though I’ve sampled them, good and bad. I’ve drunk a LOT of beer and wine. I tend to drink expensive beer. I find that it tastes better and has a higher alcohol content, allowing me to get “lit” faster. Cheap beer tends to skirt on alcohol, taste, or both.

    On the other hand, I tend to go with cheaper wine these days. All wine gets me drunk at about the same rate (the higher quality stuff hits perhaps a little faster, but not enough to make a difference). For me, a guy with little “nose” for bouquet, the taste difference between $80 and $40 isn’t that much after a glass or two. Heck, the difference between $40 and $20 isn’t all that much. These days, I look for the wine that has the beat “salve value (an $18 for $9.99, etc.). I’m just using it to wash down my dinner (or sip while watching a late night show). When I’m bringing wine as a gift or to a party, I usually stick around the $20-25 range unless I can find a deal that I *know* is good. Still, I don’t find anything over $25 to be so fantastic as to be worth the extra price. After a couple-three glasses it’s all the same, unlike (OTH) beer. You can taste the shittiness of a Coors Light no matter how many pints you’ve had (I’d rather take a silver bullet than drink one).

    Cigarettes (for those still killing themselves) I found to be much the same. The first Dunhill was pure heaven to inhale, but after the 3rd or 4th if the evening, you might as well switch to the Old Gold.

    For me, RPGs, like spirits, come in different varieties...but I see the comparison as one of beer to wine to liquor, not stout to lager to IPA. And I’m not sure which type of alcohol best equates to which type of game or style of play. Probably wine (in my book) models to games heavily based on skill systems...less is more and don’t pay too much for the shiny label...while beer scans best to indie-games (I’d rather a finely crafted micro-brew than some cheap swill knock-off of D&D).

    D&D I’d throw in the category of gin. I only drink two kinds: Bombay Sapphire (when I want a martini), or Tanqueray (for gin & tonics or just sipping). These are the equivalent of AD&D and B/X, respectively.

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    1. For me, wine is like Savage Worlds - buy it for £5 and stick it in the fridge/book case.

      Ale is like OSR, always trying new varieties but with a few old favourites. Also, lots of beards.

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    2. Has the gin boom made it to the US yet? Over here gin is ridiculously popular and there is a huge variety available.

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  5. I'm just happy I like beer. I can make my own and if I buy some the shit that's good enough to make my mouth happy doesn't cost that much extra.

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    1. I am going to get into making my own beer sooner or later I am sure.

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    2. It's easier than it's ever been these days. Just a matter of following a basic recipe, temp control and keeping the bacteria out.

      And for some bizarre reason kviek "Norwegian yeast" works fine at hot temperatures and makes tasty beer so temp control isn't so important anymore.

      And Brew in a Bag mashing makes using grain a whole lot easier if you don't want to use extract (which is perfectly fine for darker beers).

      A lot of people make it more complicated than it needs to be but it's pretty simple. The only real issue is that it takes a while after you brew to figure out if you fucked up or not and that time lag can lead to some hair pulling.

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  6. Often my wife choose a wine because the bottle looks good. I don't complain, for me, very few wines taste bad. As for RPG books (OSR or otherwise), very, very few are good imo. So that's the difference. The look of it? Owning it? That's not nearly enough.

    I would add that writing good rpg content is VERY HARD. Finding the good ones is too.

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    1. As for RPG books (OSR or otherwise), very, very few are good

      This I agree with strongly.

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  7. As one of those "cocktail guys", I feel the consumption urge pretty strongly. The problem with cocktails specifically is that for every nice gin I own, there's 3 bottles of some liqueur that's good for one, maybe two different drinks (seriously, what the hell am I going to do with all this Galliano?). There's certainly a parallel within the RPG community; how many people ever end up actually playing/using half the systems/supplements/modules they buy?

    Luckily I'm not like that, I don't think I could afford to have more than one shelf of expensive dust-collectors. My own tabletop purchasing habits are basically zero. There have been a few books where I've found the content useful enough to want to have it handy at the table (and I liked the author), but mostly I grab bits and pieces from blog posts or free supplements and do the rest of the work myself. I'm not sure if there's a good alcohol analogy for that process.

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    1. Yeah, I am partial to a sazerac but it doesn't seem worth buying a load of pechaud's bitters and absinthe for the once in a blue moon I would want to drink it.

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  8. "12 year old Highland Park... a perfectly nice whisky. The same is true of the 10 year old Glenmorangie"

    You have very strange taste in whiskies. :p
    (I find Highland Park bland & characterless, and Glenmorangie so light it's barely there at all. You do have me salivating at the thought of some £60 malts though...)

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    1. I'm not saying they are stellar but they are fine. Glenmorangie 10 just needs to be given a bit of time in the glass. It is very subtle but complex with it. Highland Park 12 is a very drinkable all-rounder. I would recommend either of them wholeheartedly to any scotch beginner.

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    2. I bought a glenmorangie 10 to a friend many years ago and it started him on a whole journey of discovery!

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  9. The problem of course is that you can't "consume" that much RPG - you have to run a game, or play in one, and that's time consuming. I play 4 sessions a month and run 2, which is *quite* a lot if you think about it. I would love to play more... but I can't, not with my other responsibilities.

    So when I get something, I do want it to be nice. Recently I acquired Troika! I don't know if I will be able to do more than run a short game with it, as my players don't seem very enthused by the system so far. But the art! The writing*! Just having it made me happy, and I think it was worth the money I payed for, even though it's a much smaller book than a WotC book.

    *an example: "At some point in your past you decided you didn’t need it anymore" … damn.

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    1. Fair enough. I have a post brewing on that topic actually.

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  10. I'm not much for Wiskey or other expensive liquors (except Rum maybe). But the problem you mentioned in your older posts to me was this:
    Some people are connoisseurs of fine liquors, some are connoisseurs of liquors in fine bottles. A lot of the price tag on modern liqours has just as much to do with the very artisenal bottle, the lable or some other gimmicky stuff (Yes I'm looking at you Deadhead Rum).

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    1. Damn forgot half of the last sentence:
      A lot of the price tag on modern liqours has just as much to do with the very artisenal bottle, the lable or some other gimmicky stuff as it hast to do with the spirit in the bottle.

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    2. That's true, although I think with whiskey actually it tends to be the reverse - high price tag associated with a strong and famous brand.

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  11. The other angle of this is that a lot of people (including me) can be very thrifty with things that they bought when they were kids (for example RPGs) but are much more free about spending much larger amounts of money on things that they never bought as kids. For example I don't think twice about spending X dollars on a meal out (which I never did as a kid) but I pinch pennies about buying game books. Not really logical to worry about a few bucks here and there when you don't really worry about spending a lot of money on, say, your car but that's how our brains work a lot of the time.

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    1. Yep. Because we remember what it was like to buy an entire RPG core rulebook for, like, 7.99 or whatever.

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