U.S. President Donald Trumps sweeping 145% tariffs on Chinese-made goods are creating chaos in the tabletop business, but there is one piece of the industry thats seemingly exempt: role-playing game books. These are books that lay out the rules and world for different tabletop games — think the Dungeons & Dragons rulebook. The caveat here is that for the book to be exempt from tariffs, it must be imported and sold separately from “dices, maps, [and] figures” that are necessary in actually playing the game.
There has, indeed, been confusion on how these books are classified; a ruling from the Customs and Border Protection from 2024 clarified specifically that Shadowruns 6th edition rulebook would be classified under 4901.99.0070, which is for printed, hardbound books. This ruling is at odds with ones from 1989 and 1991, though, per a report from ICv2, which classified these as parts and accessories to tabletop games — not for “passive reading,” so not really books.
The caveat here, per the ruling itself from Aug. 9, is that the ruling “applies only to the specific factual situation and merchandise description as identified in the ruling request.” But it is a helpful note in determining how the government agency is thinking about the categorization of these sorts of goods.
The reason its important that role-playing game rulebooks are classified as books and not games or game materials is that books are exempt from some tariffs; books are listed as exempt in Trumps April 2 executive orders Annex II, according to a report from Rascal.
But despite the possible exemption, tabletop companies remain in panic due to the uncertainty of the situation. Beyond the tariffs, theres a lot of chaos created simply by the rapidly changing levies. The other part thats uncertain, too, is how tariffs impact the materials necessary for actually producing these books.
Update (April 24): This story has been updated to clarify the reason why books are exempt from these new tariffs.
