billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him)
For a monster book? I want the art. It’s one of the best things about monster books.
Should a TTRPG have a singular Core Rulebook or more?
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Voted "something else" as while this is for me the minimum, it becomes variable beyond that.
Sometimes two is enough. But, a book of monsters might be needed if there's enough of 'em to otherwise over-bloat the DM's book. If the setting is an integral part of the game (as seems the case with, say, Blades in the Dark) then it probably needs to be presented somewhere and depending on system and-or level of detail desired might need its own book. And so on.
SableWyvern
Adventurer
While I'll generally say that art isn't that important to me, I was just discussing earlier today that I found modrons changed from being utterly ridiculous and unusable to cool and interesting just based on the change in art from 1e (here's a cube with legs and a face that looks like it was drawn by a six-year-old) to 2e (this thing has actual character and is intriguing).
I don't think there's a good answer to this question. It all depends on the system and the setting. The more rules you have the more book you need. That sounds like the captain obvious answer, I know, but it's true. Personally, I do like games that have a players and a GM book, but it's simply not necessary for some games.
A lot of games switched to one-book formats in the 90's, thinking about it, although as they got more successful, many more splatbooks followed (FASA's Shadowrun and Earthdawn, Vampire the Masquerade). I never really gave much thought to D&D having three books because, well, it had been that way for a long time. It wasn't until, again, Pathfinder 1e that I was like "now wait, I can buy this one big book for 50 bucks, where WotC is charging me 30 bucks a pop?" that I actually started to feel like I was being fleeced, lol. What was I paying for? The cover?
It got even crazier when Paizo was like "you can access almost everything in our game online for free, and hey, want to buy our books for cheap in pdf form?". Which wasn't perfect, like when they edited my digital copy of the Advanced Class Guide without me realizing it, lol, because a cool feat printed therein was too spicy for their precious Pathfinder Society right before my Oracle could take it...but it was a breath of fresh air.
Of course, like any true gamer, any money I saved on books was immediately spent on other books, so...
It got even crazier when Paizo was like "you can access almost everything in our game online for free, and hey, want to buy our books for cheap in pdf form?". Which wasn't perfect, like when they edited my digital copy of the Advanced Class Guide without me realizing it, lol, because a cool feat printed therein was too spicy for their precious Pathfinder Society right before my Oracle could take it...but it was a breath of fresh air.
Of course, like any true gamer, any money I saved on books was immediately spent on other books, so...
Alzrius
The EN World kitten
Okay, I'll bite: which feat was it? Because flipping through my print copy of the ACG, I can't seem to figure out which feat you're referring to.
'One book' seems to be leading in the votes right now... but I wonder if that would remain the case if an addendum was added to the question, of "The total price would be the same regardless of the number of books released."?
In other words, are some people voting for 'One book' merely because they assume it would be cheaper to get everything in a single volume, and price matters more to them than any potential gains in ease-of-use that might occur by distributing rules in separate tomes? Maybe, maybe not. Doesn't matter to me either way, but I'd be curious if taking cost out of the equation and making it merely about weight, rules distribution, and organization might produce different results?
In other words, are some people voting for 'One book' merely because they assume it would be cheaper to get everything in a single volume, and price matters more to them than any potential gains in ease-of-use that might occur by distributing rules in separate tomes? Maybe, maybe not. Doesn't matter to me either way, but I'd be curious if taking cost out of the equation and making it merely about weight, rules distribution, and organization might produce different results?
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