D&D 5E What do you want the books for D&Dnext to be like?

[kevtar]

I've always enjoyed D&D books. Now that D&Dnext is in the works, I started thinking about what kind of a book I would want to use with the new edition. I love the size of the 4e Essentials books. They are easy to handle and are portable. I had my copies spiral bound which made them even easier to use at the table. For the rules compendium, I added some post-it tabs for quick reference. I also think they layout for the Essentials books is fairly intuitive and easy to read.

If I could choose any format for the 5e books, I'd like to have the following:

• Size: the size of 4e Essentials books
• Art: a combination of contemporary artists and "classic" artists, including styles from all editions (e.g. line art, digital art, oil, acrylic, etc...)
• Copy: creative & technical text used collectively
• Binding: spiral bound
• Cover & pages: similar to 4e Essentials
• Indexing: a thorough index and possibly integrated dividers with tabs for quick reference to important sections (e.g. Combat rules, etc.)

What is your wish list for D&Dnext books using the above criteria? What important criteria would you add?

 

[groklynn]

I would like all spells, abilities and other "powers" to be organized in different logical lists. E.g. not only by levels, but by "tags", e.g. by area, by effect, by prerequisites, by schools/power sources and etc. Especially feats must be organized, otherwise bloat will occur one more edition. Cause I hate playing D&D 4e without DDI at my fingertips at the moment - browsing rulebooks is pain in the ass comparing tag-based search system.
The second thing - I wish all the modules could be expanded or shrunk painless, if I don't want use some certain detailed rules, I need some simple but yet "working" alternative, and vice versa, if I want some extra crunch at certain aspects, I want some extra details. So microlite20->basic D&D->AD&D->D&D3.5->FantasyCraft levels of "depth" or 3 levels of "depth" of rules. That will be fine for me.

 

[delericho]

Give us a really good Starter Set. Seriously, knock that one out of the park. (See the Pathfinder set for one way this can be done right. Unless you have a better idea, copy that.)

Beyond that, I don't really mind too much. Although I do really like the format of the Essentials books.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

I've always enjoyed D&D books. Now that D&Dnext is in the works, I started thinking about what kind of a book I would want to use with the new edition. I love the size of the 4e Essentials books. They are easy to handle and are portable. I had my copies spiral bound which made them even easier to use at the table. For the rules compendium, I added some post-it tabs for quick reference. I also think they layout for the Essentials books is fairly intuitive and easy to read.



If I could choose any format for the 5e books, I'd like to have the following:

• Size: the size of 4e Essentials books
• Art: a combination of contemporary artists and "classic" artists, including styles from all editions (e.g. line art, digital art, oil, acrylic, etc...)
• Copy: creative & technical text used collectively
• Binding: spiral bound
• Cover & pages: similar to 4e Essentials
• Indexing: a thorough index and possibly integrated dividers with tabs for quick reference to important sections (e.g. Combat rules, etc.)

What is your wish list for D&Dnext books using the above criteria? What important criteria would you add?

Gak! Normal sized books for me, or you can keep them. The same goes for binding. If the books are spiral bound I won't be buying them. (The 2e MM made it clear that it's a bad idea, so I doubt we'll be seeing that. Thankfully!) And I definitly don't want to see any spiky armor and swords that it would take the Hulk to lift!

Otherwise I agree.

As for anything online, nope, not for me.

 

[Mengu]

Inspiring fresh artwork. That's all I care about. I hopefully won't be using the ancient page/index technology for anything, or worrying about the binding, as the book is likely to just gather dust on my shelf after the first 3-6 months.

 

[Stormonu]

A starter set at least a full month before the release of the "full" rules.

I'd like the rulebooks to be, at most 2 books.

Book 1: For Players
- Races, Classes, Spells, Feats, etc. and some advice
- full-sized Hardcover or Softbound
- Uncolored pages (more 4E than 3E)
- 10-point font (more 3E than 4E)
- No walls of text; use text boxes or the margins to summarize the important information for in-game reference
- Line/Grayscale images primarily, with a full page piece of art (with no obscuring words) at the start of each chapter
- Story sidebars to bring "life" to the text and also provide an example of play
- Page-edge coloring to make the chapter divisions visible when the book is closed.
- Index and Glossary
- Fully bookmarked and hyperlinked PDF version of the rules available

Book 2: For DMs
- as above, containing Uncommon/Rare/Artifact magic items & Spells (perhaps 5th+ level spells), Monsters, Design rules and advice. The bigger of the two books.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

For me:

1. Books - full size hardcovers.
2. Art - Full Color - And I don't care if it comes out mixed (with styles that callback OD&D, 2nd, and 4th all in a hodgepoge in the books) or cohesive I don't really care, but I want humor and some whimsy in the art. The 1st ed cartoons (Rust Monster, +3 back scratcher, "This had better work") or like some of the stuff in 3rd (the Fighter stepping on Krusks face in the Climb skill art, or Mailee's exploded magic item and expression by the Use Magic Item skill). I don't want the art (or the game) to be so full of itself or it's own self importance that it doesn't feel fun.
3. Layout - Easy to read pages. I prefer the density in 3rd over the whitespaces of 4th, but make sure there isn't a lot of brown background or such that makes it hard to read. Basic white/off white pages with a border is plenty good enough.
4. Sidebars and little boxes wtih flavor text and story to help bring it to life - the little comments from people in Spelljammer really helped bring it to life.
5. Really serious Index and ToC.
6. 1st book - one is player's guide with rules, and classes, feats, themes, skills, backgrounds, spells, mundane equipment etc.
7. 2nd book - GM's guide - GM advice, Campaign and adventure design advice, Magic Items, XP charts a basic list of monsters,, NPCs, Traps and some interesting locations described

So you have everything in two books you need to run the game for 30+ levels.

• First supplement - the "Book of Challenges" with Monsters, Traps, NPCs to fight (and some to use as help). This is a yearly book with all monsters/NPCs/Traps that show up in any book that year compiled, along with new ones.

 

[Stormonu]

P.S: As a supplemental item, down the road, I'd love to see a "Tome" version of D&D - an oversized hardcover done in a fancy leather cover with the contents of all the core books in one volume - aimed at being for the DM or completist.

 

[Daven]

Books? No, thanks.
I prefer digital reading. Give me b/w rule-e-books, full color & art pdfs, and a lot of software with tags searching. Even for articles on the site it would be good to have tags.
How many times did you search for a particular article on Dragon, but you did not remember when it was published?
I don't buy books for novels, but e-books, I am ready to extend to rpgs.

So, I don't say that they have not to print books anymore, I'm saying that I would like to have also e-books and that I would buy them.

 

[kevtar]

Gak! Normal sized books for me, or you can keep them. The same goes for binding. If the books are spiral bound I won't be buying them. (The 2e MM made it clear that it's a bad idea, so I doubt we'll be seeing that. Thankfully!) And I definitly don't want to see any spiky armor and swords that it would take the Hulk to lift!

Otherwise I agree.

As for anything online, nope, not for me.

To be fair, a 4e-sized book of 300+ pages of coated text paper and spiral binding is a FAR cry from the 2e fullsized 3-ring binder of 200-300 pages of non-reinforced offset. That thing was a behemoth, the rings couldn't bear the weight and "leaked" pages when they separated and all sorts of nonsense - so that's not really a meaningful comparison.

I guess it comes down to "are you a standard spellbook" or a "traveling spellbook" kind of person (; - digital copies would be nice too (but not to solely remain online. I'd like a downloadable copy), but all in all, I've really enjoyed the essentials books (both in content, design and form).