When does detail become tedium?

[pawsplay]

When does detail become tedium? I don't know. Let's spend fifty pages hashing it out.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

New art has some value to it. I can see getting it if you are playing 4E and don't want to do conversions on the fly. Otherwise, does it have something wanted or needed? If not, don't get it!

 

[Voadam]

Does the game really support all these permutations or are we buying books we won't use?

Sigurd

Or?

I have lots and lots of monster books. Most monsters I use are straight out of the SRD though. Having options in game is great, reading monster books is fun, and so I keep getting more monster books.

 

[Shemeska]

There is rarely such a thing as too much detail.

However that very much depends on the detail being well written and evocative. Poorly written flavor text, or lots of dull stats with little or no flavor text in a supplemental book is a quick route away from interesting and into tedium.

 

[Lord Zack]

I'd say detail becomes tedium, when it starts interfering with, rather than facilitating play. I'm not certain if we've gotten to that point or not yet, though.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

Detail becomes tedium when a vocal fanbase likes to imply that not using a majority of it is somehow 'wrong'. Otherwise it stays optional and all is gravy.

 

[Jhaelen]

It seems to me that at the end of the first day a publisher should be able to say 'I have a great game'. More is not necessarily better.

Well, I'm not sure I understand the connection between the thread title and the imminent release of Draconomicon 2.

For me it's like this:
I don't get to play the game as often as I like. Currently, we manage to meet about once every 3-4 weeks. In the meantime I buy and read new books for the game.

So for me they're important to stay excited about the game and keep it fresh for me.

Having said that I don't care about the Draconomicon books. I understand dragons are immensely popular, but they don't appear often enough in my games to warrant a book about them, much less several.

I did buy and enjoy Open Grave, though. I'm also looking forward to the 'Planes Below' (or whatever the title was...).