Maybe my expectation was off - Dungeon of the mad mage doesnt use the full maps for undermountain....

CapnZapp · Nov 24, 2018

Parmandur said:
The real reason is that they had 320 pages, not 3,200 and wanted to get to the lower levels.

No, I meant that the reason isn't "that individual DMs can create their own stuff". That's bollocks. That would assume DMs are unable to expand on existing maps if these don't indicate large unexplored areas, as if we somehow need explicit permission to expand maps, which is obvious nonsense.

Instead the real reason is that WotC nowadays never does more than they think they can get away with. The ethos of going the extra mile is lost.

PS. Unlike other posters I don't want or need 320 pages of semi-random dungeons, let alone 3200 pages. You might have confused me with someone saying "this product is bad because it details a huge dungeon, not a megahuge dungeon". To me, that sounds like sheer insanity.

Parmandur · Nov 24, 2018

CapnZapp said:
No, I meant that the reason isn't "that individual DMs can create their own stuff". That's bollocks. That would assume DMs are unable to expand on existing maps if these don't indicate large unexplored areas, as if we somehow need explicit permission to expand maps, which is obvious nonsense.

Instead the real reason is that WotC nowadays never does more than they think they can get away with. The ethos of going the extra mile is lost.

PS. Unlike other posters I don't want or need 320 pages of semi-random dungeons, let alone 3200 pages. You might have confused me with someone saying "this product is bad because it details a huge dungeon, not a megahuge dungeon". To me, that sounds like sheer insanity.

The dungeon they set out to detail is way larger than 320 pages can cover; ergo, there is unmapped territory. Which is great for DMs to expand on as needed. That's not marketing speak, it is what it is.

CapnZapp · Nov 24, 2018

Parmandur said:
The dungeon they set out to detail is way larger than 320 pages can cover; ergo, there is unmapped territory. Which is great for DMs to expand on as needed. That's not marketing speak, it is what it is.

Not sure why you feel you need to reiterate this with me.

Someone said "They've mentioned on various YouTube videos that they decided to leave out certain areas of each level so that individual DMs can extrapolate and create their own stuff." I responded with "And of course we all know that's not the real reason."

It seems like we agree?

Parmandur · Nov 24, 2018

CapnZapp said:
Not sure why you feel you need to reiterate this with me.

Someone said "They've mentioned on various YouTube videos that they decided to leave out certain areas of each level so that individual DMs can extrapolate and create their own stuff." I responded with "And of course we all know that's not the real reason."

It seems like we agree?

The real reason is they couldn't do a multi-thousand page book, and leaving room for expansion is a fun way to handle that. There is no "real" reason to allude to.

hawkeyefan · Nov 24, 2018

I feel like this info was out there, and like others have pointed out, it may not have been obvious. But if it was such an important aspect of the product for a potential buyer, then I feel like it’d have been found.

CapnZapp said:
No, I meant that the reason isn't "that individual DMs can create their own stuff". That's bollocks. That would assume DMs are unable to expand on existing maps if these don't indicate large unexplored areas, as if we somehow need explicit permission to expand maps, which is obvious nonsense.

Is it obvious? Cries of “official content only” echo around the boards quite often, don’t they?

I expect the reason is as they’ve indicated...they’ve provided less vast sections of the floors in the interest of providing more floors. They likely felt that people could expand on it easily, with or without permission. They likely also imagined that leaving specific locations where a DM could expand one of the floors would be good starting points for enterprising DMs to add content on the DMs Guild. It makes the job of connecting the additional content to the original quite easy.

Morrus · Nov 25, 2018

Parmandur said:
The real reason is they couldn't do a multi-thousand page book, and leaving room for expansion is a fun way to handle that. There is no "real" reason to allude to.

Let's not be silly. It's a 300 page book which leaves out half of some of the levels. That doesn't equate to a multi-thousand page book.

guachi · Nov 25, 2018

5e modules seem incredibly space inefficient. Maybe it's my imagination, but it seems like 5e books have a lower word count per page than some earlier editions had.

LordEntrails · Nov 25, 2018

Morrus said:
Let's not be silly. It's a 300 page book which leaves out half of some of the levels. That doesn't equate to a multi-thousand page book.

It leaves out 80% or more of some of the levels.

Extrapolating from previously published maps, if one was to fully detail all the locations, without images and maps a complete Undermountain "book" would be at least 4000 pages long.

I'm pretty sure that's what Parmandur is referring to.

Ath-kethin · Nov 25, 2018

guachi said:
5e modules seem incredibly space inefficient. Maybe it's my imagination, but it seems like 5e books have a lower word count per page than some earlier editions had.

What you describe is something that to my recollection began in the 3.5 era. If you compare the font size in the core books with the font size in the later books, the difference is astounding; later books were printed using a much larger font. That combined with lower page counts led to substantially less content per book.

Of course, as people point out every time I bring this up, more text + smaller font = harder to read, and times, they have a-changed mightily since the 1e DMG and what felt like pages and pages of unbroken 6 point text.

5e books feel substantially more content-rich than later-era 3.x books did, so I'm fine with them so far. We'll see how it goes.

Morrus · Nov 25, 2018

guachi said:
5e modules seem incredibly space inefficient. Maybe it's my imagination, but it seems like 5e books have a lower word count per page than some earlier editions had.

This one is very much the opposite of that - it's very text dense, with very little artwork. Each chapter has an intro header art piece, and a full page map, and there is a handful of spot illustrations in the book, but if it's word count you're after, this one has it in spades.