Is the Age of Hardcover Gluttony over?

[jimmifett]

Personally, I prefer hard covers. I started out as a kid with GURPS, and am now afraid to open half my soft covers lest pages fall out. It's been who knows how many years, and my poor beat up hard cover of the GURPS basic set 3e is still holding together, albeit with a little scotch tape I applied.... over a decade ago? I was so happy when they switched to hard cover for 4th edition, but now it looks like they've gone back to soft in recent years. With DnD, I love me some nice hard covers. I have a couple 3.0 soft covers, but not many.

As far as art, I wouldn't waste my time buying old school black and white. I've thumbed through the previous edition artwork and while as a kid it may have been neat, as an adult I want higher production quality for my money. I want stuff I can thumb through with my rugrat on my lap and wow her with the pictures. There is a lot of 3rd and 4th ed art that isn't the best, but I don't care for the older art in previous editions at all. Just not my cup of tea. I want stuff that is going to look attractive for years until i have my holographic pop-up books and my personal jetpack for when the flying car is in the shop.

As an aside, i'm also trying to collect the classic boardgames in "faux book box" form to have to pass on to rugrat when she grows up and has little rat bastard DMs in training of her own.

 

[JeffB]

As far as art, I wouldn't waste my time buying old school black and white. I've thumbed through the previous edition artwork and while as a kid it may have been neat, as an adult I want higher production quality for my money. I want stuff I can thumb through with my rugrat on my lap and wow her with the pictures. There is a lot of 3rd and 4th ed art that isn't the best, but I don't care for the older art in previous editions at all. Just not my cup of tea. I want stuff that is going to look attractive for years until i have my holographic pop-up books and my personal jetpack for when the flying car is in the shop..

If you were referring to my comment about art in the older books- I was not talking about the style but rather the QUANTITY of art in those old B/X books (i.e not much).

 

[Obryn]

I was so happy when they switched to hard cover for 4th edition, but now it looks like they've gone back to soft in recent years. With DnD, I love me some nice hard covers. I have a couple 3.0 soft covers, but not many.

I'd give these new ones a chance. They're spending enough to give them lay-flat binding, so I'm hoping the quality is good and the books will be fairly durable.

Hoping, not knowing. Just hoping.

-O

 

[ggroy]

In part, from distributors and retailers. In the days of the d20 boom, there was just so much product coming out each month that the retailers had to decide what to buy and what not to buy. Hardcovers became one of the quickest criteria for people who didn't want or couldn't afford to stock everything: buy hardcovers, pass on softcovers. It was a real pressure for many manufacturers to put everything in hardcover just so most stores would look at it.

Sounds very much like an "arms race" for shelf space during the d20 glut.

Even the bigger d20 3pp companies went in the direction of cranking out tons of hardcover books during the d20 glut era, such as:

- Mongoose (ie. Ultimate *, Classic Play *, OGL *, etc ...)
- Fantasy Flight (Legends & Lairs, Path of *)

 

[IronWolf]

I have no issues with a move towards soft covers as long as it helps keep the price low on RPG products. If my dollar can go further with soft cover books and if they are quality enough to last given they are cared for then I am all for it.

 

[Kobold Boots]

If we're talking personal preferences here I think that game books need to stop being about art/marketing and start being about playing a game again. It's particularly ridiculous when you pay 20-40 dollars for a book that's a couple hundred pages and pull out the text, put it in a word doc, and organize it in a three-ring binder by topic for ease of play and you've got 45 pages of useful information because the typesetting and art take up so much of the work.

Translation, you're getting about 9 dollars worth of game related text for that 20-40 dollar price tag. I'm not complaining in any way, but it's important to put stuff in perspective. I love the art, and presentation, but do I really care about that as a guy that got into things at the 1st ed level? No. It adds nothing to the gameplay IMHO.

KB

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Personally, I prefer hard covers. I started out as a kid with GURPS, and am now afraid to open half my soft covers lest pages fall out.

Many of my early Battletech books, such as the excellent House books and early tech readouts, all used such pitiful glue that the pages are all now loose. I wish hard covered denoted quality glue, my copy of Unearthed Arcana (AD&D edition) has cracked in numerous places, whole chunks of the books slide in and out of the covers.

 

[IronWolf]

If we're talking personal preferences here I think that game books need to stop being about art/marketing and start being about playing a game again.

I used to say this about art myself. But I've really found myself liking the art in the Paizo books to the degree that I consider it a rather large pro to their materials.

 

[S'mon]

I find the hardback-obsession a bit annoying; those things are damn heavy when you have to put 8 of them in your bag to take to the game session! I guess people who GM at their house, or who drive to the venue, don't have this problem, but commuting to the game by public transport it's a real issue!

 

[Dice4Hire]

I much prefer hardbacks. The 20-30% additional cost is well spent in my opinion. Not only do they look better, but they are easier to store and last longer (in general).

On of my beefs with essentials is the whole paperback thing. It makes me very leery of investing in it, though I have 2E paperbacks that are in fine shape.

If I have a choice, hardcovers for me.