D&D 5E (2014) I just don't see why they even bothered with the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide.

[Arnwolf]

I don't want online guides. And I see no reason that a conversion guide should be free. If you don't like it return it, that's what I did with my 4E PHB.

 

[Sunseeker]

To me, it seems like book is targeting players, when what people were wanting and expecting was a book targeting the gm or setting in general. But yeah, it's really not a great product, and probably should have been released as a free PDF companion for an actual setting release.

I generally agree, it feels like essentially a very large "introduction to the campaign" booklet, it's similar to some of the things I've produced for my players of my larger games.

But I also agree that it's got a lot of the "what is this supposed to be?" but I think that it is WOTC recognizing a few things about their game:
The default Greyhawk fluff didn't catch everybody and left some people wanting anything else.
That their crunch was starting to wear thin and some supplemental splat was needed.
That their campaigns are neat but the "living world" doesn't do it for a lot of folks.
That they never actually did define any settings for their game at all.

So the SCAG comes out as addressing all of that, but not doing any of it particularly well. It probably should have been 3-4 books. A full-blown FR book for those new to it, how its been updated, how things can be converted etc... A crunch book with new classes, races, feats, spells, essentially a PHB2. And possibly a campaign setting for FR.

But I think the book also demonstrates WOTC's long-term strategy regarding new materials, which may or may not be in their best interests, is to keep all new splat bundled with fluff. For a variety of reasons.

 

[Hussar]

Why is it with every single release, the exact same people keep telling all and sundry how bad the book is? Good grief after over a year, if you have not liked a single 5e supplement, why on earth do you think you'll like the next one?

 

[Hussar]

I do have a question. Why would anyone expect a Sword Coast Adventurers Guide to detail anything other than the Sword Coast?

 

[pukunui]

I do have a question. Why would anyone expect a Sword Coast Adventurers Guide to detail anything other than the Sword Coast?

Furthermore, why would anyone expect an adventurer's guide to fill in for a full-blown campaign guide?

 

[Nikosandros]

You just have to keep an eye out. I managed to score a copy that's in pretty good condition for like $30 a few months ago. Have they got pdfs of it on dndclassics?

Currently, no. But new PDFs come out every week, so maybe sooner or later it will be available.

 

[IlluminatedSeraph]

.... It probably should have been 3-4 books. A full-blown FR book for those new to it, how its been updated, how things can be converted etc... A crunch book with new classes, races, feats, spells, essentially a PHB2. And possibly a campaign setting for FR.

But I think the book also demonstrates WOTC's long-term strategy regarding new materials, which may or may not be in their best interests, is to keep all new splat bundled with fluff. For a variety of reasons.

So I just wanted to pull out this piece of what you wrote and respond to it, because I think variations on this are behind a lot of the unhappiness I see on this board with the way that WotC is approaching the Realms and D&D in general. What I'm about to say may sound a little harsh, and I apologize because I don't mean it to be, but I feel like this is a basic attitude that is going to make a lot of people really consistently unhappy for a long time and that they'd be happier (even if just resigned) if they accepted a couple of facts.

1) WotC has gotten out of the business of trying to keep all of their settings current and reprinting all the source material each time. Smart or not, they've decided there are plenty of products available in the used and PDF market to service all the fluff you could ever want for any of their settings and are going forward with a combination of marketing to new players (which is SCAG's strong suit) and providing a few new hooks and twists for people to play with in their approach to the setting.

2) WotC has gotten out of the business of publishing giant rulebooks with tons of new crunch in them, like the PHB 2 and its kin. They've decided - rightly or wrongly - that there just isn't a market for that much material at a time, and that their game will stay fresh and lively longer if they update with a few new options every six months or a year. I do think they'd like to be putting things out faster, given how understaffed they are, but by 'faster' I think they probably have in mind a new "here are a few options" book every six months instead of the 11 they went between DMG and SCAG. Of course, we know for a fact that the Elemental Evil player's book was suppose to have happened in April and wound up crashing and burning - we got the PDF supplement essentially as the salvaged wreckage from that. Under the circumstances, I think it's pretty clear that this is their intended business model and we should expect to see our next mixed-use book sometime in the spring (or possibly they'll do something else, like the second Monster Manual that's rumored to be in the works).

Underlying both of those points is this: D&D just isn't being done on the scale of production that you're imagining when you wrote this post. There are not going to be 3-4 huge supplements in a year, around one campaign setting or around several, and there aren't going to be huge campaign books that try to put all the lore into a fresh new light and redo everything that's been done before. This is not what is happening, or what is going to happen, both because WotC doesn't have the resources to do it and because I'm pretty sure they don't think there's a profitable market in doing it even if they did. So can the people who hold this view please stop complaining about each individual supplement as it comes out for not being 3-4 giant books? It just isn't gonna happen. Be critical of WotC's corporate direction and basic plan for their IP if you like, but at least frame the discussion (for yourself and others) in those terms instead of comparing what is to a fantasy.

 

[jadrax]

Why is it with every single release, the exact same people keep telling all and sundry how bad the book is? Good grief after over a year, if you have not liked a single 5e supplement, why on earth do you think you'll like the next one?

It is hardly just the usual suspects though. This looks to be the lowest reviewed book of 5e so far.

It's not the people that hate it that is the problem, it's the number of people who have just gone 'meh'.

 

[Hussar]

It is hardly just the usual suspects though. This looks to be the lowest reviewed book of 5e so far.

It's not the people that hate it that is the problem, it's the number of people who have just gone 'meh'.

Well, going by Amazon, it's #335 in all books, so, it's not exactly sitting on the shelf. Granted, let's see where it is in a couple of months from now, but, that's not bad for an RPG book. To put it in context, the latest Pathfinder books, Inner Sea Races, came out October 15 and is ranked 33000 (ish) in books. Granted, I certainly wouldn't expect the sales to be similar, but, it does point to the pretty darn big gulf between the sales of the two companies on a given title.

I'm not exactly sure I put too much stock in reviews to be honest. Certainly not online ones.

 

[Li Shenron]

WotC has made it quite clear that they have no intent of publishing a complete setting book for settings that are well detailed in one or more prior editions. The two big objections to that are 1) new players don't even know these settings exist or that they could look in previous editions and 2) crunch needs conversion.

I don't have SCAG, so my feelings are based only on what I have read about it in these forums, which isn't little however.

I am not so sure what is meant by "new players". Real beginners start in someone else's gaming group and don't buy anything for a while until typically they buy the PHB, or they are people who first buy the PHB (or a starting box) and then join an existing group or start their own. I don't expect these people to start buying supplements for a while, at least not for the crunch (what is the point in wanting new subclasses and backgrounds when you haven't even played more than a couple of the core ones?).

OTOH, if they are DMs then they might want to check out some fantasy setting fairly soon, in order to be able to 'stage' their adventures somewhere. The PHB+MM+DMG don't provide setting information, only a certain 'vanilla' implied setting with all the monsters existing for example. So for those people I could imagine they would like to buy a book like this (where the extra crunch could be useful to give setting cultural features a more 'substantial' representation, that the DM can use for NPCs or propose to the players), and being maybe only a few months into the game, it makes sense that a cheap (i.e. slim) product is financially more attractive than a huge tome.

As for me, when I was a "new player" myself (2e era), what fascinated me most were exactly the huge tomes, not slim ready-to-use digests. I saw a lot more value in an encyclopaedia that I could read for years (I still do...) and use to generate endless adventures, and bring a whole new dimension to our tales. But maybe that's just me.

Note: I am not saying I want WotC to publish a new 5e FRCS. I already have a FRCS + a few additions, as well as other settings books. Probably I don't need more. And I might even buy the SCAG anyway since it's just so cheap, but it'll be for the little crunch, and just because.