I still remember sitting in your driveway poring over the Monster Manual. Heady times!Will you ever kickstart this?
Unlike Undermountain, almost all the mapped locations are keyed! We have left room for expansion (if desired); a short part of the intro offers some tips on where/how one might expand.
Joe B will be able to answer the pricing question. I think you'll be able to buy the hard copies separately - either to test out the product with a single volume first, or to spread out the $ pain over several installments (either of which is completely understandable).
I had the same feeling wrt Undermountain. Still, I know plenty of others liked it for giving them room to do their own thing as DMs. Arden Vul, on the other hand, aims to be fully statted (even if we fully expect DMs to customize it to their own tastes).I always thought that almost too much of Undermountain was left to the DM so I dont really consider it a mega dungeon. So I like that this is more complete. I also like that I can buy in volumes. If I buy 1 & 5 (for the maps) first out of the print run, it pretty much ensures that 2, 3 & 4 will be available later Id guess. Who is gonna buy an incomplete set? But stranger things have happened.
I had the same feeling wrt Undermountain. Still, I know plenty of others liked it for giving them room to do their own thing as DMs. Arden Vul, on the other hand, aims to be fully statted (even if we fully expect DMs to customize it to their own tastes).
I also figured it would be easier for a DM to ignore stuff (that is, decide to make a filled room empty) than it would be to create new stuff on the fly. So, although I know that some designers like to adhere to a formula of X empty rooms per map (or whatever), I elected to fill most spaces while anticipating that DMs can ignore stuff they don't like. Of course that doesn't mean monsters in every room - plenty of places have no fighting (interesting puzzles, traps, dungeon decor, etc.). And certain areas are more likely to have 'emptier' areas than others: for ex., Level 3 (a primary entrance) has a lot of monster-less rooms in the immediate vicinity of the main entrance (for obvious reasons). The further one gets from traveled areas, the more critters ... I tried to give players something to do (fight, puzzle, ponder, wonder, etc.) in each area.I know that this has been commonplace since day 1 to leave a few empty rooms in a dungeon here and there but UM had too many throughout the detailed areas for my taste. Seems like you guys struck a good median here.