D&D 5E 5e isn't a Golden Age of D&D Lorewise, it's Silver at best.

[Scribe]

Hmm the ethics of shareholder profits.

Yeah, not on my radar.

 

[delericho]

I suspect theybare changing up the format because they have to change the prices, and they wanted to make people.feel they were getting something different.

The thing this reminds me of more than anything else is a few years ago when Coke ran a massive advertising campaign around here about an exciting new bottle shape. Where the new bottles were both smaller and more expensive than the ones before.

 

[Azzy]

Haha, we are having two different convos here. Shareholders are not anywhere in my paradigm of ethical concerns or not.

Yeah, that's more polite than I could put it.

 

[delericho]

We've seen a ratcheting up of price-per-page at the same time quality has either remained constant or decreased, I'd suggest. What we definitely haven't seen is increased quality.

Fair enough.

I've reached a point now where the prices mean I have to be selective about my purchases - I could buy everything, but it would mean cutting back significantly elsewhere, which I don't want to do. So I now buy only books I'm reasonably sure I'll like.

And for that reason I've almost entirely stopped buying adventures, Tasha's persuaded me not to buy and more rules supplements, and Ravenloft (and the Spelljammer previews) the supplements.

So, yeah, I hear you.

What the pricing is on the 2024 editions of the PHB/DMG/MM will be absolutely fascinating and controversial whatever direction they go in.

Moving on from boring arguments about Overpricedjammer, what are people's predictions for the page counts and prices on the 2024 "big three"?

The "big three" have traditionally had absurdly high print runs that have led to a lower unit cost than might normally be expected. My gut feeling is therefore that we'll probably see the usual 1,000 pages between the three, and a price point of either $65 or $70. But I may well be wrong.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Fair enough.

I've reached a point now where the prices mean I have to be selective about my purchases - I could buy everything, but it would mean cutting back significantly elsewhere, which I don't want to do. So I now buy only books I'm reasonably sure I'll like.

Yeah I'm a vexing situation here, because in general terms, I like what WotC are doing re: stuff like Tashas, re: the new take on races, re: recent designs for subclasses (for the most part), re: the updates in the new Mordenkainen, but at the same time, WotC are just putting out a lot of material I can't really justify buying, so they're not getting much money from me.

And I'm not spending less overall on TT RPGs, I'm back in a '90s situation where money WotC (or TSR back then) could have had is going to other companies because they're actually producing interesting stuff that feels worth my time/money.

 

[ersatzphil]

And I'm not spending less overall on TT RPGs, I'm back in a '90s situation where money WotC (or TSR back then) could have had is going to other companies because they're actually producing interesting stuff that feels worth my time/money.

Amusingly, I'm in a similar boat, where I'm spending the bulk of my TTRPG money on old TSR products, because 90s era books like "Faces of Evil: the Fiends" or "Uncaged: Faces of Sigil" have ended up being more useful to me at the table than the current crop of books.

edit: To bring my comment more in line with the topic under discussion, I'd like to bring attention to Faces of Evil in particular, as a book that doesn't have any game mechanics in it. It's all just evergreen fluff. Kind of amazing it ever saw print, really.

 

[Azzy]

Yeah I'm a vexing situation here, because in general terms, I like what WotC are doing re: stuff like Tashas, re: the new take on races, re: recent designs for subclasses (for the most part), re: the updates in the new Mordenkainen, but at the same time, WotC are just putting out a lot of material I can't really justify buying, so they're not getting much money from me.

And I'm not spending less overall on TT RPGs, I'm back in a '90s situation where money WotC (or TSR back then) could have had is going to other companies because they're actually producing interesting stuff that feels worth my time/money.

Same, mostly. The difference is that D&D has to compete with my other hobbies (model building being the biggest competitor). Of course there are non-D&D TTRPGs, but I tend to have what I want of those already (just getting a group to play them is the problem).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Amusingly, I'm in a similar boat, where I'm spending the bulk of my TTRPG money on old TSR products, because 90s era books like "Faces of Evil: the Fiends" or "Uncaged: Faces of Sigil" have ended up being more useful to me at the table than the current crop of books.

edit: To bring my comment more in line with the topic under discussion, I'd like to bring attention to Faces of Evil in particular, as a book that doesn't have any game mechanics in it. It's all just evergreen fluff. Kind of amazing it ever saw print, really.

Those two books were absolutely amazing additions to Planescape and I got real use out of both, especially the latter, back when I ran Planescape (the latter was also inspiring to me artistically). And yeah, no game stats at all. No poorly-written low-level adventure. No monsters. Nothing except "fluff". But they were wonderful.

When I look back at 2E, even within the edition, most of the stuff I got the most use out of was "fluff" - i.e. campaign setting stuff of various kinds. Even when you look at serious heavy-duty "splatbooks" like the various FR pantheon books (including Demihuman Deities), I got zero use out of the stats for the gods, and very little (not zero) use out of the rules for the Speciality Priests for the gods, but I got a ton of use out of stuff like the way the religions were organised, the rituals, the titles, the holidays and so on. That is gold. That I will pay for! Not because it's "official", but because sparks the imagination and is in-tone with the setting.

You can see this in a modern example with Spire and it's various sourcebooks. The best stuff in most of those sourcebooks isn't the splat/mechanical material (some of which is excellent of course), but the details of various factions, the ideas about how they work, the ideas for adventures (which are woven in better than I've ever seen in another RPG, even across multiple authors - good work Rowan Rook and Decard, frankly, and you and the people writing for you are really pulling it out).

 

[Shardstone]

Those two books were absolutely amazing additions to Planescape and I got real use out of both, especially the latter, back when I ran Planescape (the latter was also inspiring to me artistically). And yeah, no game stats at all. No poorly-written low-level adventure. No monsters. Nothing except "fluff". But they were wonderful.

When I look back at 2E, even within the edition, most of the stuff I got the most use out of was "fluff" - i.e. campaign setting stuff of various kinds. Even when you look at serious heavy-duty "splatbooks" like the various FR pantheon books (including Demihuman Deities), I got zero use out of the stats for the gods, and very little (not zero) use out of the rules for the Speciality Priests for the gods, but I got a ton of use out of stuff like the way the religions were organised, the rituals, the titles, the holidays and so on. That is gold. That I will pay for!

Speaking as a publisher, just raw fluff doesn't really sell well at all anymore. I've tried. People still want their game stuffs, and they very much want adventures, be they modules or campaign-sized. I know its meme'd a lot, but the market is such that certain things are just far more worth the time of a writer to create and a publisher to put out. Can't get people to read our made-up histories and laws of physics without giving them something to imagine playing too.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Speaking as a publisher, just raw fluff doesn't really sell well at all anymore. I've tried. People still want their game stuffs, and they very much want adventures, be they modules or campaign-sized. I know its meme'd a lot, but the market is such that certain things are just far more worth the time of a writer to create and a publisher to put out. Can't get people to read our made-up histories and laws of physics without giving them something to imagine playing too.

Oh I totally believe it and I'm sure I'm guilty of ignoring pure-fluff books. I'm pretty sure half the reason Rowan Rook and Deckard always put some mechanics in their books is to make sure people who want "rules" buy them, even though they're easily 90-95% fluff by page count. Certainly those two are the last two "pure fluff" books I clearly remember buying.