The ultimate guide to D&D?

Thornir Alekeg said:

To me this means that D&D has made it, it has become a large enough part of our society to warrant its own "Dummies" book. ...

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I second that. I was going to say what's the big deal this is only a good thing. It's like a magazine you don't make a magazine unless theirs enough people to buy it then you get an e-zine

Winterthorn said:

It's less provocative than the more mature "D&D for Dummies and Sex for Dummies bundle"! (Oh my, the multiple interpretions! Egads! What has been unleashed? ) I think I'll stop before I get into trouble...

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So which book of that pair would explain Hewards Mystical Organ? Or spells like Enlarge Person? Hold Person? Domination? Virtue? Haste? Rope Trick? Iron Body? Don't answer yet...

I mentioned the book to my mom while she was up and how I thought I'd pick it up for her and my dad so they would know what I'm talking about. It would be nice to be able to say, "just look it up in the book," instead of trying to explain something.

diaglo said:

i want to know why the cut off is age 45.

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[Homer Simpson]
I'm a white male, age 18 to 49. Everyone listens to me, no matter how dumb my suggestions are.[/Homer]

I don't think it's such a terrible I dea, especially for people who are just starting and don't know anybody who has who has played to help them learn. I remember how hard it was to strat even when I had played in a bunch of pbem games before.

merge! merge!

die_kluge said:

I still can't get over the fact that this thing is actually larger than the Player's Handbook.

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Couple reasons for that.

The page size difference for a dummies book and for D&D books. Dummy books being about 2/3 the height as a D&D book. They also will typically use a pitch 12 font without any column use.

It also theoretically explains stuff in all of the core books, but I still think most of it will be PH simply because that's where the majority of rules are.

However, I suspect most of it is due to more examples and possibly diagrams (I imagine we will see some nice pretty AoO diagrams in it ).

Still, that size difference is a bit odd.

Don't forget the Dummies books use wide margins to allow room for their icons. I believe the Dummies word count/page is something like 400 or so, while the PHB is about 3 times that.

Market research indicates that 4 million American males, ages 8 to 45, play Dungeons & Dragons, while 7.6 million who haven’t played say they want to learn how.

At first I had a hard time believing this fact when I first read it, but when I think about it, it makes sense. Saying they "want to learn how" is a bit misleading. I've had quite a few friends that have said it looked interesting and wouldn't mind trying it out sometime, but it's usually nothing more than a casual interest and often times they don't end up trying it out when invited to do so. Maybe the above should read "while 7.6 million who haven't played have expressed interest in doing so."
Also, why does it only say males? I've known females that play or have at least had an interest in doing so. They may be alienating a large demographic with a statement like this.

and even move up in the hierarchy to become a Dungeon Master.

What? Since when was there a hierachy? All it takes to be the DM is the willingness to do a little (or a lot) more work than the players and in the case of many DMs I know, also the willingness to spend a good deal more money on books. I've never heard of a gaming hierachy, but then again, maybe I'm just not hanging around the right places.
I like the idea this book could bring new players (I like the idea of anything that brings new players), but I really hope they all don't show up thinking there's some sort of pecking order they need to get into.

Paul