D&D 5E 5E Player's Handbook owners: What's the current condition of your book's binding?

[doctorhook]

Hey gang,

There have been a number of reports from posters here (myself included) that the binding in their 5E Player's Handbooks are already damaged or falling apart only two months after launch. I'm posting this thread as per @Morrus' suggestion in another thread, just to gauge how widespread this issue is among ENWorlders.

Post your experiences!

EDIT: Set this post to run for 90 days; turns out that brings us exactly to New Year's Eve 2014! Should give us a good spread.

 

[Quickleaf]

I just voted. Binding cracked and some sections falling out of book after minimal use (dont even have a game going yet). Got my PHB thru Amazon, but I passed their return deadline. Sent message to Amazon customer service, waiting to hear back.

I encourage others to vote, and then for this to turn into a letter to WOTC advising them with hard numbers about how widespread the binding issue is.

 

[doctorhook]

I just voted. Binding cracked and some sections falling out of book after minimal use (dont even have a game going yet). Got my PHB thru Amazon, but I passed their return deadline. Sent message to Amazon customer service, waiting to hear back.

I encourage others to vote, and then for this to turn into a letter to WOTC advising them with hard numbers about how widespread the binding issue is.

Ditto here, except I went Chapters.ca instead of Amazon. I looked sending it back to WotC for a replacement, but from Canada to the States and back is a recipe for pricey shipping, so I'm looking into rebinding it somehow...or alternatively, ordering another book and then returning the defective one in its place. (Roll an ethics or karma check, DM's choice.) I'm concerned that even if I got it replaced, the new book would just have the same problem in another two months anyway.

 

[Mercurius]

Mine is fine but I've only gently used it. It really sounds like WotC used a sub-par print-shop.

 

[doctorhook]

Mine is fine but I've only gently used it. It really sounds like WotC used a sub-par print-shop.

Yeah, trouble is that it's tough for us on the boards to separate the music from the noise, so to speak; lots of people are complaining about this, but that doesn't really tell us much about how prevalent it is. With this poll, I'm hoping we'll have a better rough-guess of the proportions.

At the moment, with only four respondents, I'm guessing wildly that the numbers will ultimately show that one-fifth of 5E Player's Handbooks have weak or defective binding. That would be a relatively small minority of the books, and yet still scandalously bad news for WotC.

 

[fjw70]

No issues.

 

[drjones]

Mine now is perfect, but my first one cracked all the way through after short use. Got a replacement for free at my FLGS.

 

[drjones]

At the moment, with only four respondents, I'm guessing wildly that the numbers will ultimately show that one-fifth of 5E Player's Handbooks have weak or defective binding. That would be a relatively small minority of the books, and yet still scandalously bad news for WotC.

I don't know about that at all. Every video game I have ever seen has a forum thread somewhere full of people who had a serious issue and could not run it at all insisting that because 100 people had the same issue that it must be a huge problem. But it ignores the selection bias of people coming to forums being more likely to be the ones who are having problems and ignores the total number of units sold. 100 people could be a lot, but it might still be less than a tenth of a percent of the users. The only people who know the real failure rate are at Wizards.

 

[doctorhook]

I don't know about that at all. Every video game I have ever seen has a forum thread somewhere full of people who had a serious issue and could not run it at all insisting that because 100 people had the same issue that it must be a huge problem. But it ignores the selection bias of people coming to forums being more likely to be the ones who are having problems and ignores the total number of units sold. 100 people could be a lot, but it might still be less than a tenth of a percent of the users. The only people who know the real failure rate are at Wizards.

Word; that's exactly the point I was trying to make. Since only WotC knows the stats on rates of defective products, and since they're unlikely to talk about it publicly, we need some data before we can talk about this intelligently. Obviously the sample here won't be representative of the production run as a whole, but even the data from a biased sample (i.e.: only ENWorlders who post) is more reliable than guesses and anecdotes.

As for my 1/5th guesstimate, that was just a random number I pulled from my butt, for the purposes of comparison later. Suffice to say, if the actual number of defective books is anywhere near 20% of the print run, it could be disastrous for WotC. (Just FYI, I love 5E, so I'm not hoping for a pox on WotC's house--I just want a better idea how many people have books that are falling apart too.)

 

[Wepwawet]

Mine is fine and I use it quite hard: reading in bed in strange positions, carrying it in my bag to work or to see friends, and generally reading anywhere i can...

Sometimes i do think that the way i'm holding the book can't be good for its health, but it's holding on perfectly fine