Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Keldryn" data-source="post: 5428195" data-attributes="member: 11999">I'm a bit conflicted about this, but for the most part I don't like it.I have to agree that publishing more books which primarily consist of new character options (powers, feats, etc) doesn't make a whole lot of sense, as the Character Builder has proven to be very popular and is a lot easier than searching through half a dozen books to create or level up a character.Unfortunately, the CB tends to just turn any new character options into more entries in an already massive and often overwhelming list of powers and feats.  The original context of those options is frequently obscured or lost altogether.  If a Dragon article features a new "school of fighting" for martial characters, the powers and feats associated with that write-up typically just get added to the CB as yet more options, without much of the story elements joining them.  There is a list of "Dragonmark Feats" in the CB, but again the context is missing, as there is no mention of which dragonmarked house is associated with that dragonmark, which race comprises that house, or that a PC not of that race is probably the only individual in the world to manifest a dragonmark in that manner.  (This does trace back to the 4e EPG however, as the descriptions for those dragonmark feats don't mention houses or races either; you have to flip back to the intro section to match them up.  The original 3.5 Eberron book not only mentions the house in each dragonmark feat write-up, but also briefly touches on how marked house members have used their powers in the world and even the associated guilds that non-marked members belong to.)If most future "splatbook" expansions are published digitally, the story elements will of course still be there to read.  However, it feels like the CB is becoming the focus for creating D&D characters, to the point where many players don't buy the book or even bother to read through the new options in their original context.  Everybody will of course approach it differently, but for me the massive lists of powers and feats in the CB don't do a whole lot to spark my imagination or suggest interesting character stories.  On top of that, I spend my workdays sitting in front of a computer screen all day (I'm a programmer).  I play a fair amount of video games (or at least I used to before the baby came along last year).  I feel rather over-saturated in my exposure to electronic media, and I find myself longing for some time when I'm not plugged in to the digital world.  I want to be able to prep for a D&D game without sitting at a computer or reading a PDF off of a screen.  I want to spend an evening every couple of weeks sitting around a table with friends who are physically present and who are not distracted every 15 minutes by instant messages and cell phone calls.  I want at least one leisure activity that isn't polluted by the need to be "plugged in" 24/7.  If they more or less cease publishing physical books, then I'm likely finished with being a customer.  Reading off a tablet screen or an eReader is not the same experience as reading a physical book (which may be a plus for some, but not for me).  It's probably a good business decision on their part, but it no longer meets my needs as a consumer.</blockquote>

Verification