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<blockquote data-quote="humble minion" data-source="post: 8612429" data-attributes="member: 5948"><p>Hmmm. </p><p></p><p>On the upside: </p><p></p><p>I'm glad we're getting spelljammer. I love what I've seen of the art, it looks bonkers and gorgeous. I never played it back in 2e so I'm not too wedded to the whole phlostigon thing and don't terribly mind if it goes away, or if we shift partially into the Astral. SJ is about going to weird places, and the Astral ain't short of weird. I'm actually genuinely happy that they're breaking it up into individual books - I like having player-facing material separate to DM-facing, like how the old AD&D boxed sets used to have a campaign setting description in a player-facing setting book and then a whole bunch of secrets of the setting in the corresponding DM book with the adventure/adventures etc. This is good, more of this please! They could probably even incorporate the monster book into the adventure book and save printing costs and space.</p><p></p><p>On the downside: </p><p></p><p>I hate the DM screen. Seriously, I've got a zillion of those, I don't need more. It's surely a very low value-for-money piece of the package. Again, a hell of a lot of pagecount devoted to adventures in a setting release. I've harped on about this endlessly on here, it's one of my pet hates, but it's clear that WotC disagrees with me on this, so it's not like it was a surprise. And more seriously, the campaign setting component of the package looks very, very slim and anemic. Just comparing to other setting books:</p><p></p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Eberron: 44 pages player options. 77 pages setting (plus another 50 pages describing setting power groups/antagonists and how to run them in the EXCELLENT 'Building Eberron Adventures' section that every setting book since should 100% have emulated)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Ravenloft: 20 pages player options. 118 pages setting.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Wildemount: 42 pages player options. 147 pages setting</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Spelljammer: [drumroll] 64 pages of player options plus setting <em>combined </em>(and it's fair to assume that this 64 will include pages devoted to contents, introductions, maybe an index etc etc, so the real total will be less than this by as much as 10%)</li> </ul><p>That's ... not much. That's really not much at all. Compared to the other setting books, it's vanishingly tiny. I think we can safely assume that the Astral Adventures book will be where all the actual rules for spelljammers/spelljamming, air envelopes, navigation etc etc will be, so it might be even less. To be clear, we're looking at <em>less than half</em> of the space for setting material than there was in the SCAG, which is widely criticised (very rightly, in my opinion) for its limited coverage and scope, and general perfunctory, uninformative, and incomplete treatment of a big setting.</p><p></p><p>Now it's possible there'll be bleedover between books. Maybe setting details about the Elven Armada and the Scro empire etc (assuming they still exist) will all be in the (surprisingly large by comparison) monster book, maybe ships will be there too, and they'll probably try and shuffle some location descriptions/gazetteer stuff into the adventure book (heaven knows how, given how much they're cramming in there already).</p><p></p><p>But this still looks like an extraordinarily content-light release. I'm glad WotC is moving in the direction of slipcase collections and the separating out of DM and player material, and while I'm pretty cynical about the price rises, it's not unexpected and I can handle it. But It seems we're paying a whole lot of money for cardboard (in covers for very thin hardbacks and in the useless and unwanted DM screen) and getting a whole less paper (which is where the <em>actual usable content</em> is written) for our $.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="humble minion, post: 8612429, member: 5948"] Hmmm. On the upside: I'm glad we're getting spelljammer. I love what I've seen of the art, it looks bonkers and gorgeous. I never played it back in 2e so I'm not too wedded to the whole phlostigon thing and don't terribly mind if it goes away, or if we shift partially into the Astral. SJ is about going to weird places, and the Astral ain't short of weird. I'm actually genuinely happy that they're breaking it up into individual books - I like having player-facing material separate to DM-facing, like how the old AD&D boxed sets used to have a campaign setting description in a player-facing setting book and then a whole bunch of secrets of the setting in the corresponding DM book with the adventure/adventures etc. This is good, more of this please! They could probably even incorporate the monster book into the adventure book and save printing costs and space. On the downside: I hate the DM screen. Seriously, I've got a zillion of those, I don't need more. It's surely a very low value-for-money piece of the package. Again, a hell of a lot of pagecount devoted to adventures in a setting release. I've harped on about this endlessly on here, it's one of my pet hates, but it's clear that WotC disagrees with me on this, so it's not like it was a surprise. And more seriously, the campaign setting component of the package looks very, very slim and anemic. Just comparing to other setting books: [LIST] [*]Eberron: 44 pages player options. 77 pages setting (plus another 50 pages describing setting power groups/antagonists and how to run them in the EXCELLENT 'Building Eberron Adventures' section that every setting book since should 100% have emulated) [*]Ravenloft: 20 pages player options. 118 pages setting. [*]Wildemount: 42 pages player options. 147 pages setting [*]Spelljammer: [drumroll] 64 pages of player options plus setting [I]combined [/I](and it's fair to assume that this 64 will include pages devoted to contents, introductions, maybe an index etc etc, so the real total will be less than this by as much as 10%) [/LIST] That's ... not much. That's really not much at all. Compared to the other setting books, it's vanishingly tiny. I think we can safely assume that the Astral Adventures book will be where all the actual rules for spelljammers/spelljamming, air envelopes, navigation etc etc will be, so it might be even less. To be clear, we're looking at [I]less than half[/I] of the space for setting material than there was in the SCAG, which is widely criticised (very rightly, in my opinion) for its limited coverage and scope, and general perfunctory, uninformative, and incomplete treatment of a big setting. Now it's possible there'll be bleedover between books. Maybe setting details about the Elven Armada and the Scro empire etc (assuming they still exist) will all be in the (surprisingly large by comparison) monster book, maybe ships will be there too, and they'll probably try and shuffle some location descriptions/gazetteer stuff into the adventure book (heaven knows how, given how much they're cramming in there already). But this still looks like an extraordinarily content-light release. I'm glad WotC is moving in the direction of slipcase collections and the separating out of DM and player material, and while I'm pretty cynical about the price rises, it's not unexpected and I can handle it. But It seems we're paying a whole lot of money for cardboard (in covers for very thin hardbacks and in the useless and unwanted DM screen) and getting a whole less paper (which is where the [I]actual usable content[/I] is written) for our $. [/QUOTE]
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