Dark Sun - Player's Guide rendered obsolete

[Windjammer]

So far with 4E settings we got two books - a DM exlusivie campaign guide, and a Player's Guide with race and class entries appropriate for the setting along with some nice campaign specific feats and "backgrounds".

4E Dark Sun is abandoning that model in favour of this:

Book 1:

Dark Sun Campaign Setting
D&D Supplement
Richard Baker and Robert J. Schwalb





Aimed at players and Dungeon Masters, this game supplement explores the heroes and wonders of Athas—a savage desert world abandoned by the gods and ruled by terrible sorcerer-kings. Use it to build Dark Sun heroes and thrilling D&D adventures set in the Seven Cities of the Tyr Region, the Ivory Triangle, the Sea of Silt, and monster-infested wastelands—or plunder it for your own D&D campaign!
The Dark Sun Campaign Setting provides exciting character options for D&D players, including new races, new character themes and class builds, new paragon paths and epic destinies, and new equipment. It also provides everything Dungeon Masters need to run 4th Edition Dark Sun campaigns or include Dark Sun elements in their homebrew campaigns. It has rules and advice for handling survival challenges, arena encounters, desert terrain, and adventure creation. It also presents a short, ready-to-play introductory adventure.
Item Details
Item Code: 253870000
Release Date: August 17, 2010
Series: D&D Supplement
Format: Hardcover
Page Count: 224
Price: $39.95 C$44.00
ISBN: 978-0-7869-5493-3

First emphasis mine. Observe the price tag compared to the page count (less than Eberron or FR Campaign Guide).

Book 2:

Dark Sun Creature Catalog
D&D Rules Supplement
Richard Baker and Bruce R. Cordell

Monsters and other threats from the world of Athas.
This supplement for the Dark Sun Campaign Setting collects the most iconic and dangerous monsters of the Dark Sun campaign setting into one handy tome. It also contains other hazards and threats found in the desert wastelands and dungeon tombs of Athas. The creatures and threats presented herein make worthy encounters for Athasian heroes or the heroes in your "homebrew" D&D campaign.

Item Details
Item Code: 253880000
Release Date: August 17, 2010
Series: D&D Rules Supplement
Format: Trade Paperback
Page Count: 144
Price: $19.95 C$23.95
ISBN: 978-0-7869-5494-0

Can anyone explain the rationale for this? It used to be that 1 DM buys the Campaign Guide and then 1-2 players buy the Player's Guide. Seems to me that the DM is now asked to buy two books (at roughly the same page count) for $60 and the players are asked to buy a book at the DM book price tag. Not only that, where are the DM exclusive infos on the setting world? Why is the intro adventure in a book addressed to DM's and players?

I'm quite disappointed. 4E provided a brilliant way of rethinking the distribution of setting material into the DM's and players' hands respectively (contrast the 3.5 Player's Guides to Eberron and Faerun), and now WotC reverts to the earlier, less functional model in the name of ... what? Increased sales? Please tell my my cynical streak is wrong and I'm missing the great rationale behind this. Thanks.

 

[ggroy]

Can anyone explain the rationale for this? It used to be that 1 DM buys the Campaign Guide and then 1-2 players buy the Player's Guide. Seems to me that the DM is now asked to buy two books (at roughly the same page count) for $60 and the players are asked to buy a book at the DM book price tag. Not only that, where are the DM exclusive infos on the setting world? Why is the intro adventure in a book addressed to DM's and players?

I'm quite disappointed. 4E provided a brilliant way of rethinking the distribution of setting material into the DM's and players' hands respectively (contrast the 3.5 Player's Guides to Eberron and Faerun), and now WotC reverts to the earlier, less functional model in the name of ... what? Increased sales? Please tell my my cynical streak is wrong and I'm missing the great rationale behind this. Thanks.

If we knew exactly what the sales figures were for the 4E Forgotten Realms and Eberron titles, it may possibly give us a clue as to their reasoning.

 

[Rechan]

Dark Sun isn't going to have a class. So, the crunch for players is probably fairly limited. Thus less a need for a player's book.

 

[ggroy]

Dark Sun isn't going to have a class. So, the crunch for players is probably fairly limited. Thus less a need for a player's book.

In principle they could have done a Dark Sun player's guide as a 32 or 64 page softcover book.

 

[The Little Raven]

Can anyone explain the rationale for this?

After two settings using the original model, they probably decided that the DM's guide wasn't delivering as good a return on the investment as they thought, so they made the core book one that both players and DMs would buy.

Also, for the Creature Catalog, that is highly necessary for a setting like Dark Sun, which is up to its eyeballs in new, weird, Athas-specific monsters. Looking at the Eberron and FR guides, there is a really low amount of new monsters, compared to what you would need to reasonably represent Dark Sun's individuality.

As for the price... we're in a recession, still, and the price of paper and other printing costs has been rising recently.

4E provided a brilliant way of rethinking the distribution of setting material into the DM's and players' hands respectively (contrast the 3.5 Player's Guides to Eberron and Faerun), and now WotC reverts to the earlier, less functional model in the name of ... what? Increased sales? Please tell my my cynical streak is wrong and I'm missing the great rationale behind this. Thanks.

I agree that the Player/DM division of materials was a good one, but we only see the results on our end, not the results on WotC's end. It may have been a good model in theory, but might not be working out in pratice.

Also, if the model they move to is increasing sales, that makes it a more functional model for them, since their objective is to continue to sell supplements so they can continue to develop them. There's nothing sinister about changing a plan after two attempts with the initial plan, if it will net you higher sales or more customers.

Dark Sun isn't going to have a class. So, the crunch for players is probably fairly limited. Thus less a need for a player's book.

This is true, but we are going to see other new, player mechanics.

I believe part of it is that they aren't going to detail Athas as much as we have detail on Eberron and the Realms, because Athas should be much more of a mystery for DMs to do with as they please.

 

[The Little Raven]

In principle they could have done a Dark Sun player's guide as a 32 or 64 page softcover book.

Which would actually make everything cost more overall, since printing a separate 32 page book would cost more than including those 32 pages in a larger book. Also, while those 32 pages in a larger book would be pure content, in a separate book, several of those pages would be eaten up by ToC, credits, title pages, indexing, and whatnot.

 

[frankthedm]

Can anyone explain the rationale for this?

...and now WotC reverts to the earlier, less functional model in the name of ... what? Increased sales?

Please tell my my cynical streak is wrong and I'm missing the great rationale behind this.

You did not miss anything. Similar thing was done to Dungeon magazine when it was fused with Polyhedron.

 

[Fifth Element]

Also, for the Creature Catalog, that is highly necessary for a setting like Dark Sun, which is up to its eyeballs in new, weird, Athas-specific monsters. Looking at the Eberron and FR guides, there is a really low amount of new monsters, compared to what you would need to reasonably represent Dark Sun's individuality.

This right here. Dark Sun needs a plethora of new monsters, unlike the settings released to date. So they probably looked at the option of having a player's book, DM's book, and monster book, and realized the rage they would receive for requiring three books to play the setting, when they've promised it would only be two, they went in this direction.

 

[Windjammer]

"More functional for WotC" - I see. Still believe they could have switched to a more profitable way of distributing the content while, at the very least, keeping the adventure in the DM-exclusive offering.

I must also confess of not seeing a single 4E WotC softcover since the "Wizards presents" previews, so I guess they are at least very wise to reduce the price tag of the bestiary by going softcover. (160 page 4E hardcovers cost $30, and the bestiary is 144.)

I also hope that the Dark Sun bestiary part isn't as heavily tied into the main book's world section as it was in the FR campaign guide (for instance, Underdark entry with Drow entry; Okoth with reptiles etc etc). I penciled in some dozen cross references in my copy of the FRCG between world and bestiary section; but cross referencing these sections across two books is rather inconvenient, especially for table use.

 

[Windjammer]

Which would actually make everything cost more overall, since printing a separate 32 page book would cost more than including those 32 pages in a larger book. Also, while those 32 pages in a larger book would be pure content, in a separate book, several of those pages would be eaten up by ToC, credits, title pages, indexing, and whatnot.

A 32 page softcover for 4E by WotC costs $10 (point of comparison: Dragonborn and Tiefling race codeces). Taking those - purely hypothetical - 32 pages away from the Dark Sun CG, we're left with a 190 pp. page count. Sticking to the previous page count of 4E campaign guides - of ca. 290 pages - that means they could have integrated the bestiary into a solid 100 page section in the book itself.* On the whole, we'd be looking at a Campaign Guide at $40 and a Player's book at $10 - and these are the overall price tags for the DM and the player respectively. Under their new offering, a DM is asked to pay $60 and a player is asked to pay $40. That's double the combined cost, and they aren't offering more in terms of page count, just a less convenient distribution of the content.

And that's not even comparing the amount of material you get these days in a $40 book compared to, say, a previous offering like the 3.0 Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting.

I'm appreciative of 4E using large font and huge areas of white space in their books, but combined with the increasingly poorer content/cost ratio this is getting inexcusable rather quick.

*How is this too little for Dark Sun? I'm serious here, I'd like to know. I'm rather afraid that they're gonna bloat the bestiary with useless fringy stuff like the Athasian cacti in Dragon #364 to meet their page count. In that vein:

for the Creature Catalog, that is highly necessary for a setting like Dark Sun, which is up to its eyeballs in new, weird, Athas-specific monsters. Looking at the Eberron and FR guides, there is a really low amount of new monsters, compared to what you would need to reasonably represent Dark Sun's individuality.

...

I believe part of it is that they aren't going to detail Athas as much as we have detail on Eberron and the Realms, because Athas should be much more of a mystery for DMs to do with as they please.

Emphasis mine. So we need a huge bestiary and a small world section for ... what purpose exactly? Honestly, I'm more and more hoping that they just pitched the bestiary incorrectly and that it's more of a general background resource with "threats" covering not just critters but a lot more info on the dragon kings etc.