Do you miss the good old days? Boxed sets and single books.

[Psychic Warrior]

That's why you keep them in the box.

wOW! I never thought of doing that!

 

[Thanee]

The boxed sets were a nice way to get into the game and gradually expand it, but I vastly prefer the 3E way of handling things with the three fairly complete core books.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Sledge]

my 3.5 core books came in a box. Seriously though I do miss getting boxes with lots of goodies. Stuff like the original forgotten realms boxed set and the undermountain and myth drannor boxes. Dark Sun also had an amazing initial boxed set.
However I am liking hardcover more and more these days. The goodies can of course be bought elsewhere. Still it would be nice to get it all as a kind of surprise again. That may of course be more of a childhood nostalgia than anything else.

 

[Nomad4life]

Back in the good ol’ days, I remember that the single most appealing advantage that Warhammer FR had over D&D to me was that everything you needed to play was all in one book. I liked that. A lot.

To this day, I still prefer RPGs that only require one book to play, with the one exception of C&C.

 

[SWBaxter]

There's lots of games out there that are playable with a single book. Box sets are rarer these days, I'm guessing that's due to some combination of economics and consumer preference. As to which I prefer, it differs from game to game. Part of D&D's appeal is that there are zillions of spells, zillions of critters, and zillions of classes/feats/etc., so I don't mind that the rules span several books. Other games pitch themselves as generic rulesets with specific sourcebooks for each genre, and again I don't mind that if they're done well. I also don't mind if a game built around a simple, strong theme is complete in one volume. Or if some generic rulesets (Fudge is a good example) pack a bunch of stuff in one rulebook and let you go from there.

The multi-book approach is better for the publishers, of course, since it helps to create an ongoing revenue stream. Lots of lines that work fine as one-book games (like Feng Shui or Call of Cthulhu) also have a bunch of add-ons available for purchase. Some folks actually get turned off of games simply because there's nothing being published for it, which is an attitude that I find a little odd but no doubt fuels the trend towards big libraries of supplements.

 

[Crothian]

I don';t miss the old days. It has nothing to do with how many books I need to Role play. There are many games out there that I only need one book to play right now, so it is not like that option is gone.

 

[Psion]

I liked my boxed sets, but they were sort of impractical... they got crushed &cetera.

 

[Glyfair]

I voted for missing the boxed set days, but it wasn't a "all the rules in one place," but the nostalgia for boxed sets. You had a lot of extra goodies with boxed sets, and they definitely added to the experience.

Yes, some of that can be recreated today with web enhancements & PDFs. However, more and more companies are forgoing that because of the expense with no direct income.

Yes, boxes can get crushed. However, the experience of opening the box and sorting through the cool stuff was great.

 

[Infernal Teddy]

I dunno... back about 2000 - 2003 it seemed like a lot of new editions were being redone in two books instead of one. 7th Sea, L5R 2nd edit, Blue Planet. And SR has never really been playable with just the core book.

On the other hand, the german edition of CoC is now in two books - and there never was a game where that was a better idea

 

[EyeontheMountain]

I voted no, mainly because I like hardcovers better. The otehr point to raise is that to play D&D, all you need is a computer capable of accessing/downloading the SRD. Couldn't do that inteh old days, now, could we.

At least not legally.