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Draconomicon: surprises ahead! (scoop + speculation)

Maltrok

First Post
Klaus said:
Not to disagree with James Wyatt, but what *I* would do is take a cue from (drumroll) the D&D cartoon. Back in that cartoon, there was only one type of good dragon: gold. And the kids had to rescue its egg and save it from extinction.

I think a single metallic amid 5 chromatic ones would work fine. Almost like... a Point of Light.

;)

This would be the same as the original D&D rules: white, black, green, blue, red and gold were all that were shipped in Book 2.
 

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Klaus said:
Not to disagree with James Wyatt, but what *I* would do is take a cue from (drumroll) the D&D cartoon. Back in that cartoon, there was only one type of good dragon: gold. And the kids had to rescue its egg and save it from extinction.

I think a single metallic amid 5 chromatic ones would work fine. Almost like... a Point of Light.

;)

See, I rather like that idea myself. I always felt the notion that there must be an equal number of good and evil/metallic and chromatic dragons was a bit silly. (Especially since, pound for pound, the good/metallic dragons were always more powerful than their evil/chromatic counterparts.)

But we'll see. I honestly have no more clue than the rest of you what they'll be doing with metallic dragons. Since they can't just be "the good dragons" anymore, I'm hopeful they'll be interesting enough to hold their own. :)
 

JoeGKushner

First Post
Mouseferatu said:
My guess would be option #1. It wouldn't be the first edition where the PHB was underpriced for its size, in order to provide an easy "gateway" into the game.

So then the 'screws' come in with the DMG?

Dungeon Master's Guide
224 pages
$34.95

Most expensive per page of the 'core' books.

The dragon book is currently 288 pages for $39.95.

So for an extra five bones, you're getting 64 more pages than you do in a core book?

WoTC page/cost math is pretty fishy once they go beyond their standard 160/29.95 rates.
 

JoeGKushner said:
WoTC page/cost math is pretty fishy once they go beyond their standard 160/29.95 rates.

I don't know the specific numbers and details. What I do know is that printing costs don't rise at the exact same rate as page counts. In some cases, you can pay less per page by printing more, but in other cases you can't. I know that it's cheaper to print books at certain intervals than others. (For instance, I know that for some companies, it was best to print books in page counts that were divisible by 8; 16 was better, and 32 even better than that. But I don't know if that's always the case.) And I know that there's a certain optimum profit-to-cost ratio beyond which it becomes less cost-effective to print larger books, even when there is a bulk discount. Sometimes the companies will do so anyway, if they really want to hype a book, but it's not necessarily the best decision in terms of pure business.

Then, of course, there are predicted sales numbers to take into account. WotC knows the PHBs will sell in greater numbers than anything else, whereas more specialized books are going to sell less. This, too, inflates or deflates the "reasonable" cover price.

My point? Printing's a wonky business. I've looked into it, a little bit, and I still don't understand it. But I do know it's far more complex than a simple "This book is X% longer, so it should cost exactly X% more."

(All this, of course, completely ignores the point that there's absolutely nothing wrong with any RPG company, WotC or otherwise, charging what they think the market will bear for any given book.)
 


Set

First Post
Instead of a dragon that breathed lightning, it could be fun to see a dragon that built up static while flying low over the desert, and after a few hours had a set number of dice of electricity stored up within it, to be delivered via touch to any grounded creature. Perhaps only a set amount of dice would be delivered with a glancing blow, and the dragon would have several 'touches' worth of electricity stored up when first encountered.

It could swing by and zap round after round (or grapple and blow it's wad all at once through some unlucky sap), but once it's charge was drained, it would have to fly away and spend a few hours building up a new charge.
 

JoeGKushner

First Post
Don't get me wrong. WoTC can charge whatever they want for the books. Paper costs haven't diminished I believe and we've seen from Mongoose that going in-house with printing isn't necessarily the end all be all solution some might've thought it was.

Just seems odd that the three core books have such strange page counts. But I guess of the three, the DMG has been deemed the "loser" book in the old page count/price ratio.

Mouseferatu said:
I don't know the specific numbers and details. What I do know is that printing costs don't rise at the exact same rate as page counts. In some cases, you can pay less per page by printing more, but in other cases you can't. I know that it's cheaper to print books at certain intervals than others. (For instance, I know that for some companies, it was best to print books in page counts that were divisible by 8; 16 was better, and 32 even better than that. But I don't know if that's always the case.) And I know that there's a certain optimum profit-to-cost ratio beyond which it becomes less cost-effective to print larger books, even when there is a bulk discount. Sometimes the companies will do so anyway, if they really want to hype a book, but it's not necessarily the best decision in terms of pure business.

Then, of course, there are predicted sales numbers to take into account. WotC knows the PHBs will sell in greater numbers than anything else, whereas more specialized books are going to sell less. This, too, inflates or deflates the "reasonable" cover price.

My point? Printing's a wonky business. I've looked into it, a little bit, and I still don't understand it. But I do know it's far more complex than a simple "This book is X% longer, so it should cost exactly X% more."

(All this, of course, completely ignores the point that there's absolutely nothing wrong with any RPG company, WotC or otherwise, charging what they think the market will bear for any given book.)
 


Henry

Autoexreginated
Yair said:
I just want to say this picture is SO MUCH WORSE than the old draconomicon's picture...

Actually, I enjoy it a lot better than the Draconomicon's cover. The 3.5 Draconomicon was too bland in color for me. This one is more evocative to me.
 

Klaus

First Post
Henry said:
Actually, I enjoy it a lot better than the Draconomicon's cover. The 3.5 Draconomicon was too bland in color for me. This one is more evocative to me.
If, by "old Draconomicon", you mean the 2e Forgotten Realms one, I heartily agree.

If you mean the 3e one, all I can say is BURN, YOU HEATHEN!!!!

:nadt:

:D
 

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