Expert Player's Guides - $20 Hardbacks

[MongooseMatt]

Hi guys,

Here at Mongoose Publishing, we are always looking for new ways to present gaming material and better formats to help our readers get exactly what they need from our books. The Expert Player's Guides mark a new approach to D20 gaming from Mongoose Publishing.

How would you like huge 256 page hardback tomes packed full of D20 rules, each one a complete toolkit focussed on one area of the game?

How would you like every part of these books to be designated as Open Content, allowing you to freely use them in your own roleplaying projects?

And if that sounds good, how would you like these 256 page hardback books to be priced at less than twenty Dollars?

The Expert Player's Guides are designed to provide complete gaming resources, drawn from the very best of Open Gaming material, at a fraction of the price similar books have been traditionally marked at in the past.

Released in January, the first of these tomes is the Renegade Wizard's Spellbook, a source for variant spellcasting methods and arcane spell lists (after all, who wants to play a spellcaster who has access to only the 'standard' spells?). All for $19.95.

Following on from this we have some real treats in store - Clerics get the same treatment, then we have a compendium of Epic Level monsters, a complete bazaar that you can place in any town or city (and where players can pick up some amazing mundane knick-knacks), and much more!

For more information on this series, plus a quick peek at the Renegade Wizard's Spellbook, visit;

http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/d20/series.php?qsSeries=38

 

[philreed]

How much of the material in these books and how much is from existing OGC sources? Could we see a Section 15 for the first one?

 

[MongooseMatt]

I don't have the section 15 to hand at the moment but the majority of information from these books will be from Open sources.

 

[Napftor]

As an appreciatve user of open content, I'm pleased to see this announcement.

 

[trancejeremy]

So what's the catch? I mean, 256 pages for $19.99 is just too good to be true. Are they tiny books or something? Even if they are mostly open content from other sources and so you save money on writing (and art), that still seems too cheap

 

[Crothian]

This sounds cool, I can;y wait to see them!!

 

[MongooseMatt]

So what's the catch? I mean, 256 pages for $19.99 is just too good to be true. Are they tiny books or something? Even if they are mostly open content from other sources and so you save money on writing (and art), that still seems too cheap

No catch. None. Seriously. You know what a typical 256 page hardback looks like - same format.

We ran the numbers, saw it was possible and decided to go ahead. The catch (for us) is that we have to sell a certain number of books before we see a penny, and this number is more than the usual RPG title. However, we feel this is a reasonable risk. Basically, you chaps have a choice - you can have cheaper RPG books. On the other hand, if we don't hit those minimum numbers, you'll never see these books again

We are also doing something similar with our RuneQuest books, with the core rulebook priced at $19.95. Aside from a (very) large Babylon 5 box set detailing the entire station and one rulebook, I believe I am right in saying that we are releasing nothing RPG-related in 2006 that is more than $29.95.

As a company, we are very keen to go down the road less travelled and try things others may dismiss. The prices of RPG titles have been climbing over the past few years and we have released our own fair share of $40+ hardbacks. Now we are trying something a bit different.

Will it work? That is up to you chaps!

 

[Sledge]

Obviously my wallet will prefer it.
My main concern is that these books have a normal font size and normal margins. I don't need a book with a large font and 1.5 inch margins.

 

[trancejeremy]

Well, I hope you can pull it off, since I like cheap books. But from what I remember of the numbers the Atlas Game guy posted on RPG.net, you have to sell a lot of books to make that work. And possibly print them on Soylent White paper.

Still, I'll be buying them, because I'm the sort of person that would rather pay $20 for a big book on a subject I'm not that interested in as opposed to $20 for a 96 page book I am interested in.

 

[MongooseMatt]

Well, I hope you can pull it off, since I like cheap books. But from what I remember of the numbers the Atlas Game guy posted on RPG.net, you have to sell a lot of books to make that work. And possibly print them on Soylent White paper.

The Atlas figures were flawed.

The production values, incidentally, are not being reduced - same paper and hardbacks as our other books in this format, same margins, same lack of white space. It is no use reducing the price of something like this if you are not going to give the same value. Hopefully you'll regard it as a double whammy!