Has the age of the big book arrived?

[delericho]

I prefer bigger books. Heroes of Battle, in particular, struck me as being disappointingly thin. That said, extra pages for the sake of extra pages (or, worse, extra pages filled with blank space or a bigger font) are not a selling point either. Take the necessary space to produce the supplement you want to produce, and no more.

The only BIG book I have is AE, which I must confess I haven't read in detail. However, this was because it was an update, and not because of the weight of the book or the quality of the content.

 

[Shade]

How big are the fonts in these "big books"?

Compare them to the Forgotten Realms books, with their "I almost need a magnifying glass" font size...are they still bigger?

 

[Turjan]

How big are the fonts in these "big books"?

Compare them to the Forgotten Realms books, with their "I almost need a magnifying glass" font size...are they still bigger?

Hehe, now that you mention it. I liked the FR book, I'm comfortable with its font size. It's 320 pages, and that's about my favourite size for game books. I was okay with AE, as the layout was very good. Obviously it's hard to pack a complete d20 game in less pages than this one had, at least if you don't want to resort to FR font size.

I'm not a big fan of short books. For me, the days of the 64 pg. booklets is over. I'm not overly fond of the strategy to split releases into small books, if it isn't necessary. I'm okay with having introductory adventures in separate booklets, though, as you usually only use them for a limited number of times. If the setting details come separately, that's fine, too. I don't always treat setting and rules as monolithic units. That's why, in the end, I would have had preferred an updated version of AU to the final AE release, as I don't use the setting. But in principle, I like big books .

 

[DaveMage]

How big are the fonts in these "big books"?

Compare them to the Forgotten Realms books, with their "I almost need a magnifying glass" font size...are they still bigger?

AEG's WLD has very small type - slightly smaller (it seems to me) than the FRCS...

 

[HellHound]

After I stop at the airport this evening (everyone say "hi" to Paradigm Concepts)

Hi Paradigm Concepts!

 

[Impeesa]

Well, it has technology rules (which negates the need for part of Magic & Mayhem) and the new spellcaster setup sort of obviates the need for the spellcasting PrCs like necormancer.

But it doesn't really try to gather what it doesn't re-define. White wold has a conversion document which I think mentions what gets over-ridden that might give you more details:

http://www.white-wolf.com/downloads.php?category_id=64

Yeah... I haven't picked it up yet, but I took a good flip through it at the store. It looks to me like they took the original Warcraft RPG, did mostly new material covering the same areas (to bring it in line with WoW), then slapped in 90% of the PHB. Tada, huge book.

--Impeesa--

 

[philreed]

Hi Paradigm Concepts!

Back from the airport. Magic of Arcanis is now at print and should be at GenCon.

And now it's time for a break.


(I did grab Spycraft and Iron Heroes, though.)

 

[romp]

FWIW, I saw Spycraft 2.0 at $26.37 over at amazon.com ....

 

[philreed]

FWIW, I saw Spycraft 2.0 at $26.37 over at amazon.com ....

Highly recommended at that price. It's a very attractive book. I was surprised to see the reference to the Star Wars RPG, though -- I had thought the cleanest approach would have been to scrap the Star Wars reference and use the V/WP system from Unearthed Arcana.

I guess that didn't surprise me quite as much as seeing the "Requires use of the Dungeons & Dragons . . . " in Iron Heroes.

 

[Azgulor]

I disagree, at least from my personal experience. I balk at spending $50 in one shot, no matter how good a deal, yet I have no problem blowing $10-20 in four or five different stores.

And my fiance would kill me if I spent $50 on one book, but dropping $20 here and there I can get away with.

When was the last time you saw a hardcover come in with a list price of under $20? The only ones that come close in my recent memory are the original 3.0 core rulebooks at $20 each. That was $60 to play a game five years ago with material spread over 3 books vs. $50 for say, Conan or $40 for Spycraft 2.0 (list prices again) which are complete games in a single book.

I would much rather have a single, self-contained book for a game where the supplements are truly optional rules and material. I've played far too many games where I had to wait an additional 6-18 months for additional books to come out and fill in gaping holes such as magic, monsters, etc.

Azgulor