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Message: <blockquote data-quote="w_earle_wheeler" data-source="post: 2646109" data-attributes="member: 35955">What I find amusing is the number of 3rd party d20 products with huge fonts, horrible layout and poor editing pricing their books at $39.95 just because WotC is doing it.Ugly greyscale borders, horrid fonts and messy background images just can't compete with the visual style of WotC. It doesn't trick anyone into thinking they're getting a higher quality product.The strength of a non-WotC product is in the independant writing and game design. Focus on that instead of poorly emulating a style outside of your budget. Instead of spending extra money on flashy design that doesn't work in greyscale, pay for more black and white illustrations, or another copy editor, or a nicer cover piece. Or just skip it and keep it clean and simple.Mongoose did a good job with the ParanoiaXP book. It was full of content and used artwork that was iconic to the genre. Kenzer is another good example with their HackMaster line. The 3rd edition of GURPS is another good example of how a publisher keeps costs down and quality standard with softcovers and artwork appropriate to a black-and-white layout (that is, until they started using messy photoshop art that would have worked well in color but was simply muddied in greyscale). The World's Largest Dungeon is another border offender, but it doesn't look too bad, and it is saved by the reasonably sized font and consistent, clean layout. I can (and will) buy an adventure module from Goodman Games for around $12, or a full-color one like The Devil Litch for around $20. Compare this to Monsters of Faerun or the new Warhammer FRP adventures.WotC has the advantage of being able to print more books at less cost. Stop trying to be WotC. The new Warhammer FRP adventures are an example of a bad move. Needlessly hardcover and overpriced, these supplements are a joke in my game store. The same goes for some of the ParanoiaXP supplements... priced in a similarly outrageous fashion to WotC's seldom spoken of Monsters of Faerun. The new Ravenloft books look like a mess, which is a real crime since their content isn't half-bad. The Adventure d20 book is an example of a great game with a good cover but an interior layout so schiziphrenic and embarassing that I couldn't bring myself to pay the outrageous cover price for it... maybe when it shows up in the discount bin, as many of the d20 publishers do in 6 months. Eden's All Flesh Must Be Eaten and WitchCraft are other awesome games that suffer slightly because of muggy layout and poor copy editing (thought WitchCraft was saved by amazing interior line art) -- if you look at the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG, it at least seems worth its high cover price because it's in full color. At least until you start stumbling over the editing mistakes.The publishers need to keep their costs down and show the authors and content the respect they deserve by editing it well and presenting it in a professional manner.I could be wrong. Maybe most people don't notice these things. But most of these books are barely worth $30... and don't give me the "oh but how much would you spend at a movie and dinner" spiel. I and my group seldom buy a book priced over $30, and even then we will get it off of Amazon.com for 20% - 30% off with free shipping. Maybe people with money to burn will be able to support the industry by buying 2 $40 books a month. Maybe I'm further in the minority than I want to believe. I guess only time will tell.But I don't expect the prices to come down. They're up for good. To lower them would mean admitting that the price points have been set too high, and that's not going to happen. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":-)" title="Smile    :-)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":-)" /></blockquote>

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