D&D 5E I just don't see why they even bothered with the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide.

[Prism]

I'm actually staring at the 3rd edition Campaign setting book right now so I don't need to double check anything. If you think SCAG has more information than it then you need to go back and triple check.

Then you will be aware, and to quote you, you are 100% wrong on the detail. SCAG is a regional book and has lots more information on the Sword Coast region than the 3rd edition Campaign Guide. I am aware that you don't think that information is useful but it seems to be useful to others. Plenty of regional history, locations and story hooks. Do you even have the SCAG?

 

[variant]

The worst part of the SCAG is that the only character option supplement book is filled with a bunch of useless Forgotten Realms information.

It has about $10 worth of crunch in a $40 book. Unfortunately, you have to buy this if you want things like the Swashbuckler or Bladesinger subclasses.

Why are we stuck buying a Forgotten Realms book to get a few generic D&D and fantasy options?

 

[Angel of the Dawn]

The worst part of the SCAG is that the only character option supplement book is filled with a bunch of useless Forgotten Realms information.

Not the only one. Here's the Elemental Evil's Player's Companion, not as tied to the Realms. Much cheaper and all crunch.

It has about $10 worth of crunch in a $40 book. Unfortunately, you have to buy this if you want things like the Swashbuckler or Bladesinger subclasses.

Why are we stuck buying a Forgotten Realms book to get a few generic D&D and fantasy options?

You know, the internet is for complaining and all, but I think all the class variants and the metric ton of backgrounds were worth the cost of SCAG. At least, for me. That's why I bought it, after all. I didn't want any of the Forgotten Realms crap. I've been dissing that setting for years. So I presumed the crunch was worth the price of admission, and I wasn't disappointed. Considering SCAG actually piqued my previously nonexistent interest in Toril, I especially consider the book worth my money.

Here's hoping WotC puts out more stuff like this -- more FR stuff, maybe a regional and in-depth Dark Sun or Planescape (Sigil) book. If the book is good quality, I'll even buy a book for Dragonlance or Eberron or Greyhawk, other settings I don't care about.

 

[Shasarak]

Maybe its you who needs to have another look at how little information there is in the 3e campaign guide. The sword coast and the north gets a total of 18 pages of which over 4 are wasted on utterly pointless stats for NPC's you will likely never meet and even less likely fight. I mean, for example a whole page on Halaster's stats is pointless. Meanwhile Luskan and Neverwinter get 2 small paragraphs each.

The SCAG has over 30 pages on the same area. Populations of towns and cities would have been nice, but everything else is good and has plenty of detail, story and adventure ideas. Maps of the cities would be nice but shouldn't be in a players book anyway really.

If you had compared to the amount of detail on the various 1e and 2e boxed sets and guides then you might have had a better point but not for 3rd edition which was detail light for much of Faerun. Even the 4e campaign guide had more detail then the 3e one

I think what we all really want to know is how much information does SCAG have in it about Waterdeep compared to the City of Splendors Waterdeep book.

 

[paintphob]

I think what we all really want to know is how much information does SCAG have in it about Waterdeep compared to the City of Splendors Waterdeep book.

I am not sure if you are serious or not. SCAG (being a regional book) has much less than the single location specific City of Splendors. But SCAG does have more information on the Field Ward than you will find in CoS.

 

[Hussar]

One cherry picked region is more detailed in the SCAG then the 3e FRGC, and given were talking about the SWORD COAST CAMPAIGN GUIDE it'd be very weird if the sword coast didn't get special attention.

Why would you expect the SCAG to have the same or more information about all of FR as the 3e FRGC? It's a regional sourcebook, not a general overview book. Complaining that the SCAG doesn't have information about areas outside of the Sword Coast is kinda pointless no?

 

[Jester David]

I'm actually staring at the 3rd edition Campaign setting book right now so I don't need to double check anything. If you think SCAG has more information than it then you need to go back and triple check.

Let's do the math. The 3e book has 315 pages of content, pre-index.

8 pages of monsters. Useless for players.
10 pages of adventures. 14 pages of DMG content.
12 pages of history and timelines. Handy for DMing, needless for an adventurer.

Crunch. 24 pages of class options, most of which is generic feats and 13 prestige classes, half of which are generic.
22 pages of spells.

24 pages of gods and 4 pages of cosmology (vs 21 for SCAG. Not much different).
12 pages of organizations, with 3 1/2 pages being statblocks. So 9-ish. Compares with the 10 pages of backgrounds.
12 pages on races including a full pages of names, a page on powerful races. Compares with 17 pages in SCAG. And since less pagecount was going to racial stats for the genasi and tiefling, there's a LOT more lore.
6 pages on the classes and their role in the world. The SCAG gives each class more.
20 pages on life in the world. Okay, the Campaign setting is better here than the couple pages on these topics. Still, this is a lot of reading for stuff that's often in the DM's hands. Like trade.

The bulk of the book (132 pages) is on geography. 11 pages of which (almost 10%) are taken up my NPC statblocks. 17 pages on the Sword Coast & North region. Maybe 20 at most (including statblocks). This compares with 60 pages in SCAG. Which means SCAG gets into a lot more detail on those places. Even if you include a chunk of the Western Heartlands and other areas, SCAG is still well ahead in pages.

Also, not to mention the fact that while the 3rd edition campaign setting gives you regional history, life and society, and important sites, it also gives you plots and rumours.

I'm not sure why plots, rumours, and adventuring sites would be necessary in a player book: that content is to give a DM ideas and material to work with. And only so much regional history is necessary.


So SCAG has more detail on classes. And more detail on races. It has comparable detail on factions and power players. And comparable detail on deities (and likely more detail on fewer deities). While there's less detail on the entire campaign setting, there is far more on the expanded Sword Coast region.
But this comes at the expense of life in the world details, which are often the purview of the DM anyway.

And while the book is short on DM content and details, that's not what the book is meant to include. You can't fault a player's book for not included DM content.

SCAG is not a perfect book and could have been larger and included more details, but you could say that about any setting book. There's always something else to say or include. And it's unfair to say it's lacking information and detail.

 

[Shasarak]

8 pages of monsters. Useless for players.

Unless your DM is a cutie pie soft baller, knowing about Monsters is never useless for players.

The trick is using your knowledge in a way that does not alert the DM.

 

[delericho]

Let's do the math. The 3e book has 315 pages of content, pre-index.

You have, of course, compared the font sizes between the two books? Or, rather, the word count per page. I haven't seen the SCAG, but the FRCS used a tiny font size, which meant that those pages were packed. Which may well mean that a simple comparison of page counts is misleading.

Or not - as I said, I've not seen the SCAG. But if you're going to do the math, you really should do all of it.

 

[Jester David]

You have, of course, compared the font sizes between the two books? Or, rather, the word count per page. I haven't seen the SCAG, but the FRCS used a tiny font size, which meant that those pages were packed. Which may well mean that a simple comparison of page counts is misleading.

Or not - as I said, I've not seen the SCAG. But if you're going to do the math, you really should do all of it.

Comparing the effect of fonts only works if I know how many more words can be squeezed into a page.
Simmilarly, the amount of art per page can also dramtically affect the total amount of information. And there might be irrelevant information in some passages.
The only way to be sure would be to count every relevant word Int the two books and compare totals. But I don't have that kind of free time.