I love The Rules Compendium!

[Iron Sky]

I used the random treasure table on pg 300 on Friday night and thought it was cool. That was one of the (few) things I missed from 3.x and after reading the thread about the random treasure being statistically equivalent to the treasure parcel system, I thought, awesome!

Appeals to the emergence-loving, AI-programming, heuristic-crafting side of me at some deep level.

 

[Raikun]

What exactly is the Rules Compendium? Is it Essentials or is it compiled standard 4e PHB's?

It might help to point out something that even though it's been stated, is easy to miss -

Essentials is purely a marketing phrase. Everything that makes up Essentials is still purely 4th edition, but just with a marketing push as far as what new players should look for first when jumping into the game.

They could have left the "Essentials" name off, and released the Rules Compendium, release HotFL as a "PHB4", Monster Vault as MM4, etc, and existing players wouldn't be so thrown for a loop.

 

[teach]

It's an interesting idea...should the RC have been released from the get go? In that case, we now have a 4 way split of D&D books (player handbook, dmg, mm and now rules compendium). I think if they had tried that, people might have called foul. I think the RC works now, because people already have the DMG, PH and MM's. I wouldn't buy the Errata for 40 bucks, but for 20 bucks, in a nice compact book that can be taken easily to the table, sure. I know some friends have mentioned that they'd be happy to buy the rules compendium every 2 years or so with updated rules.

 

[Jhaelen]

They could have left the "Essentials" name off, and released the Rules Compendium, release HotFL as a "PHB4", Monster Vault as MM4, etc, and existing players wouldn't be so thrown for a loop.

Well, had they done that and I'd bought 'PHB4' sight unseen, I would definitely not have been a happy customer. Ditto for the 'MM4'.

I have zero interest in buying a rehash of the books I already have. I'm also not fond of the new book format (no hardcovers).

 

[TerraDave]

Its very handy. Though it does make some of my 08 books cry to themselves at night.


Actually, I like it so much I wish it was open content.