Layout Question - One book or three?

[DSC-EricPrice]

We're in the final stages of laying out a typical class/race sourcebook and we came to a question that we're hoping the community can share some opinions about.

We are considering dividing the content of the "book" up into three seperate pdf files.

One for the class expansion (with the class, the feats, spell list, and prestige classes),
One for the animal companions for the class (its druidic)
One for the magic items

One thought is that DMs would like to be able to give just the class section to the players, or that players would want to just keep their animal reference around for stats when shifting, and that the magic items, which contain some extra information that might be mineable for campaign ideas, might be something that the DM doesnt ever want the players to see.

The other thought is that a DM can just print out what he wants anyway, so it really doesnt matter.

What do you think?

 

[Flyspeck23]

Good question.

We did a similar thing for all our card product, so each is a collection of PDFs (sorted by class for spells etc.). But seeing that yours will be a regular book, why not do both?
It wouldn't be too much work (depending on how you did the layout), and the only reason not to do it would be file size.

Oh, and allow your GMs to share the files that are useful for the players with their players - at least that's what we did

 

[Nellisir]

We're in the final stages of laying out a typical class/race sourcebook and we came to a question that we're hoping the community can share some opinions about.

We are considering dividing the content of the "book" up into three seperate pdf files.

What do you think?

I print & have bound my better pdfs, so a single document is good for me. As noted, a DM can print whatever pages she wants, so the only real reasons to split the document are a) to make it look prettier in sections, or b) to sell portions individually. "A" can be dealt with just by starting each chapter on a new page.

Cheers
Nell.

 

[DSC-EricPrice]

There was actually some discussion of that too Nellisir. We had considered leaving out the magic items section, since its generally the purview of DMs, and potentially selling both a DM version and a player version, but historically every class book has a magic items section.