Hi folks,
I appreciate you taking the time to chat about my new book! I think there are going to be a lot of 5E clones released this year after the OGL situation, and I know they will be a bit contentious. I think this will be similar to the OSR where a lot of retroclones were released and people picked their own flavor, but everything was roughly compatible.
As others have pointed out, a big chunk of this book is a reprint of SRD content. I have reworded more than a few items (such as surprise and alignment) and I've also rewritten a few rules, such as the overland travel. Otherwise, where I've got optional rules I've included them as sidebar comments. It's a bit of a challenge for those of us publishing 5E clones - Black Flag is facing the same issue where some folk are saying "But this is just 5E." Truthfully, the low price point is meant to help head off this discussion, even though I put a crazy amount of labour into this book.
For some, where the value comes in is with the subclasses, ancestries, new/remastered spells, and setting lore, which might be 80-100 pages of the total. Most of that should be reusable in any setting, but I've very much presented it as an integrated package for my Iskandar setting. There are folks charging $4 for a single subclass, so I hope $4 for all that content represents
some value
Regarding the single column digest-sized layout, I've adopted that for all my books the last couple of years. As dnd_reborn noted, it's so you can use the material on mobile devices. If reading on a regular screen, I recommend you go 2UP.
cheers,
MTB
I was expecting more new and/or revised content. The one thing I did get from it was a simplified layout. But as far as I can tell it is just a reprint of the PHB. I didn't see anything new. But it was just a quick scan.
).
