New Core Rulebooks Every Year - A Mistake

[Tewligan]

Gish.

To you and Dire Bare, welcome aboard the List Train! Toot toot!

 

[Tewligan]

Get over it. I'm not particularly fond of the phrase either, but everyone knows what you are talking about when you say it.

Pish and tosh, good fellow! I would submit that more people will know what "fighter/mage" means than that horrible word. I've seen people asking what the g-word means on this very board.

Also, you're now doubly on the list.

 

[Thurbane]

Can anyone provide a link or quote from WotC that says A.) all non campaign specific books will be core, and B.) all core material will be available for free in the SRD?

It seems unlikley in the extreme that the bulk of rulebooks will be available to everyone at no charge...

 

[airwalkrr]

Unless you are trying to run a RPGA sanctioned game, either on or offline, then you have to buy every single book because each and every single book is considered "core."

[off-topic]

Hardly. I used to be an RPGA Triad for LG and I constantly had to deal with options I was not familiar with. If players didn't make me aware of their special toys and how they worked before the game, I didn't let them use them. It is the duty of the player in the RPGA to bring all supplemental rules to the table. Of course, one of the key problems with RPGA these days is that there are so many rules and players love to powergame so much that players will lug 12 books to the table and an inexperienced DM will have to rifle through some 20-odd feats, spells, and pieces of equipment, and that's just for one player. By the time the DM has read all the supplemental rules, an hour of that four-hour slot has been lost.

I really wish players in the RPGA were limited to options outside the PH, DMG, and MM for this very reason. Too many rulebooks interfere with the game. Let a player use one or maybe 2 books in addition to the three cores and nothing else so that the focus can be on the game and not uber-characters.

[/off-topic]

 

[Varianor Abroad]

Nod to airwalkrr. That's my dislike for things RPGA as well.

On the discussion at hand, if they label everything after the first set Optional Core Material I'm good with it. (Doesn't mean I'm going to buy it, but I'm okay with it.)

 

[Glyfair]

[off-topic]I really wish players in the RPGA were limited to options outside the PH, DMG, and MM for this very reason. Too many rulebooks interfere with the game. Let a player use one or maybe 2 books in addition to the three cores and nothing else so that the focus can be on the game and not uber-characters.[/off-topic]

I've suggested that a system like the faction system for Xen'drik be used for future D&D campaigns. Each faction could have an area they specialize in and the DM could be sure to understand. For example, one faction might be the only one to allow Incarnum, one might be the only faction to allow the Bo9S, etc.

When I have brought this up I've gotten two responses:

1) You should trust the players to understand the system and not abuse it. It was also suggested you should be able to understand all you need about such things as Incarnum from the brief sidebars in adventures that use it (this came from faction leaders).

2) No RPGA DM worth his salt doesn't understand all the options (not from anyone official).

Because of this insistence and the incredible amount of tracking and odd rules, it looks like my group wants nothing to do with the RPGA sponsored games. I've been sticking to home games and Dungeon adventures recently.

 

[Hussar]

I have no interest in buying new "core" books every year. I just want 3 core books. PHB, DMG, and MM. Everything else should be optional instead being crammed down our throats.

Which, incidentally, it is. Just because the books say PHB2 or DMG2, doesn't mean that you need to buy it. It is exactly the same as splat books now. If you don't want warlocks in your game, don't buy that book and don't use them. Too easy. Just because the book says Core on it, doesn't mean that it MUST be used any more than you MUST use anything in the Core books now.

See, my biggest problem with this type of philosophy is that instead of selling to the consumer, you're expecting the consumer to want to sell himself. I feel like to attract the new gamer, especially in a casually may have heard of the game sense, things should be branded and packaged to make it easy and simple to determine how to get in on it. You don't want to walk into a game store(2 to 3 yrs from now), see the section with D&D and have to spend time searching through numerous similarly labeled books to find what you actually need to get started, it gives an impression of unnecessary complexness to the game, and most people when presented with bewilderment or confusion about something tend to either just let it go or make a judgement call(which may or mat not be correct). Sure helpful salespeople can help, but that's a hit or miss proposition in most LGS's.

Board games, with expansion packs handle this quite effectively by clearly labelling the base set, and also by putting it in a bigger box so that it stands out. They then label the expansions as exactly what they are and usually put them in smaller boxes.

The problem with this comparison though is that most board games with expansions don't have dozens of expansions. At most they have a dozen expansions. D&D has always had a bazillion books added to it. Just because something says PHB2 on it doesn't change that.

We've had numbered Monster Manuals for years now and it's never been a major malfunction. Why should numbered Player's books and DM books suddenly cause everyone to panic?

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Gish.

Give a man a gish, and he'll win the combat. Teach a man to gish, and he'll crush his enemies, drive them before him, and hear the lamentations of their women.

 

[Duncan Haldane]

Just a thought here, but what if WotC tied the yearly PHBx, DMGx, etc to the stated "one setting a year" in some ways? When they do Eberron, that year's PHB can have Articifers, Warforged, Shifters, all that jazz. When they do FR, they can throw in node magic, more domains (or whatever they'll be calling the cleric spheres or schools), some FR style races, etc. That way, they settings themselves can be settings and not big piles of new feats and spells. If you want to play Eberron, for instance, then you need that year's "core" stuff in addition to the gazeteer for the setting. Of course, WotC would have to stuff each PHB, etc, with lots of goodies to entice people who don't play that year's featured setting, but I think they're up to the task

Interesting thought, but for me I think I would prefer to have a setting book each year matching up with the setting-neutral material in that year's PHB/DMG/MM.
Eg, in 2009 we have PHB2,DMG2,MM2, Eberron Update 2, Realms Update 2.

That way the material stays modular and setting-neutral, but you know how to integrate it into your setting.

What concerns me though is the world-altering changes by adding of new "core" material. For example, rumours abound that Gnomes and Bards won't be in PHB1. So, suddenly all gnomes and bards in the Forgotten Realms keel over dead. But a year later Gnomes and Bards are re-introduced in PHB2. Do our dead gnomes and bards come back to life, or do we wake up from a year long dream where we thought they were dead?

Duncan

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

So download them all off the internet for free. They're all going to be part of the SRD.

Has this been confirmed? This is the second time someone's said that in this thread. And this is the second time someone's asked for a citation to prove it.