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Please Put Spell Blocks in all Modules
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<blockquote data-quote="Tzarevitch" data-source="post: 6382804" data-attributes="member: 1792"><p>My point is you are assuming that. I doubt they would ever reduce existing content needed to run a module so we can leave that argument out. The worst they'll do is continue as-is. </p><p></p><p>1. We don't know WotC is under any particular page count limit. They have told us repeatedly how much the expanded the PHB and the MM because they felt like it needed to be done. I could be wrong but that suggests to me that they don't have a particular limit beyond not going overboard and making a good product. </p><p></p><p>2. If they had a page count limit, the space needed to add the spell lines can be significantly mitigated by better use of existing page space. Their choice of formatting in the book left a lot of open space that could've been better used. Look at Hoard of the Dragon Queen for example. Take page 92 and you can see how much available space they wasted because of their choice of spacing. There is almost an inch available on the bottom of the first column and well over an inch at the bottom of the second. The exact same thing occurs on the bottom of the next page, and the page after that. Compare that to how far the text goes down on page 84 of HotDQ and you can see how much space is wasted. Another example is on page 94. In addition to the inch of unused space on the bottom, 1/4 of the page space used is taken up by a picture of a stick for heaven's sake. Compare this to the PHB and how generally dense the text is there and you can see how much space HotDQ wasted by the editor's choice of formatting.</p><p></p><p>I also don't agree it will take 32 pages to add a line or 2 of spell code. Then entire catalogue of spells in the PHB is 78 pages with full text and big spacing gaps. How does 1-3 lines of dense code describing the small subset of spells in the module take almost half as much as the full text of the entire universe of spells in the PHB? Admittedly I could go through HotDQ and plot out exactly how much space it takes but I admit, I'm not that interested. </p><p></p><p>My point is, I agree it would take extra space to write the spell lines. I draft and edit documents for a living so I am very familiar with how formatting affects page counts. I suspect it would take more like 10 pages at absolute most, assuming reasonable spacing and non silly-big fonts, but even our best estimates are entirely subject to how WotC arranges the spacing in the book. As I showed above, WotC wasted a LOT of space in HotGQ that could be used for additional text such as the spell line codes <em>without</em> reducing any of the additional content if they felt like it. Also as I stated above, WotC has not given any indication that they are on a hard page count with their books (and even that is very adjustable as I showed above.) Therefore it stands to reason that the only thing stopping them from doing it is being convinced that it can be done and is actually useful. That's where forum threads like this come in. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Tzarevitch, post: 6382804, member: 1792"] My point is you are assuming that. I doubt they would ever reduce existing content needed to run a module so we can leave that argument out. The worst they'll do is continue as-is. 1. We don't know WotC is under any particular page count limit. They have told us repeatedly how much the expanded the PHB and the MM because they felt like it needed to be done. I could be wrong but that suggests to me that they don't have a particular limit beyond not going overboard and making a good product. 2. If they had a page count limit, the space needed to add the spell lines can be significantly mitigated by better use of existing page space. Their choice of formatting in the book left a lot of open space that could've been better used. Look at Hoard of the Dragon Queen for example. Take page 92 and you can see how much available space they wasted because of their choice of spacing. There is almost an inch available on the bottom of the first column and well over an inch at the bottom of the second. The exact same thing occurs on the bottom of the next page, and the page after that. Compare that to how far the text goes down on page 84 of HotDQ and you can see how much space is wasted. Another example is on page 94. In addition to the inch of unused space on the bottom, 1/4 of the page space used is taken up by a picture of a stick for heaven's sake. Compare this to the PHB and how generally dense the text is there and you can see how much space HotDQ wasted by the editor's choice of formatting. I also don't agree it will take 32 pages to add a line or 2 of spell code. Then entire catalogue of spells in the PHB is 78 pages with full text and big spacing gaps. How does 1-3 lines of dense code describing the small subset of spells in the module take almost half as much as the full text of the entire universe of spells in the PHB? Admittedly I could go through HotDQ and plot out exactly how much space it takes but I admit, I'm not that interested. My point is, I agree it would take extra space to write the spell lines. I draft and edit documents for a living so I am very familiar with how formatting affects page counts. I suspect it would take more like 10 pages at absolute most, assuming reasonable spacing and non silly-big fonts, but even our best estimates are entirely subject to how WotC arranges the spacing in the book. As I showed above, WotC wasted a LOT of space in HotGQ that could be used for additional text such as the spell line codes [I]without[/I] reducing any of the additional content if they felt like it. Also as I stated above, WotC has not given any indication that they are on a hard page count with their books (and even that is very adjustable as I showed above.) Therefore it stands to reason that the only thing stopping them from doing it is being convinced that it can be done and is actually useful. That's where forum threads like this come in. :) [/QUOTE]
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