Pocket Players Handbook

[Psionicist]

Originally posted by Umbran Never claimed you wanted a cheaper version of the original. My point being that even if it's the same price as the full-sized version, since it's a smaller print run it may not be as profitable. In order to get a company to do a less-profitable thing, you've gotta be pretty convincing.

I hoped that the idea would be convincing enough.

Seriously, my thought was, If I being a poor student will buy this book even at full price, others will too. For the same reason buy DVD boxed sets with special edition material or leather bound copies of LotR.

Originally posted by Umbran Again, profit margins come into play. They know that a larger book sells. You are now suggesting they effectively split those sales into two different editions, each of which has a smaller profit margin than the single large print run edition.

I don't know what to say here, so I won't. Nobody knows what the publishers think about this idea.

Originally posted by Umbran Who asked you to expalin your reasoning? I suggested you might want to come up with ways to make the book more attractive to people who would otherwise not see the book as an asset.

The small size alone is attractive enough for me. It would be cool with a leather bound edition though.

Originally posted by Umbran Let's get this straight - I'm not against this book at all. I'm not trying to knock it down. I'm trying to help you make a better product, one with wider appeal. If you're not interested in presenting a more attractive idea to a publisher, fine, ignore me.

I am not ignoring you, look!

Frankly, I never though about presenting the idea to a publisher. Hopefully they will read the thread and let their marketing guys do some research if it is a good idea or not. I would really like one of these books, but I do not have time to "work" for it.

Short version: I am suggesting a product I would spend money on. If noone will ever print this, too bad.

Originally posted by Umbran If I were complaining about details, I'd mention that haiving two such editions would make rules discussions difficult, as people who own different books couldn't give each other page refernces. I'm not talkign about details, I'm talking about (what seems to me, at least) to be larger design issues - things relating to how folks comonly use their rulebooks.

Good points. Hopefully someone smarter than me will figure out a good solution.

Originally posted by Umbran And as for making suggestions - Funny, but it looks to me like I've already done so. I've suggested solutions to the major points I raised. I just thought you'd like a shot at doing it yourself, first, since it was your idea.

It would be easier if you wrote your suggestions as suggestions and not ideas how to solve problems.

I like some of your suggestions, such as the arwork. Read my reply to Djeta Thernadier. However I cannot see how the colored tabs would help, other than getting worned out rather quickly.

 

[Emiricol]

Leatherbound! Great idea, from MY perspective

Probably demolish the profit margin though

 

[Umbran]

Short version: I am suggesting a product I would spend money on. If noone will ever print this, too bad.

Well, then at worst you can fault me for taking you too seriously

However I cannot see how the colored tabs would help, other than getting worned out rather quickly.

Hm, maybe I'm not being clear in description. Imagine that in the margin on each page (*not* sticking out from the side of the page), there's a colored rectangle. The color denotes what section of the book you're in. As you're flipping through, it becomes easier to say, "Wait, I'm seeing blue makers, I must have gone too far."

A great many reference books use such a system - dictionaries being the most notable ones I can think of. Cookbooks also frequently use such a scheme.

 

[Psionicist]

Hm, maybe I'm not being clear in description. Imagine that in the margin on each page (*not* sticking out from the side of the page), there's a colored rectangle. The color denotes what section of the book you're in. As you're flipping through, it becomes easier to say, "Wait, I'm seeing blue makers, I must have gone too far."

A great many reference books use such a system - dictionaries being the most notable ones I can think of. Cookbooks also frequently use such a scheme.

Ahh, now that's ingenius Umbran! I like it!

 

[Sixchan]

Ack. No coloured Tabs. It would look out of place in a book that is otherwise entirely black and white. Grey ones will suffice. And they can still say things like "Chapter 2: Races" on them in black.

 

[frankthedm]

Uh-oh. I just had a scary thought. Would the contents of the MM now all be Pocket Monsters?

sharpens a knife DON"T say that again. Bad enough they snuck a scaly blue pikachu in there!

 

[whydirt]

Psionicist, could you send me a mail at msprange@mongoosepublishing.com please?

Is this a sign of future things from Mongoose Publishing?

 

[Zustiur]

Wow

This idea is sooooooo cool!

For me, this would be perfect: In my gaming group, I am the only one who has any of the books. Therefore we only have one set of books.

Which means 1 PHB between 5 players.

A pocket PHB would mean either:
A) it would be easier to convince my players to buy them as they would hopefully be cheaper.
Or
B) I wouldn't be buying multiple copies of books I already have, when I only need multiple copies of specific parts of those books.

I really think the pocket ones have to be cheaper however - due to less content.

I see them as being rules only.
No pictures, no story/descriptive text. Just the facts. That way, you buy the real PHB, DMG, MM for all the in depth stuff. And the little books for table use - when you need to be looking up separate rules issues during a game.

In my case, that would mean I'd probably have the real PHB in another room for when I'm designing, and we'd just have 2 or 3 little PHB's on the table - taking up less space, and allowing multiple players to level up or read spells at the same time.

I think probably this is an idea for 3.5 ed though. Which is a pity as I don't intend to convert (see above complaing about being the only person to buy the books).

Ultimately I believe, the books NEED the combat pictures I've heard about from 3.5. But they don't need: non rules stuff like the following passage taken from page 11 of the PHB.
"The elven woods are home to the elves and their allies."
Especially since such comments are game world specific.

I'm no so sure of the usefulness of compacted DMG and MM however. I'm more inclined to think along the lines mentioned in one of the posts above - Break the current books up into: Character pocket book, Combat pocket book, Spells pocket book, and Items pocket book.

Or some similar set of divisions.

Zustiur.
p.s. Sorry it got so long.

 

[Buttercup]

I love this idea so much that if no one does it, I believe I'll just make my own mini books from the SRD and take 'em to Kinkos. I admit I'd rather have the professionally done, but who knows if that will happen.

I also wanted to comment on the concern that having paperback editions of something available in hardback would cut profit. I don't think this can be true, because regular mainstream publishers do it all the time. Pick any best-selling author you can think of. First their book comes out in hardback, then, six months later or so, it hits the stores in mass market paperback format. Many people who don't want to spend the $25 for the hardback will gladly spend $7 for the paperback. And frequently, the hardbacks go out of print but the paperback edition stays in print for decades.

 

[seasong]

Personally, I would prefer that a third party publisher ran with this, particularly Green Ronin or Mongoose (the latter if they can learn to include a decent table of contents, durnit), both of whom have done "collected rules" books that I've found useful.

WotC could make a very pretty booklet, but I'm willing to bet that I would have to print out errata and fold it in, and I'd be paying as much for pretty as I would for useful.

I'd like to plug again the idea of breaking this into multiple books. I'd pay $15 for a 100-200* page, 5x7.5 booklet of combat rules that was laid out well, had a quick reference section, and some decent illos of AoO, area effects, charging, etc. Better organization a major plus - in 3.0 (haven't seen 3.5), the combat rules are split over the PHB combat section, the Equipment weapon descriptions, the Magic chapter, and the DMG.

* Not sure how many pages it would be, but I'm good with a slender or slightly thick book, either way.

Aside from that, I already own books just like this for spells and magic items, so I'd be less interested in a repeat there, but a character creation booklet (with ability scores, race, class (including NPC and PrC), skills, feats, basic equipment, and spell lists included with each class) would be wonderful.