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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SteveC" data-source="post: 3843379" data-attributes="member: 9053">I'd like to piggyback on this, because I think the situation is a little more complicated than is immediately evident. If I had to guess, I imagine the idea for these products went like this:1. "We need some products between the announcement of 4E and the launch. Most likely 3X material is not going to sell so well with the new edition coming out, and most of our design/editing/playtesting staff are all working on 4E."2. "Hey we have a huge amount of concept artwork for the new edition. We're going to rework a lot of the core concepts, and the art department has a huge amount of great material that will never really see the light of day. We can put that together and sell it as a 'visual companion.' Heck we can get some non gamers to pick it up based on the art."3. "Cool! It also serves as a preview of what we're doing with 4E."Up until step three, that's a good pitch that works. It's when you start talking about making it a preview that people get testy, because they think "ah, that's just stuff that's we would normally see on the website!"I don't know what's going to be in these books, but I would hope that they're filled with stuff that went into the creation of the game that would never ordinarily see the light of day. I'd hope that's the case.As an example, I have a good friend who is an outstanding artist, and he worked for a small press roleplaying company years ago doing character and monster art. He did about 20 pieces for them...mostly black and white inks, and they ended up using (being able to afford, rather) about three of them. The rest of it just ended up sitting around until he slowly sold it off. I am assuming there is a ton of art that we are never going to see for 4E--character sketches, roughs and so on. Is this what they're showing us in the final product? If so, that's interesting to me on a purely visual level, just like the other Visual Companions I've purchased are.If, and I hope this isn't the case, what the book is made up of is largely preview materials that you'd actually expect to see online, I really don't know what to say about it.I am hoping that's not the case.--Steve</blockquote>

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