Smaller Core books

[Crazy Jerome]

Given the contract, I could rewrite the 3E PHB to be considerably shorter, simply by cutting out the redundant text. I'm not sure it would be 10% shorter, but it would be close.

Shorter books due to tighter editing would be great.

 

[olshanski]

Aren't they also supposed to be smaller, like 8 or 9 inches high? This reduces the size by another 20% or so.

 

[Nyaricus]

So long as they have better editing this time around, I'm down with it.

 

[Morrus]

Maybe it's just smaller text. Or less whitespace. Or something.

 

[Roman]

Also don't forget that they are now integrating Epic Rules into the first three core rulebooks, which should take even more space and thus makes the shrinkage more disconcerting.

 

[wedgeski]

edit: I perceive a book's value not by it's weight, but by the entertainment it provides.

Couldn't agree more. Obviously there's a certain 'You must be kidding' cut-off (a 32-page PHB for example) but beyond the couple-hundred mark, quibbling over page count is nonsensical because we *don't know what the rules are going to be*. PHB-wise, since the Vancian system is all but gone I would suspect the spell reference is taking a major hit; for the MM we already know the dragon is a 14-page write-up so notions of '1 monster per page' bit the dust a long time ago; and as for the DMG... well, if losing a chunk of pages means the book actually becomes *useful* again, I'm all for it.

 

[Zaukrie]

Great idea. The core books should be books to bring people into the game, not for people that have been playing for years. I'm assuming we'll still get some kind of splat books/expansions, beyond the yearly PHB, MM, and DMG that we've read about.

The core books should be approachable, and bring people into the game, not be intimidating. Shorter is better.

 

[drothgery]

Aren't they also supposed to be smaller, like 8 or 9 inches high? This reduces the size by another 20% or so.

No. The Star Wars Saga Edition line is like that (9" square), but WotC has said straight out that D&D won't be.

 

[Jer]

Remember that they will move magical items to PHB (and my wild guess they might move Prestige Classes there as well...). That definitiely shrinks the book a bit. Now PHB really can be cut to half on spells without some serious lost (that's 60 pages) but with magic items (that's 70 pages). Not bad.

Actually, I thought that the Bruce Cordell interview from the other day confirmed that magic items would still be in the DMG.

Also, we still haven't heard much about "prestige classes" at all. My personal suspicion is that they're mostly going away and being replaced by alternate talent trees, but that's just a suspicion. I'd bet that if they're keeping prestige classes in any kind of form similar to what they are now, they'll be in the DMG since they're still supposedly chosen by the DM for his/her specific campaign.

What I am really not that much happy is the monster manual. 300+ monsters on 288 pages means - no 1 monster per page. That is bad. I think that monster should have 1 or 2 or 4 pages if needed but never less. And always whole page. It helps.

Meh - not all monsters need a full page IMHO. Kobolds, Goblins, Orcs - anything without a raft of special abilities should fit in less than a single column. And no single monster should have more than a single page total for itself. If this is an indication that they're actually going to be able to do something about the "stat bloat" in the monster writeups, I'll be very happy indeed.

OTOH - the layout people should make sure that a monster entry doesn't cross pages such that I have to flip back and forth between pages when I'm using the book at the table. This is the single most annoying characteristic of the 3.5e Monster Manual - a good chunk of the monsters fall on page boundaries where I have to flip back and forth to see their stats and their special abilities.)

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Not too concerned. Pagecount isn't everything.

PHB: It's possible that we'll have a lot less spells than before, but those spells will be more versatile:

Instead of Fireball, Lightning Bolt, Cone of Cold, and so on, we might just have Elemental Strike, and you can choose an energy type (just like energy powers in the EPH work) and maybe even an area type (ray, bolt, burst, ball, cone....)

Add to that simpler mechanics (that will probably need a lot less detailing), and you're quite short, even after expanded classes.

So even if magic items are added to the PHB (and those magic items will probably not use as much space as they did in 3.xe), it can provide the old info on less space. It will get slimmer, but that's because of the liposuction.


DMG: No magic items in the DMG would cut a lot of space. Add to that a lot of easier mechanics, and it's easy to see it getting shorter.


MM: That's the only thing that might bother me. Unless the descriptions for monster advancement and monster abilities get shorter, and the monster descriptions follow, less pages would mean less monsters. More monsters are always welcome!