D&D 5E The Printers Can't Handle WotC's One D&D Print Runs!

One of the reasons why the three new core rulebooks next year will not be released together is because D&D is such a juggernaut that the printers can't actually handle the size of the print runs!

Jeremy Crawford told Polygon "Our print runs are pretty darn big and printers are telling us you can’t give us these three books at the same time.” And Chris Perkins added that "The print runs we’re talking about are massive. That’s been not only true of the core books, but also Tasha’s Cauldron. It’s what we call a high-end problem."

 

[Micah Sweet]

Humble bragging about how successful they are. Thing is if they are printing in such massive numbers, they should be able to get a deal lowering prices, instead they are jacking up prices, not because they have to, but rather because they believe players will still pay it. Perhaps they are right.

History suggests they are right, at least for a while.

 

[darjr]

Not so crazy, think aboutnit: UA is to test if people want an option before they invest time in balancing it seriously. Player options or serious DM modules (like ship combat or advanced traps) are something that will be used a lot, potentially years for a PC option like a Subclass. Monsters are easy to make, and don't last long in combat, 1-3 Rpunds of combat. Minutes of real play time, rather than years. A 5E monster book can easily have hundreds of options thst will see a relatively short shelf life, simple enough to get a spread that enough DMs will want to play with, whereas a PC option has to appeal broadly and takes up more space.

Ok yea.

But there are more things to test than just individual monsters. Like new CR balancing or more general monster features or removing spells for actions.

 

[Parmandur]

Ok yea.

But there are more things to test than just individual monsters. Like new CR balancing or me general monster features or removing spells for actions.

True...and they seem to have tested that by just...doing it in books since 2020. Those are questions of pure math, which private playtesting can account for. Get a few hundred monsters in a book, a large chunk of people will get value out of it if the math works OK.

 

[Parmandur]

Humble bragging about how successful they are. Thing is if they are printing in such massive numbers, they should be able to get a deal lowering prices, instead they are jacking up prices, not because they have to, but rather because they believe players will still pay it. Perhaps they are right.

The market will bear fair prices, yes.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

The market will bear fair prices, yes.

These aren't fair prices, its a scam.

 

[Parmandur]

These aren't fair prices, its a scam.

It's well below inflation: if they charged the same rate they did in 2014, the books would be ~$63, not under $60. As already notedd by Ryan Dancey on Twitter recently, the 3E FRCS was selling for the equivalent of $68 today, or over $92 CAD.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Wasn't the MM the first AD&D book to come out?

Yes, it was.

It's fascinating to put that book in the perspective of OD&D's releases. At that point, assuming a person had all of the OD&D booklets and was using them, OD&D would've looked a lot like AD&D. But the monsters, the MM would've been a substantial upgrade in all ways on what people had at that point. Better artwork (or any artwork at all!), clearer presentation, more variety, you name it.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Whyso? I hadn't really thought about it before, but why not do a UA on monster design?

Because none of us general public people could do useful and accurate game balancing if our lives depended on it. WotC would receive such a wide disparity on what "worked" and what "didn't work" that the information would be useless.

 

[Parmandur]

Because none of us general public people could do useful and accurate game balancing if our lives depended on it. WotC would receive such a wide disparity on what "worked" and what "didn't work" that the information would be useless.

Yeah, it doesn't fit the purpose of UA, which is to do desiresbility testing. Which doesn't matter for something as transient as a Monster stat block.

They did test Monster flavor during Next, but that was an evergreen brand effort that they don't need to do more of, it seems.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Because none of us general public people could do useful and accurate game balancing if our lives depended on it. WotC would receive such a wide disparity on what "worked" and what "didn't work" that the information would be useless.

You're putting a lot of faith in the design team at WotC as being better than anyone else.