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<blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 4579688" data-attributes="member: 2067">To me, it seems to be a longevity strategy first and foremost.Here's a bit of history:In 2e, there was an epidemic of cross-referencing as something of a sales strategy. Any given book would reference 2-4 other books that you would need to make that book &quot;complete.&quot; It might not be a major mention, and you might be able to get away without that other book, but the implication was unless you had this other book, the book you are currently reading isn't the best value.That kind of irked people in a &quot;this isn't a complete product&quot; sense. And, in many ways, it helped exacerbate the &quot;setting split&quot; problem: someone who bought Dark Sun wouldn't buy Forgotten Realms because if he bought one FR book, he'd need to buy the whole collection, and all the while, he was buying the whole collection of DS books...So 3e came along with the idea that every book after the first three would be a &quot;complete product.&quot; You wouldn't have to own any book other than the first three in order to use anything from any other book. The first three were &quot;core&quot; in that respect.This was refreshing at first, but it became a bit limiting. It became a little liberated by an expanded SRD including psionics and god rules and the like. By the end of 3e, it had basically been abandoned, in part probably to experiment about the outrage it might generate in 4e. So 4e comes along and basically tries for a middle ground between 2e's &quot;you need everything!&quot; and 3e's &quot;you only need three things!&quot; They try this for the same reason 2e did (to sell more books) and for the same reason 3e eventually did (to supplement the supplements).It has the same problems as 2e, ultimately. They might end up being less onerous, but it still gives you the feeling that your game isn't complete, that you need more stuff, and that you can't be satisfied until you have a total set. If it's less onerous, it might end up coming beneath the threshold for most collectors' binary switches, but it might still be too much. We'll see that with how fast 5e gets here. <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&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> If it's closer to 6 years, the strategy didn't work as well as it maybe should've, and we'll see something different in 5e (perhaps a &quot;one book per year&quot; core, or a return to the &quot;3 book core&quot;). If it's closer to 10 years, the strategy probably worked OK, and 5e will follow something similar.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="I'm A Banana, post: 4579688, member: 2067"] To me, it seems to be a longevity strategy first and foremost. Here's a bit of history: In 2e, there was an epidemic of cross-referencing as something of a sales strategy. Any given book would reference 2-4 other books that you would need to make that book "complete." It might not be a major mention, and you might be able to get away without that other book, but the implication was unless you had this other book, the book you are currently reading isn't the best value. That kind of irked people in a "this isn't a complete product" sense. And, in many ways, it helped exacerbate the "setting split" problem: someone who bought Dark Sun wouldn't buy Forgotten Realms because if he bought one FR book, he'd need to buy the whole collection, and all the while, he was buying the whole collection of DS books... So 3e came along with the idea that every book after the first three would be a "complete product." You wouldn't have to own any book other than the first three in order to use anything from any other book. The first three were "core" in that respect. This was refreshing at first, but it became a bit limiting. It became a little liberated by an expanded SRD including psionics and god rules and the like. By the end of 3e, it had basically been abandoned, in part probably to experiment about the outrage it might generate in 4e. So 4e comes along and basically tries for a middle ground between 2e's "you need everything!" and 3e's "you only need three things!" They try this for the same reason 2e did (to sell more books) and for the same reason 3e eventually did (to supplement the supplements). It has the same problems as 2e, ultimately. They might end up being less onerous, but it still gives you the feeling that your game isn't complete, that you need more stuff, and that you can't be satisfied until you have a total set. If it's less onerous, it might end up coming beneath the threshold for most collectors' binary switches, but it might still be too much. We'll see that with how fast 5e gets here. :) If it's closer to 6 years, the strategy didn't work as well as it maybe should've, and we'll see something different in 5e (perhaps a "one book per year" core, or a return to the "3 book core"). If it's closer to 10 years, the strategy probably worked OK, and 5e will follow something similar. [/QUOTE]

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