D&D 5E What's your preferred "Splat Frequency"?

[Mercurius]

One of the big questions remaining for 5E is whether, or to what degree, Mearls will make good on his promise to miminize splats. But this begs the question: do you even want minimal splats? What is a good splat book frequency?

For context, not including setting and adventure books, 4E varied but came out with 7 hardcovers the first year (in 7 months), 14 the second year (including stuff like the Dragon Annual), 11 the third year (including the Essentials books), 6 the fourth year and 2 the last year (2012). But if you consider that 2008-2010 were the prime years of 4E, before they had turned their eyes on 5E, then the average is about one book per month.

3.5 was similar. From 2003 to 2007, WotC produced between 9 and 12 hardcover splats per year, almost one per month.

Pathfinder, on the other hand, has produced far fewer. From 2009 to 2014, they will have produced a total of 17 books (not including the Inner Sea Guide), which is a bit less than 3 a year or one per season.

Feel free to vote for either what you think is ideal and/or what you hope to see for 5E.

 

[variant]

One or two per year is my limit. I bought almost every 3.5 book and those days are over. Most of them were filled with information I never used. I want quality over quantity.

I wish WotC would remake Spellfire as a living card game. They would have more of my money on an annual basis if they did, as long as it is at a reasonable release schedule and I don't have to play the booster pack game again.

 

[Wolfskin]

I'd like up to 4 supplements a year, personally.

 

[Lord Vangarel]

For me less is definitely more!

I'd like one rules book per year which essentially gathers up all the relevant info from adventures published together. To do this I'd envisage the adventures being targeted on themes, for example an adventure path may be about pirates and the rules book that year would be about pirates and pirate campaigns.

Additionally I could live with one monster book per year. This could be alternated with an npc book like Pathfinder did or a factions book showing npcs from specific orders.

Finally one campaign book per year. This could be supplemented by smaller players guides to the adventure path in the campaign.

Ideally Wizards would push out two adventure paths a year on different subjects so if you didn't like one there's always the other.

I'd also like multiple standalone adventures or mini campaigns which Wizards could push to third party publishers. Give them the ability to create adventures but not necessarily rules without Wizards say so. These could cover multiple campaign worlds. Third party publishers would have to ask Wizards if they can publish new rules and approval be required.

 

[Agamon]

If you count settings and adventures, which should have crunch in them, 4-5 per year. Otherwise, a general supplement maybe once per year is good.

 

[doctorhook]

Less is more! I voted for 2-4 per year, assuming that "splats" doesn't include published adventures. I'd love a lot more of those!

 

[delericho]

If they're going to due true splatbooks (that is classbooks, or racebooks, or tribebooks, or whatever; rather than general supplements) then I want one full set, published with as short a gap between them as possible - once I add the expanded options for one class to my game, I want to be able to add the options for the others as soon thereafter as possible. (Obviously, though, I don't want to sacrifice quality to do this - hence "as short as possible".)

I don't ever want to see a second cycle of the same splatbook being repeated - no "Complete Warrior II" or "Martial Power II", or similar.

If they're not doing splatbooks but are instead doing more general supplements (PHB2 rather than "Martial Power") then I'd vote for one big player-side supplement per year, one DM-side supplement per year, and one setting or setting supplement per year.

 

[Halivar]

It's my opinion that future crunch should be in addendum to fluff products like setting books, AP's, manual of the planes, deity books, etc.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

Another vote for "less is more!"

Let's look at my personal numbers for 4e:

I ran/run two RL campaigns with 12 positions and 10 players. These campaigns "used" 14 PCs.

I play in an (interrupted) campaign with 6 players and 6 characters in total.

I played in a online campaign, racking up three PCs.

I play/run a shared online campaign with 6 players and 6 characters.

Personally I've run five characters in 6 years. Even with PHBI only I'd still have a lot of options to explore...

Of the RL campaigns I've run only 2 characters used classes not from the PHB. So no, additional material is essentially dead weight.

 

[Lalato]

0 to 1 seems about right to me. One big $50 book per year that has some new interesting variants, modules and whatnot seems good to me.

I barely have enough time to read the core books... much less an onslaught of splats. That said, I'm certain I would buy a campaign setting that is mostly fluff (80-90%) with some campaign specific splat (10-20%). Like campaign-specific backgrounds, sub-classes or sub-systems. Something that is only meant to be used in the specific setting at the discretion of the DM. For example, I would buy a Dark Sun book that had some material on how defiling magic worked in 5e, but I wouldn't expect to transfer that to my FR game.