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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Garnfellow" data-source="post: 4591842" data-attributes="member: 1223">Actually, I don't think a list of "Complete XX" books makes a compelling case for your argument. Most of these books are terribly shoddy and well deserved their infamy.Now, I need to back up a little bit: I am not a 2e hater. I think it is easily the most unappreciated and unjustly hated of any D&D incarnation. Its setting books are some of the best from any era. I loved the revisions to the core system -- I thought they did a great job cleaning up and consolidating 1e, and I really didn't miss much of the stuff they dropped. Yeah, excising demons and devils was a tremendous mistake, and it would have been nice to have keep many of the appendices from the old DMG. And the ring binder monster book format was nice in theory, but turned out to be not so much in practice. But overall, I was pretty happy with the changes to the core and I loved the new permissive attitude.But I still remember the first time I read through the Complete Fighter's Handbook, and how my heart sank. Compared to the revisions to the core books, the Handbook was a pretty shoddy thing: badly edited, with big text, wide margins, lots of recycled or crappy new black-and-white art, bland writing, and wonky mechanics. It was a disaster, as were most of the other books in the line. There was no design consistency between the books in terms of the new Non-Weapon Proficiencies or kits, so you had options that varied widely in power, utility, and just plain interest.Many of the designers who worked on these books are actually pretty good, but that didn't really shine through. The books read like they were hastily thrown together and only barely edited, with no developer review. In fact, the Complete XX books became almost the industry benchmark for shoddy splatbooks. (Which is why I was so puzzled when Mongoose introduced its Quintessential line, which so explicitly mimicked the "turd standard.")WotC struggled at points with quality control, both early on in 3.0 and again in 3.5. But at no point did their standards drop as low as the Complete XXs. Even though there were many great 2e products, I'm afraid that TSR largely earned a reputation for focusing too much on quantity over quality. And that couldn't have been good for business.</blockquote>

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