Why don't companies show people how to use their books?

[Poster Bard]

d20 has been going strong for 5 years. We have thousands of books covering a wide variety of areas and a wide variety of styles. But the one thing most of the books fauil to do in my mind is show people how to use them.

CMG always tried to add in that sort of information.

 

[Shawn_Kehoe]

This reminds me of a bit that Monte Cook did on his website about "Ivory Tower" game design - how D&D 3E gives the rules, but often doesn't give the rule proper context to explain its existence. The example he uses is the Toughness feat - it was primarily designed for 1st level wizards and sorcerers, but the feat description doesn't say that.

Here's the link:

http://www.montecook.com/cgi-bin/page.cgi?mc_los_142

It sounds like your beef is a similar strain of the same problem.

Shawn

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

I understand that Sean Reynolds is planing a set of books that cover things like Class and Spell Design, but that go into some detail on the thinking that went into these topics when Third Edition was written.

J. Grenemyer