Why must the Spell Compendium be innovative?

[Lord Rasputin]

Yes, in every single book. I'm not giving to charity, here, when I shell out my hard-earned chicken feed for their hard work. If their hard work isn't WORTH the chicken feed they get from me, they need to be told to change so that it is.

Or you could just skip the product.

We're not talking a necessity of life here. We're talking about a freaking game. If you don't like it, DON'T BUY IT. If enough gamers agree with you, WotC won't put something like this out again. If enough buy it, then they'll put out a similar compendium for something else (say, magic items). But there are thousands of other customers out there, and they also have preferences, and if this product matches their preferences and not thine, so be it.

 

[BWP]

Yes, in every single book.

There has never been, and never will be, a game company that will satisfy such an unreasonable level of expectation. At least, not one that will last long enough to publish more than a couple of books.

Fortunately, such a game company doesn't need to exist, precisely because it is so unreasonable.

And if you don't understand why your complaint is so ridiculous, you might want to consider that 99.99% of gamers want books that will enhance their current games by making them easier or more interesting to run, not books that will inspire new, different games.

 

[Justin Bacon]

Anyone can be useful. A *leader* should be more. It takes game design and grunt work to make a Spell Compendium. Game design and grunt work should be the bare minimum for a game company. The Spell Compendium should have been wrapped up in a bow and delivered to every gamer's household as par for the course. It's something a dedicated enough community could have done. It's the toaster waffle jingle. And I know WotC can do better, can do more. They can do the Spell Compendium, sure. And they should. But they shouldn't stop at re-publishing things we've seen before. That's lazy, and they deserve to be called on it, as much as they deserve to be praised for how useful a compendium of updated spells is.

Ah, I think I've spotted the problem: You're posting from an alternate dimension in which WotC, after publishing the SPELL COMPENDIUM next month, will stop publishing D&D supplements.

The rest of us, fortunately, live in a dimension where WotC turns out dozens of products every year and very few of them are compendiums.

Justin Alexander Bacon
http://www.thealexandrian.net

 

[Erik Mona]

Of all the books that have come out in the last few years from all of the companies out there, this one is for sure going to make it to my game table and will likely be used every session.

You can keep your raptorians and illumians and living constructs and other innovative stuff.

Sometimes utility is what hits the spot.

--Erik

 

[thalmin]

I would rather have this product now (or actually next week) as is instead of waiting for some way for WotC to make it imaginative. Sure they could have surrounded the spells with story, but that would add more pages (and cost) and not give what most of us want, a useful tool.

 

[Nightfall]

For once Merric, you and I are in complete agreement about a WotC decision. There's no need to make what is CLEARLY a collection of spells "innovative" if all they are doing is collecting spells from other sources that are useful and people liked.

 

[The Shaman]

A supplement like the spell compendium doesn't necessarily have to break new ground to be a worthwhile product, though certainly it never hurts to look for opportunties to innovate.

So, to my eyes, this is an *excellent* product.

However, I think calling it "excellent" may be overdoing it a bit. This seems like a luxury item, an extravagance that's nice to have if you don't mind paying twice for material you already have in your gaming collection - for some gamers it may prove to be a useful tool, but so is an index to spells and the books where they're found offered as a free web enhancement.

To each their own. Caveat emptor.

 

[Nightfall]

Agreed Shaman. Excellent product? No. Good product, probably. Useful? More than likely. But beyond that, not much else to get excited about IMHO.

 

[smootrk]

I love the idea of a compendium. Now all they need is the Class (& PRC) Compendium, the Race Compendium, the Feat Compendium, etc... all of which I would probably purchase.

Or they could revise and update & quality control the entire game system using all the assembled suplemental books. A defacto version 3.75, possibly broken into several volumes.

 

[Nightfall]

I'd only go for that IF they put some of it into the SRD. But that's just me.