Why must the Spell Compendium be innovative?

[Psion]

Little banana hangers that keep your bananas fresh are innovative.

But not exactly useful.

Gimme useful.

Heck, I probably have most of the books that contribute to this. But I still want it. Why? Because I can reach out an have all that material coalated and available for immediate use in the game. Ferreting out individual spells that might be useful to my game is a PITA.

 

[Remathilis]

Ok, this year, we got:

CORE
Complete Adventurer
Dungeon Master’s Guide II
Dungeons & Dragons For Dummies
Fantastic Locations: Fane of the Drow
Fantastic Locations: Hellspike Prison
Heroes of Battle
Heroes of Horror
Lords of Madness: The Book of Aberrations
Magic of Incarnum
Races of the Wild
Sandstorm
Spell Compendium
Stormwrack
Weapons of Legacy

FORGOTTEN REALMS
Champions of Ruin
Champions of Valor
City of Splendors: Waterdeep
Lost Empires of Faerûn

EBERRON
Deluxe Eberron Dungeon Master’s Screen
Deluxe Eberron Player Character Sheets
Explorer’s Handbook
Five Nations
Magic of Eberron
Races of Eberron
Grasp of the Emerald Claw

By Total, we had 1 new classbook, 2 new racebooks, 1 monsterbook, 2 mapbooks, 2 enviromentbooks, 2 genre books, 2 magicbooks, 1 adventure, 2 alignmentbooks, 4 settingbooks, 2 accessories, and 4 books with any form of innovation: Magic of Incartum (new spellsystem), Weapons of Legacy (new magic items) and DMG2 (advanced DM advice) and D&D for dummies (D&D in plain english)

Each book has some element of new stuff, even if its new feats or prestige classes.

WotC makes one massive, useful compelation, and people jump down its throat...

THAT'S TWENTY-SIX NEW BOOKS THIS YEAR! Give the guys one phone-it-in! (And thats not accurate either, errata and revsion costs mantime)

 

[Lord Rasputin]

WotC makes one massive, useful compelation, and people jump down its throat...

So far as I can tell, using "people" implies plural, when in this case, we should be using the singular.

 

[I'm A Banana]

That no matter what, you feel that because WotC somehow failed to live up to some yardstick you possess they OWE YOU.

YES. I knew someone would get it eventually! ENWorld is FULL of clever folks!

Expecting a company that has invested man-hours and cash into a product to give it to you for free is like expecting record companies to give you "Best of..." CD's for free.

Hey, there's plenty of people out there who think record companies should give you music for free. In comparison, certainly asking a company to correct their errors without charging me for their mistakes is MORE reasonable.

Whether either is really reasonable at all or not is pretty much up to the individual definition of "reasonable." Which is certainly an ambiguous word at best.

I want to know how many other things you can purchase for less than $150 and have as many hours of non-repititious fun with?

Most everything worth buying that is less than $150 can grant equal or greater hours of non-repititious fun, with enough imagination and creativity.

The Spell Compendium does everything it sets out to do. Sadly, what it sets out to do is kinda pathetic. It should have been par for the course, given to loyal fans who baught their books even despite their glaring mistakes. That doesn't mean it's not useful. It just means attacking WotC for lacking imagination in making this product IS an accurate attack that I have every right to make. It's not wrong. Some people might not care about creativity. Some people liked Jar Jar Binks. There's no real accounting for personal values. I happen to value creativity and innovation QUITE highly. Highly enough to point out that the Spell Compendium utterly lacks it. Others don't, and bully for them, they'll like this book just fine. It doesn't change the book's lack of creativity.

So Wizards gets attacked for a lack of creativity because they didn't TRY to be creative, and instead they try to sell us their previous mistakes, this time polished up and shiny. It's almost like charging for erratta.

 

[Caliban]

I'm sure your righteous outrage posted on a 3rd party message board wounds them to the core.

I'm not sure where you get this sense of entitlement from. They don't owe you anything, and they haven't promised you anything. They provide products for sale. If you don't like the product, don't buy it. If you are not innovative enough to use it, that's your problem, not their's.

Sitting there and telling people uninvolved with the creation, marketing, and distribution of that product that it's not good enough for some standard you created seems kinda unproductive. You might want to inform them about their product is not meeting your standards, so that they can get to work on fixing it.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'm sure your righteous outrage posted on a 3rd party message board wounds them to the core.

If you're going to knock me for what I'm saying at least read what I'm saying.

I'm under no delusions that my message board gripes will change anything at any higher level. I don't really care. I call it as I see it, and there's no way that you can honestly tell me that Spell Compendium *is* a rich wellspring of brand new and imaginative material, is there?

I'm not trying to change the Wizards (who, at any rate, usually do better on their own). It's not worth the effort to change them. I'm just griping about a problem. I'll change it when it starts to become the rule rather than the exception.

 

[Caliban]

If you're going to knock me for what I'm saying at least read what I'm saying.

I don't have that kind of time. It's much more fun to read your last post and make sarcastic (yet humorous) comments about that.

I still don't see why you expect every single product of theirs to be "innovative". It just seems like a silly complaint to me.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I don't have that kind of time. It's much more fun to read your last post and make sarcastic (yet humorous) comments about that.

Can't dispute the truth of that.

I still don't see why you expect every single product of theirs to be "innovative". It just seems like a silly complaint to me.

Cuz I'm demanding and idealistic. I want my cars to all be BMW's and my girls to all be supermodels. I want my D&D books to all be brilliant and my poems to all be Yeats and Homer and my plays to all be Shakespeare and my music to all be Beehtoven.

I'm also optimistic and not easily dissapointed -- Wizards is absolutely capable of delivering 100% brilliant D&D books. "They can't all be genius!" seems false to me. I don't see the genius as being that unique or special.

You don't need to share my thoughts, but, I think, you should permit them to exist, and accept that even books you love may be attacked by people who don't share the same criteria for loving a book that you do...

(the last isn't directed SPECIFICALLY at you, but more to the people who, like Merric, I think, can't see how I can attack Wizards for doing something that they see as great)

 

[shilsen]

You don't need to share my thoughts, but, I think, you should permit them to exist, and accept that even books you love may be attacked by people who don't share the same criteria for loving a book that you do...

I got your back! From what I've seen of this thread, I think your arguments are simplistic and poorly supported, and that you display an unwarranted sense of entitlement. But I totally believe you have a right to make those arguments and have those opinions. So go ahead, make ... um, your day.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I think your arguments are simplistic and poorly supported, and that you display an unwarranted sense of entitlement. But I totally believe you have a right to make those arguments and have those opinions. So go ahead, make ... um, your day.

See, I can completely agree with all of that. Let's hold hands and buy the world a coke.