Why no index is new WotC books? *Update: Received "official" answer... kinda...*

[Henry]

Give me the less content for more index, please. Anyone trying to look up something in-game that they were caught off-guard with will know IMMEDIATELY the value of an index. In fact, the table of contents is worth sacrificing to me in favor of an index. Just label the chapters on the page edges just as they always do in a WotC book, and I don't need it! I'd rather have both, of course, but Good Gravy an index is a useful tool in ANY gaming product over 32 pages.

 

[reveal]

I posted this in the "Do you want an Index" poll thread but I'll post it here as well.

If you want an index, go to http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=company/feedbackform and fill out the form or write custserv@wizards.com directly.

Either way, let's let WotC know that indices are important to us and we want them back, dag-nabbit!

 

[el-remmen]

Heh, the existing indexes in the Core Books are so damn crappy they are almost not worth having - plus the DMG should be cross-indexed with the PHB.

 

[jmucchiello]

The one and only problem with LaTeX is, that one has to be very knowledgeable, if one wants to change something which is beyound the standard distribution. It can surely be done and with a good probability it has already been done, but you still need to know, where the extra package with the required functionality is - with several thousands of extensions not a simple task.

Being knowledgeable to stray in LaTeX is a huge understatement. I've used LaTeX before (in college 18 years ago or so) and even I hesitate to attempt RPG writing in LaTeX. I've been using Word for 20 years now, and it's hard to cut the cord.

 

[MerakSpielman]

You don't write documents in LaTeX -- you code them. It's like a greatsword - heavy, clumsy, and unwieldy, but versitile powerful in the rights hands.


And a lot of designing an index is reworking it to be consistent and useful.

You can mark the phrase "fighter bonus feats" and it'll show up in the index.

But then a copy editor will notice a separate entry in the index for "fighter bonus feat" (non plural) with a different page reference and suggest combining the two entries. Somebody else will suggest putting "Fighter Bonus Feats" under "Feats, bonus, fighter" and somebody else will suggest putting them under "Bonus Feats, Fighter." Then all the people involved have to discuss the best way to do this.

Or perhaps the most relivent list of fighter bonus feats occurs on a page without the exact phrase "Fighter Bonus Feats," instead having a sentence "Fighters choose their bonus feats from the following list." And so for the most useful data, there's no phrase to mark for the index at all.

And then they realize they've left the realm of automatically generated indices behind - the only way to get the index exactly the way they want it is to type it out by hand.

I'm not saying I wouldn't like an index. Just like the rest of you, I really really would.

But how many of you are willing to spend an extra $10 - 20 for the exact same book with an index? I'd wager you're in the minority.

 

[reveal]

But how many of you are willing to spend an extra $10 - 20 for the exact same book with an index? I'd wager you're in the minority.

Considering the core books each have an index and they cost no more than the new hardcovers that are coming out, even after they raised the prices, I don't think it would drive up the costs for the new books if they included an index.

 

[MerakSpielman]

Considering the core books each have an index and they cost no more than the new hardcovers that are coming out, even after they raised the prices, I don't think it would drive up the costs for the new books if they included an index.

Do consider those to be well done, useful indices? I do not. I am usually unable to find what I want using them.

 

[reveal]

Do consider those to be well done, useful indices? I do not. I am usually unable to find what I want using them.

I don't think everyone is going to be satisfied with every index that comes out but my original point was that there are none. If you look at the poll in the other thread on this subject (http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=119821), a vast majority of folks want indexes. From that, I would gather that there are a lot of folks, including myself, do find the current indices useful.

 

[el-remmen]

The 2E PHB and DMG indices were actually a lot better than the 3E ones - and the 2E books needed it less (being less detailed rules-wise).

 

[Henry]

Do consider those to be well done, useful indices? I do not. I am usually unable to find what I want using them.

I have to say that I find what I am looking for every time in the Core books indices - just Sunday I had to reference the "shaken" condition, and could not remember where to look; had I been forced to scan every chapter to find the "special abilities and conditions" section I would have found it in the LAST chapter of the book, instead of zipping to the index, finding what I needed, and resuming play within 30 seconds. (Actually, it took me about as long to REMEMBER that the core books had indices, so I wasted time floundering without it in the first place!)