View Full Version : (Almost) no more new setting books?
I'm not a 4th edition player, but that's not really a problem as I usually play with only core rules and use other books purely for the fluff. I like the 4E Manual of the Planes a lot for that reason. But looking back on recent years, and forward at upcomming books, it seems that almost all 4E books are about classes and monster. There's the basic Player's Guide and Campaign guide for Forgotten Realms, Eberron, and Dark Sun, but I already know the basics and would be much more interested in more specific parts of the world. There's the Neverwinter book comming up, but that seems to be about it.
Is that a mistake on my site, or does 4E focus exclusively on rule-books?
TheAbstruseOne
2011-07-03, 12:06 PM
They're at the point right now in the release cycle that they have no clue what to do next. If they were still independent, it wouldn't be a problem. But now, they're part of the Hasbro corporate machine and corporate machines want money and results. Because there's already 6 PHBs (PBH1-3, Heroes of Forgotten Whatever, Heroes of Fallen Whatever, and Heroes of Shadow), 6 MMs (MM1-3, MV1-2, and Dark Sun Creature Catalog), 2 DMGs, and a comprehensive rulebook with errata; sales are slipping big time because anything they release from this point out isn't a must-buy. Have the RC, MM, and a player's book? You can play the game. Anything else is a bonus.
The biggest proof of both the floundering and the corporate interference is killing the Miniatures line and the almost complete scrapping of the entire year's release schedule. HoS and Shadowfell? That was supposed to be Ravenloft. Now we're only going to get an update via Dragon articles listing different Domains of Despair, some of which may be ones previously seen in Ravenloft. Dragon's been starving for material (look at the articles from around 2008 and 2009 compared to the ones from 2011 and you'll see what I mean), so they're cannibalizing some of their print releases for material because that $8/mo subscription brings in a lot of money (estimates run from 7000 to 15000 active subscribers). They're releasing board games because they can get those in big box stores like Wal-mart, Target, and K-mart which gives them more exposure.
So basically, unless something is less than 3 months away from release (which means it's been sent to the printers), don't expect anything whatsoever from WotC until they announce a new edition. You can't say necessarily that they're doing anything wrong from a business standpoint, but it's the first time since Hasbro bought out WotC that a new edition of D&D's been released and even though they sold great in 2008-2009, sales started slipping and profits went down and even though it's perfectly reasonable and expected for a RPG publisher, a corporation that isn't in the business doesn't care and just wants quarterly profits to go up every three months like clockwork and doesn't accept excuses.
Edit: All that and I didn't even really answer your question. Fluff books don't sell well. Period. The only reason FR sold well is because it's Forgotten friggin' Realms. The only reason Dark Sun sold decently was because they pushed the crap out of it when it was released and it's a very non-D&D style of D&D compared to other settings. The only reason Ebberon ever sold a single book is because of steampunk and Full Metal Alchemist. But Manual of the Planes? The Plane Above/Below books? Underdark/Hammerfast/etc.? I'd be shocked if any one of those books sold numbers higher than four digits. Thoroughly shocked.
The only people who buy fluff books are the people who are hardcore D&D fans, of which there are very few due to other distractions (no, not Pathfinder...I mean XBox and WoW and online message boards). They're books that are not only just for the DM, but just for a specific type of DM (one that wants to know more about all the background stuff instead of just running the game). If no one's buying, there's no reason to write them. Any new info, just put it in a Dragon article because they'll make more money off that $8 subscription than off that $19.95 book.
Hzurr
2011-07-03, 12:28 PM
my understanding is that setting books will be more like the recent "Gloomwraught" book. Where rather than one big setting, it will ne more focused on a subset of an existing setting. In addition to the Shadowfell book, this year will also see Neverwinter, as well as a book on the Feywild. (which as far as I understand will be done similarly to how the Shadowbooks were).
So that means 3 quasi setting books in 2011, which isn't bad. And don't forget that GenCon is only a month away, so at that point we'll get a better feel for what to expect for the end of the year and 2012
Uuuuuhhh.... Feywild.
As an expansion of the MotP, that's something to look forward to. :smallbiggrin:
This doesn't quite answer your question, but honestly, having leafed through the 4e Pamphlet Manual of the Planes, I have a better time pulling fluff from old settings and tweaking it to match 4e, precisely because WotC's put so little effort into fleshing out the 4e fluff. Sure, when I pull fluff from just about any premade source, I end up ignoring part of it . . . but since there's so little 4e fluff to work with, ignoring part of it means that there's more likely to be an actual gap instead of a gloss, if that makes any sense.
I haven't paid any attention to WotC's release schedule, so I can't help on that front, but there's a wealth of old material to be mined if you're willing to make a few lesser or greater changes to it. I don't see why the bulk of the old Eberron books wouldn't still work, for instance (OK, dragonmarks no longer have the strict racial restrictions, but that doesn't mean the Houses are any less powerful or picky . . . and once you get past that, pretty much everything else still works), and they tend to be REALLY cheap on Amazon or eBay or whatever source you like to get old RPG books from.
Possibly not what you wanted, but worth mentioning.
Kurald Galain
2011-07-03, 03:27 PM
Is that a mistake on my site, or does 4E focus exclusively on rule-books?
Not just rule books - also tile sets, dice sets, and random effect cards. WOTC's business model does not go for a lot of settings books, no, primarily because they learned from TSR that it's not good to fracture your own fanbase.
Mando Knight
2011-07-03, 06:57 PM
A lot of the setting-y stuff is included in the Dungeon and Dragon magazines. Mostly related to specific things like sets of powers/feats/items or potential Big Bads, but there's a good amount of fairly modular fluff to go with the stat blocks.
zorba1994
2011-07-03, 10:56 PM
Also, don't forget that out of the specifically interested hardline DMs that would be interested in fluff books, I'd bet that a decent percentage of that already miniscule demographic doesn't care about fluff books because they figure they can come up with anything as good, if not better.
Katana_Geldar
2011-07-03, 11:05 PM
Heroes of the Feywild is going to be more like Heroes of Shadow. It would be good if it were more like Shadowfell, but it won't be.
TheAbstruseOne
2011-07-03, 11:22 PM
Also, don't forget that out of the specifically interested hardline DMs that would be interested in fluff books, I'd bet that a decent percentage of that already miniscule demographic doesn't care about fluff books because they figure they can come up with anything as good, if not better.
Actually, the hardline DMs will want it more. Not only does it give them ideas they can steal for their own homebrew campaign, but it also gives them something to complain about! *in stereotypical nerd voice* "Of course they had to RUIN the entire cosmetology that was slowly expanded over the course of 30 years to dumb it down for the masses. Who wants to play in a game world with only eight different cosmic planes? It's 27 different planes or it's NOTHING!"
Katana_Geldar
2011-07-03, 11:28 PM
I want more books like The Shadowfell, Manual of The Planes, The Planes Above/Below.
I already know where Gloomwrought is in my campaign world.
Dacia Brabant
2011-07-03, 11:41 PM
You're better off now just using the well-developed homebrew settings on this board and elsewhere than relying on anything by WotC. Apart from the rules and the graphics, they don't really know what their game is about anymore--and that's coming from someone who really quite likes 4e, which as a ruleset suits my playstyle and gaming needs more than 3.5 or AD&D, but a coherent RPG is more than that.
cosmetology
And of course the stereotypical nerd would use the incorrect word, too. :smallamused:
TheAbstruseOne
2011-07-04, 12:12 AM
And of course the stereotypical nerd would use the incorrect word, too. :smallamused:
Yes, that was completely intentional! *nervous laugh*
KillianHawkeye
2011-07-04, 01:24 AM
cosmetology
And of course the stereotypical nerd would use the incorrect word, too. :smallamused:
Yes, that was completely intentional! *nervous laugh*
His favorite character is probably a Rouge. :smallwink::smallamused:
TheAbstruseOne
2011-07-04, 02:30 AM
His favorite character is probably a Rouge. :smallwink::smallamused:
No, I'm actually good about that one. "Rogue" is a pretty common word in gaming, while "cosmology" is not. Also, Firefox's spellcheck hates me.
Not just rule books - also tile sets, dice sets, and random effect cards. WOTC's business model does not go for a lot of settings books, no, primarily because they learned from TSR that it's not good to fracture your own fanbase.
After 20 Forgotten Realms and 15 Eberron books in 3rd Edition?
Sure, supporting 10 settings simultaneously isn't a good idea, but that doesn't mean you have to limit yourself to a Campaign Setting and a Players Guide and call it a day.
DSA has only a single setting (with two continents), and there are literarily dozens of books for that world. My brother has only DSA books and still twice as many as I do.
TheAbstruseOne
2011-07-04, 04:32 AM
After 20 Forgotten Realms and 15 Eberron books in 3rd Edition?
Sure, supporting 10 settings simultaneously isn't a good idea, but that doesn't mean you have to limit yourself to a Campaign Setting and a Players Guide and call it a day.
DSA has only a single setting (with two continents), and there are literarily dozens of books for that world. My brother has only DSA books and still twice as many as I do.
There was originally a very good annual pattern to the release schedule for 4e:
1 PHB (new races and classes, including a new power source)
1 DMG (Heroic - Paragon - Epic...don't know what they would've done by year 4)
1 MM
2 Powers books (expanding on the classes for a specific power source)
1 Adventurer's Vault with new items
1 Campaign Setting book
1 support book for the Campaign Setting book (FR and Ebberon had player's books while Dark Sun got a MM)
4-6 Adventure books (at least one of which will be for that year's campaign setting)
4-6 "Fluff" books (either focusing on a specific race (Dragonborn, Tiefling), a major NPC type (Draconomicon, Open Grave), or about the cosmology (Plane Above/Below, Manual of the Planes)
This was scrapped with Essentials as an attempt to revive sales with a 3.5-like relaunch of the system but still completely compatible so they didn't end up with the sort of backlash they got when 3.5 launched. It helped but wasn't as strong as Hasbro wanted, so they went through yet another scrapping which in this case meant scrapping almost their entire release schedule for this year (I guess they figured they'd sell more books if they moved from 24 or so books a year to 12).
For the reasons behind that (or at least my speculations for them), see my post above. It really looks like they're banking their money on board games and boxed sets until the next edition cycle. They're also banking a lot on DDi and honestly I think the move to browser-based tools rather than offline tools is to stop people like me who would sign up for 1 month around every 6-9 months just for the updates and cancelling, thus ensuring they get at least $8/mo (or is it $10/mo now?) from at least one person in every gaming group, which is more profit than if every gaming group bought 1 of every book. There's also rumors of a tier-based subscription where you get access to certain tools at each level, so they can get $5/mo from every player and $15/mo from every DM, but that's pure speculation.
Kurald Galain
2011-07-04, 08:08 AM
After 20 Forgotten Realms and 15 Eberron books in 3rd Edition?
Yeah, good point. I'm not saying that WOTC is right to do it this way, but it does appear to be their choice. I don't think that Greyhawk or Dragonlance or Al'Qadim or Birthright have sufficient fanbase to warrant Hasbro printing books for them.
Incidentally to the OP, if you want fluff books there is no reason why you couldn't use a 2E Setting Book, or even one from GURPS.
True. I think a Planescape game of any edition runs perfectly with the AD&D boxes. But when they really want to, WotC sometimes makes really good books, like Races of Faerun, Silver Marches, Elder Evils, and Dragons of Eberron. I'd like to see more books like those and buy them.
technoextreme
2011-07-04, 08:36 AM
After 20 Forgotten Realms and 15 Eberron books in 3rd Edition?
Sure, supporting 10 settings simultaneously isn't a good idea, but that doesn't mean you have to limit yourself to a Campaign Setting and a Players Guide and call it a day.
DSA has only a single setting (with two continents), and there are literarily dozens of books for that world. My brother has only DSA books and still twice as many as I do.
Eberron has four books supported in 4E. You have the Campaign Book, Stormreach, Dragons of Eberron, and the Players Guide. Yeah weirdly enough a few of those are 3.5E books but if you look at the book it says they are compatible with 4E and do actually have statblocks for those monsters.
Eberron has four books supported in 4E. You have the Campaign Book, Stormreach, Dragons of Eberron, and the Players Guide. Yeah weirdly enough a few of those are 3.5E books but if you look at the book it says they are compatible with 4E and do actually have statblocks for those monsters.
Citation needed. What page are you looking at?
I think there's a web-update pdf. But I think the very few stats I saw in DoE were all 3.5e.
KillianHawkeye
2011-07-04, 01:27 PM
Dragons of Eberron came more than half a year BEFORE any 4th Edition material. Perhaps you're thinking of something else?
technoextreme
2011-07-04, 02:32 PM
Citation needed. What page are you looking at?
Grab the book and look at the rear of its cover. At least the version I looked at actually said its compatible with 4E and low and behold when I went to Wizard's website they did post a conversion.
OracleofWuffing
2011-07-04, 05:42 PM
Hm... I don't see any explicit mention of 4e on the back of my copy, but it does have the D&D Insider logo, and the Conversion PDF (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/DragonsEberron_4E.pdf) certainly does exit.
Katana_Geldar
2011-07-04, 10:08 PM
What about The Book of Vile Darkness? I have that on pre-order, it will be sweet.
TheAbstruseOne
2011-07-05, 03:52 AM
Yeah, good point. I'm not saying that WOTC is right to do it this way, but it does appear to be their choice. I don't think that Greyhawk or Dragonlance or Al'Qadim or Birthright have sufficient fanbase to warrant Hasbro printing books for them.
I don't agree that the reason is insufficient fanbase so much as there's not enough material to warrant a book. I'm going to go through the Wikipedia list of D&D game worlds through the years and (with admitted limited knowledge of some of the worlds) judge how much new material would be needed.
Al-Qadim - Between FR, DS, and core; all you'd need is fluff and cherry-picking races/classes/monsters used.
Birthright - Pure fluff. I don't know the setting that well, but the most I can see being needed are new Themes so a Dragon article would give you this setting.
Blackmoor - I don't know much about this setting, but what little I do know tells me that this requires absolutely no new rules at all.
Council of Wyrms - I don't remember this at all, but Wikipedia has it listed so *shrug*. I think Dragonborn took care of anyone wanting to play in this game world honestly.
Dragonlance - Reskin Halflings as Kender and Dragonborn as Draconians. Kill Gully Dwarves as a PC race. Add some magic items/artifacts. A Dragon article could take care of this, and everything else is fluff. I admittedly never read anything into 5th Age or beyond so more might be required depending.
Ghostwalk - A lot of this was rolled into Hammerfast, and the only rules needed would be to convert living players to ghosts.
Greyhawk - Pure fluff. Aside from some NPCs to stat and some magic items/artifacts, everything in Greyhawk is in the core rules. The only thing anyone cares about in Greyhawk are the iconic modules anyway, and any attempt to officially convert those would cause massive backlash anyway, so what's the point?
Jakandor - I have absolutely no idea what this is. Looking at the description, I don't think there's anything needed.
Kara-Tur (Oriental Adventures) - Lots of fluff, but everything's there depending on power choices. A Dragon article could reskin or offer new power choices to fix anything needed for this setting. I think this was going to be the Year 4 setting with the Ki power source debuting in PHB4, but they abandoned that power source.
Kingdoms of Kalamar - I don't know anything about this setting really, but it looks like a 4e version was already released and it'd mostly be fluff and maps anyway.
Lankhmar - I don't really know this system, but it looks like just fluff would be needed.
Mahasarpa - See above for Kara-Tur.
Maztica - Fluff and reskinning, if that wasn't in the FR book already.
Mystara - Same as Greyhawk. Fluff, NPC/magic items, and updated modules. Hollow World would take more work, but it's almost all reskinning of other races and powers.
Pelinore - Core rules with new fluff.
Planescape - The books are there already, you just have to do a lot of work to bring them together in 4e.
Ravenloft - This one would've been perfect for a full treatment, but because of the stigma of "campaign setting fatigue", we got Shadowfell and HoS instead. With those books though; we only need the fluff, restatting of the key NPCs (Open Grave has them uses pre-MM3 style Solos), some rules for Powers, maybe some Themes, and a little reskinning. Any rules needed could be covered in a Dragon article and I've been harassing WotC employees on Twitter for that.
Rokugan - Same for Kara-Tur, but WotC lost the rights anyway and there's a new edition of the L5R RPG anyway.
Savage Coast - Fluff.
Spelljammer - Only setting that would actually require enough new rules/items/races to justify a full book, but I think this is the one that fits your hypothesis of lack of interest being the reason. This setting is just flat-out too silly to bother with IMO, but if they wanted to do Spelljammer it could be covered by pulling Gama World stuff and adding some magic items in a Dragon article.
Thunder Rift - Don't remember this one honestly, but it looks like another fluff-only.
Wilderlands of High Fantasy - I don't know anything about this setting and Wikipedia doesn't have any real info, but something tells me Core would cover it.
Conclusion: Almost all the settings are already covered under the rules and just require a DM to use the fluff from older editions with the new rules. The ones that don't can be given the appropriate crunchy rules info in just one or two Dragon articles. The only one that hasn't been written up that would require a full book is Spelljammer, and who honestly wants to play Spelljammer?
Problem is, that that stuff is out of print for almost 15 years. I'd buy a whole library of Planescape books, but the prices for the old box sets are just not affordable for me.
Kurald Galain
2011-07-05, 05:26 AM
Conclusion: Almost all the settings are already covered under the rules and just require a DM to use the fluff from older editions with the new rules.
You forget that almost all the settings need a major cataclysm that arbitrarily rearranges the geography, kills off the most important NPCs, and switches the pantheon around :smalltongue:
who honestly wants to play Spelljammer?
Me.
TheAbstruseOne
2011-07-05, 08:12 AM
Problem is, that that stuff is out of print for almost 15 years. I'd buy a whole library of Planescape books, but the prices for the old box sets are just not affordable for me.
They really need to get over the anti-PDF mentality and put the out of print stuff online. Think of the number of DDi subscriptions they'd get if you could download all the old modules/settings.
And I forgot to multiquote, but Spelljammer? Really? Really?
But then people get the idea that they don't have to buy all the latest stuff and can continue using old stuff. Can't let that happen!
And I think while pdfs work for splatbooks, sourcebooks are really lots of reading material. Having to read them on a computer is really impractical.
As long as there are no cheap e-readers that can display pdfs and have power for a couple of days, printed books are just so much better for reading long texts.
Gryffon
2011-07-05, 09:06 AM
The only one that hasn't been written up that would require a full book is Spelljammer, and who honestly wants to play Spelljammer?
This would most likely single-handedly convert on my friends no matter how much he's sworn he won't buy any 4e books.
TheEmerged
2011-07-05, 01:18 PM
When the group I DM was getting ready to move to Paragon levels, there was talk of moving to a different setting instead. Spelljammer was the one setting more than one of the older players mentioned.
EccentricCircle
2011-07-05, 01:35 PM
The only one that hasn't been written up that would require a full book is Spelljammer, and who honestly wants to play Spelljammer?
Me!
I've run a few spelljammery games in 3.5 but the lack of rules to support it is a pain.
I'd have been happy if they had continued the original pattern of doing two (generally quite good) books for a new world each year. the 4e Eberron book is really nice and even though I hardly ever run 4e myself i'm one of those DM's aluded to above who enjoys reading the details of constructed worlds to inform their own setting design.
I don't care if they don't do a sourcebook for every city in the forgotton realms. those wouldn't be of much use to me. but a Ravenloft Campaign setting, or a Spelljammer book really would.
I would have liked to see:
Greyhawk, Ravenloft, Dragonlance, Spelljammer, Planescape and an oriental setting at least.
its a shame that that doesn't seem to be the way its going now.
that said the fluff books they have done such as the planes ones and the open grave book are all very enjoyable. some of them have given me stuff to work into my ongoing 3.5 game even if I've not used any of the crunch, so I really can't complain...
but spelljammer would be awesome... goes to read the stuff on astral ships in plane above...
BlckDv
2011-07-05, 02:43 PM
I have fond memories of Spelljammer, although to be fair a lot of it was because of how utterly silly it was. Space Hippos, Space Orcs, Space Space. And the pop-culture monsters (It's not the Guyver, we swear). It made a great mood breaker when a main campaign got a bit too heavy.
I'll also disagree on Birthright only needing fluff. I've *tried* to run it in 4e, and Bloodline and Realm rules are NOT easy just just hand wave onto 4e PCs. The Bloodline rules as written for 2nd Ed. were married very tightly to the "your PC begins as the luck of the dice, then you see what you can make of it" mentality which has been removed, discouraged, or at least marginalized in the newer editions. Rolling randomly for Bloodline strength, then randomly for powers sits uneasy a top point buy stats, power balanced classes, and rock paper scissor races of 4e.
Don't even get me started on trying to work Realm Magic into the Ritual system or nation level economics into the 4e handwave the buy/sell dynamic economy.
evirus
2011-07-06, 12:09 PM
The Bloodline rules as written for 2nd Ed. were married very tightly to the "your PC begins as the luck of the dice, then you see what you can make of it" mentality which has been removed, discouraged, or at least marginalized in the newer editions. Rolling randomly for Bloodline strength, then randomly for powers sits uneasy a top point buy stats, power balanced classes, and rock paper scissor races of 4e.
Isn't Gamma World a bit like this?
MeeposFire
2011-07-06, 01:52 PM
There was originally a very good annual pattern to the release schedule for 4e:
1 PHB (new races and classes, including a new power source)
1 DMG (Heroic - Paragon - Epic...don't know what they would've done by year 4)
1 MM
2 Powers books (expanding on the classes for a specific power source)
1 Adventurer's Vault with new items
1 Campaign Setting book
1 support book for the Campaign Setting book (FR and Ebberon had player's books while Dark Sun got a MM)
4-6 Adventure books (at least one of which will be for that year's campaign setting)
4-6 "Fluff" books (either focusing on a specific race (Dragonborn, Tiefling), a major NPC type (Draconomicon, Open Grave), or about the cosmology (Plane Above/Below, Manual of the Planes)
This was scrapped with Essentials as an attempt to revive sales with a 3.5-like relaunch of the system but still completely compatible so they didn't end up with the sort of backlash they got when 3.5 launched. It helped but wasn't as strong as Hasbro wanted, so they went through yet another scrapping which in this case meant scrapping almost their entire release schedule for this year (I guess they figured they'd sell more books if they moved from 24 or so books a year to 12).
For the reasons behind that (or at least my speculations for them), see my post above. It really looks like they're banking their money on board games and boxed sets until the next edition cycle. They're also banking a lot on DDi and honestly I think the move to browser-based tools rather than offline tools is to stop people like me who would sign up for 1 month around every 6-9 months just for the updates and cancelling, thus ensuring they get at least $8/mo (or is it $10/mo now?) from at least one person in every gaming group, which is more profit than if every gaming group bought 1 of every book. There's also rumors of a tier-based subscription where you get access to certain tools at each level, so they can get $5/mo from every player and $15/mo from every DM, but that's pure speculation.
That schedule was also a problem. They put out too much material too fast. We love it but it saturates the market too quickly and makes it difficult for them to continue. The schedule they have now is much slower and is there because the first schedule was too fast. In hindsight it would have been better to slow the start of 4e (after the first three rule books) a bit and continue that for longer even through the essentials cycle and beyond.
TheEmerged
2011-07-06, 02:36 PM
Isn't Gamma World a bit like this?
A bit. You roll your two origins. You then assign an 18 and a 16 to your attributes depending on those origins (or, assign a 20 to one because both origins share the same attribute). You then randomly roll (3d6) the remaining attributes. Two of the three skills you get bonuses to are dependent on your origin, the third is rolled randomly (it is possible to get all three bonuses to the same skill, I managed to get 2). Most of your powers/attacks are decided by the origin at low levels, at higher levels card choices become more a factor.
The 18/16 bit guarantees you'll have some capability, but can give wildly different results. Brian D. Brain, the character I rolled, didn't have an attribute below 12 and had two very complimentary origins (Mind Breaker + Mind Coercer). One of the other people at the table got Plant & Swarm, and really lousy rolls for the other 4 attributes. Both characters were playable, but mine was obviously more useful.
BlckDv
2011-07-08, 11:21 AM
Isn't Gamma World a bit like this?
As The Emerged said, a bit only. While the random scores four your four/five "offstats" in Gamma world are more in line with the old char gen ways, they are still bent to make balance a main concern.. even the worst PC is still pretty good at what he does, and in equal amount.
To try and express the bloodline rules very loosely in 4e terms, you would first roll a random "score" on a 1-100 scale (not d100, a very weighted roll), and that score would entitle you to some number of power rolls.
A lucky set of rolls could give a starting PC something like an extra daily and multiple extra encounter powers, a bad roll would give you nothing. You can see how this does not make for PCs that are even remotely equal assets. I loved the system just fine in the framework of 2nd Ed, I have no innate devotion to the philosophy that all PCs must be created equal for the players to have fun.... but the Deep Maths from the Design Times of 4e assume equal PCs and a widely varied party requires major banging on the pipes to work correctly.
What I would expect/want from a 4e Birthright rules set would be a new set of story that preserved the Tainted/Minor/Major/Great bloodline system, but with mechanics that fit better into the all are equal design scheme of 4e, perhaps by linking Bloodline powers to feats like the... Bloodline Feats system they have used in other materials. *grin*. I can see ways of adopting it, but while I would welcome 4e Birthright, I don't have the passion/dedication to work it out myself homebrew, as it requires much more than re-skinned fluff.
kyoryu
2011-07-08, 05:46 PM
As long as there are no cheap e-readers that can display pdfs and have power for a couple of days, printed books are just so much better for reading long texts.
Define "cheap". You can get a gen1 Nook for $110 or $120 or Best Buy, and they're not even the cheapest.
EccentricCircle
2011-07-08, 06:23 PM
oh and add a maztica campaign setting to my list of books i'd really like to see reprised in 4th edition.
TheAbstruseOne
2011-07-10, 07:17 AM
Define "cheap". You can get a gen1 Nook for $110 or $120 or Best Buy, and they're not even the cheapest.
Kindles are around that price as well (within $20) and the battery life on those is a few days at least (my roommate's has gone a month before) and is easily and quickly charged by a laptop or desktop. That's the cost of the three core books and a splatbook.
I really wouldn't mind buying some books in ebook format, especially rulebooks that aren't frequently referenced at the table (basically any book other than Rules Compendium for 4e). The problem is that, for most systems I've seen, the ebooks are the same friggin' price as the printed books!
The best deal I've seen is $10 extra for the print and ebook versions. It's moronic because an ebook release is 100% profit as soon as the writers/artists/editors are paid. There's no printing costs, no storage fees for stock, no costs of any kind once the books are being laid out. Sure, there's hosting fees, but those are negligible if you put any advertising on the site. There's no reason to charge that much for an ebook! Period!
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