So Are Splatbooks Just Not Gonna Be a Thing Anymore?

[DixieDevil]

So, it seems WotC is focused more on releasing adventures these days. Do you think 5e is gonna have any splatbooks like they did in 3.X?

I hope so.

[Rhaegar14]

I mean, we're getting the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide in less than a month with new subclasses for almost every core class. If that doesn't count as splat I don't know what does.

[Hyena]

Well, Sword Coast's adventurer's guide is coming out november the third. It's going to have new races, new subclasses, new backgrounds - so, no, there are going to be splatbooks.

EDIT: shadowmonk'd

[Rhaegar14]

My first ninja/Swordsage/Shadowmonk! I'm more proud of this moment than I reasonably should be.

[rollingForInit]

There was also the supplement for Elemental Evil, that was released as a free pdf, with new spells and races.

There are splatbooks. But they've said they aren't going to be releasing dozens and dozens of them, as they did with certain older versions.

[goto124]

How did the term 'splatbooks' come about? Do the new classes make monsters go SPLAT?

How fast did it take for splatbooks of previous editons to get published?

[Mara]

I doubt we'll see PH2 or similar books, but setting material, free PDFs, and unearthed arcana will be things.

[Anonymouswizard]

How did the term 'splatbooks' come about? Do the new classes make monsters go SPLAT?

I believe it comes from oWoD, where vampires had clanbooks, werewolves had tribe books, mages had tradition books, etc. To refer to that style of book *book was used, and then people decided that asterisks look like splats....

[Kurald Galain]

How did the term 'splatbooks' come about? Do the new classes make monsters go SPLAT?
What Anonymous said.


How fast did it take for splatbooks of previous editons to get published?
Pretty fast. 3E released 8 to 10 books per year in its prime. 4E started out with one book every month, and Paizo is currently running at about one book per month as well.

I do believe WOTC has said they won't be releasing a series of "complete <class>" or "complete <race>" guides this time, though.

[Inevitability]

I believe it comes from oWoD, where vampires had clanbooks, werewolves had tribe books, mages had tradition books, etc. To refer to that style of book *book was used, and then people decided that asterisks look like splats....

http://img02.deviantart.net/8020/i/2010/323/9/3/the_more_you_know_by_stathisnhx-d33639v.png

[KorvinStarmast]

Anonymouswizard is correct. (http://rpg.stackexchange.com/a/48659/22566)

The source of much bloat, but also some neat add ons to various games.

[Sredni Vashtar]

Adventures are probably more economically sound for them than splats. The modules will probably be their bread and butter, with "bigger" things like splatbooks being more occasional things. (I wonder if they'll ever bring the old boxed sets back, personally, though talk about not economical for TSR/WotC/Hasbro/whoever owns D&D now.)

[Mr.Moron]

Adventures are probably more economically sound for them than splats. The modules will probably be their bread and butter, with "bigger" things like splatbooks being more occasional things. (I wonder if they'll ever bring the old boxed sets back, personally, though talk about not economical for TSR/WotC/Hasbro/whoever owns D&D now.)

Adventures are also consumable content. You buy an adventure you finish it you need a new adventure. You buy a pile of feats and spells, you might not want another pile of feats and spells.

It's also nice because it keeps the baseline engine of the game consistent and confines expanded to options to specific settings or adventures, making it less complicated and bloated. Save for those anything-from-any-book style of groups.

[TopCheese]

I think that after some time a majority of people will start asking, almost begging, for more splat support.

What I would love to see is two adventure league days. One has just the core normal stuff while the other one allows for splat/approved homebrew (which now will be harder without their forum... But whatever, there are other ways). See how many people show up for each day, then after a while switch the days to see if the day had any effect on people showing up.

People showing up can take a survey so the numbers aren't that misleading.

It will never happen but oh well...

[Temperjoke]

Too many splatbooks can make it intimidating to get new players into things, especially if you have veteran players who own a copy of everything and only use certain books, while another person prefers a different set of books. I'd imagine that instead of lots of different individual books, the content that would have been in all those books is put together in singular adventures. So it's not less, it's just the same amount in big gulps instead of little bites.

[Anonymouswizard]

Too many splatbooks can make it intimidating to get new players into things, especially if you have veteran players who own a copy of everything and only use certain books, while another person prefers a different set of books. I'd imagine that instead of lots of different individual books, the content that would have been in all those books is put together in singular adventures. So it's not less, it's just the same amount in big gulps instead of little bites.

This is what I'm worried about. Running Eclipse Phase intimidates me because there is so much setting information that I just don't know (which I learnt when on this very forum), the only mitigating factor being that all the splats are free (...which to be honest is the only reason I own the corebook at all). Especially if somebody already knows the rules from some splats and uses them, while you don't even know the corebook.

Which is why for most of the games I own I only buy splats if they feature X creation rules.

[TopCheese]

This is what I'm worried about. Running Eclipse Phase intimidates me because there is so much setting information that I just don't know (which I learnt when on this very forum), the only mitigating factor being that all the splats are free (...which to be honest is the only reason I own the corebook at all). Especially if somebody already knows the rules from some splats and uses them, while you don't even know the corebook.

Which is why for most of the games I own I only buy splats if they feature X creation rules.

This is why you do Core +1. Back in 3e and 4e this was typically how I saw games were ran.

[Theodoxus]

Anonymouswizard is correct. (http://rpg.stackexchange.com/a/48659/22566)

The source of much bloat, but also some neat add ons to various games.


I've never heard "Splat" as a term for an asterisk before... Must have been before my time – Bobson Sep 30 '14 at 17:52
2
@Bobson I suspect it's regional or otherwise specific to a demographic. But all it takes is gaining a foothold, and then it spreads. You can see this phenomenon of one pronunciation taking root and spreading despite differences in people's name for '*' right now again, where games based on Apocalypse World are being called, as a class, "*World games", pronounced "starworld games." – SevenSidedDie♦ Sep 30 '14 at 18:50

Had I known this was the origin, I would have pushed for Starbooks as well... It's what my tiny gaming group called the oWoD clan books... ah well, we were on the wrong side of history. I always thought "splat" was indicative of the poor quality of the books - broken spines and flopping (splatting) open to the center...

To the OP - I'm hoping any expanded material stays with the format of the AGs; I loathe Paizo and their expansionistic tendencies to push new content inside their APs. "Oh look, a new feat for this specific build of an NPC, in the middle of a block of text. How convenient." Beyond that, I hope they include free online source material for their expansion, ala EE... though I'm not a fan of the creep EE gave, and I'm seeing more of it with the previews of SCAG... but what're gonna do, keep rolling up base classes from 2014? That's soo yesteryear.

[Regitnui]

Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide will probably be their model. I'm looking forward to the Eberron splat. It must be soon, since they released the unearthed arcana very early.

[Kane0]

So far it looks like one every 4-6 months, which is a much more managable rate.
I'm hoping for an eventual compendium of adventure player material in the form of a 5e equipment and spell compendium somewhere down the line to keep everything organised.

[Anonymouswizard]

To the OP - I'm hoping any expanded material stays with the format of the AGs; I loathe Paizo and their expansionistic tendencies to push new content inside their APs. "Oh look, a new feat for this specific build of an NPC, in the middle of a block of text. How convenient." Beyond that, I hope they include free online source material for their expansion, ala EE... though I'm not a fan of the creep EE gave, and I'm seeing more of it with the previews of SCAG... but what're gonna do, keep rolling up base classes from 2014? That's soo yesteryear.

I do dislike the idea of having to buy adventures to get new options, because I don't use them. I do hope they continue to do the free online materials from adventures as well, but I believe they also intend to do 'here's the new splatbook, including the rules material from the last round of modules', or at least I hope that's what they're doing.

As a side note, I would have gone for xbooks myself, as I'm used to doing algebra and think that *s look a bit silly.