D&D Reprint On Demand Report: Spelljammer and Ravenloft

Three more books from the POD option at dmsguild.com came in today: Ravenloft II: The House on Griffon Hill, Spelljammer: Goblin's Return and the first-time-in-print Scourge of the Sword Coast. I won't focus on the content, but instead on the quality of these print editions:

Ravenloft II: The House on Griffon Hill

I couldn't resist this primarily because I never owned the original, and I always wanted to investigate the first module to outline Mordent, one of my top five domains in Ravenloft. The cover and binding of this module is great, and it's a bit thicker than the old 1E modules were, mainly due to being perfect-bound on heavier quality paper. The cover and back look great.

However, the interior looks a bit faded to the naked eye, although I noticed it less once I put the reading glasses on. The net effect is that some pages....many....just look a bit "off" in that way a print from a scanned copy tends to be. This is unfortunate. It's not bad enough to make me regret the purchase, however....or the advantage of an inexpensive new copy over hunting for one on ebay. The back contains reprints in color of the handouts and maps for the module, and they actually fare much better, being legible and useful.

Spelljammer: Goblin's Return

I owned this one long ago and ran it once. Like Ravenloft II, the module's color cover looks great, and it's thicker paper and perfect bound spine mean it looks just a tad thicker than the original (which was itself a big book at 68 pages including fold out ship cards. The cards are in the back, and remain in full color, albeit standard, slightly washed-out colors instead of the glossy cardstock of the original.

The print in this module suffers from the same problem as Ravenloft II: a bit light, and feels like a bit washed out in a "print of a scan" kind of way, but the problem once again more or less disappears for me with my reading glasses on so I'm not 100% sure it's me or the book itself. I'm leaning to "book" though because of the next module, which serves as a great control....

Scourge of the Sword Coast

This was the third module to be released in the 2013-2014 D&D Next playtest phase, which means its at once compatible with D&D 5E and also contains some interesting artifacts in its design from that formative phase of 5E, including some interesting monsters stats. The book's never been offered in print before, but it was clearly laid out and designed for print; the POD version looks awesome, and the version I got (the deluxe premium color paper) is crisp and sharp....and the fact that it looks so good and is also so readable is a good test to confirm that the lighter print of the other two books is a real problem, and not just an issue with my eyes.

As a side note this module is a direct sequel to the Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle module, which was a Gencon special with playtest rules and a level 1-10 quartet of scenarios. This is another great candidate for a future POD edition. I actually ran the entire Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle as a level 1-10 campaign in the first half of 2015, albeit ported from the Sword Coast to the Silver Coast of Pergerron. Good module! But not sure how viable Scourge of the Sword Coast is as a direct sequel, since it's aimed at level 2-4, and takes place after the last scenario in Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle, where the PCs would be pushing level 10-11.

Overall

I think for the price all three POD books above were worth it, but if you're a collector I'd keep hunting the originals, especially Ravenloft II and its large map of Mordenshire. For Goblin's Return, this module would be perfect if you want to run it....and more than sufficient if you're collecting Spelljammer for fun, but maybe not ideal if you want a "first printing" level of quality. As for Scourge of the Sword Coast....if you had the two prior print release modules from that era (Murder in Baldur's Gate and that other one with the drow elf and the crystal shards) then this is a must-have, and contains plenty of useful stuff to crib for 5E games.

The Original Dungeons & Dragons Returns this November

'Nuff said: Wizards is releasing the original three book set plus four supplements in a wooden case with dice. It's a pretty penny ($149.95) but seriously......new covers, faithful reprints of the interiors....this is even more impressive than what they did with AD&D 1st edition.

AD&D 2nd Edition Reprints plus classic Module Reprints

Real brief, but over on rpg.net (yeah yeah still hanging out there occasionally) cloak n' dagger found the following listings for May 2013 on Amazon for AD&D 2nd edition books. This includes the PHB, DMG and Monstrous Manual (thankfully not the folio-style version). Also listed: the S series and A series modules! A series is one of the few I ran straight up back in the day. Secret of the Slavers Stockade FTW!

The D&D 3.5 Reprint Covers

So ENworld's Morrus has the scoop here. They are basically variations on the same style as the 3.0 and 3.5 covers....nothing unusual I guess, although I was really hoping for a return to "cover with good art" form but ...whatcha gonna do.

I have no idea if I will ever play 3.5 D&D again, given how Pathfinder has magnanimoulsy swept through my gaming spheres like some sort of fandom-powered ramjet sail sucking up gamers like stellar gas....but I will definitely grab these books, and definitely use them if one day the opportunity arises.

I'm so used to Pathfinder with its enhanced level of character scaling now that honestly 3rd edition would feel almost quaint and traditional by comparison, I suspect.







You know what? I likese these covers, they're less busy than the 3.5 covers, and have a better thematic style to tie them together with that stylized dragon motif in the faux leather.

Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 reprints....whoa!

It's up on WotC's site as an official announcement here. And not just straight reprints, but premium edition reprints.

This is a smart move. I can honestly say I think I'd prefer the more structured and less inflated (ironically!) mechanics of a good core 3.5 ruleset with a choice selection of splatbooks and add-ons over Pathfinder. Don't get me wrong, Pathfinder is good, but it's design bumped up player power by a noticeable margin without doing a lot to also bump up the equivalent challenge levels of monsters. I have also never liked the increased rate of feat acquisition in Pathfinder. I do, however, love the way Pathfinder manages skill ranks so I'd probably houserule that into a 3.5 game.

Also, and this may sound petty, but I really do prefer playing the game with the official stats for mind flayers, beholders, githyanki and other D&D icons. Call me shallow, but...well...SHALLOW! Now gimme!

So yeah....going to be pre-ordering these new editions ASAP (saves me my eternal ebay search for the pefect set that's also at a decent price; an impossibility for 3.5 edition books!)

POSTSCRIPT: After comparing and studying the Pathfinder books and the D&D 3.5 material online, I realize that Pathfinder really is, by and large, still a pretty decent progression of the system on its own. Funny, but I'd never noticed how much nicer the PF art is compared to the 3.5 art until directly comparing the two (at least in the core books).

Anyway, I'm not sure having mind-flayer stats, beholder stuff and so forth is quite worth the price of these premium editions, but from a collector's standpoint I think I would like to have them. A shame WotC can't actually produce their own direct sequel to 3.5 (as opposed to what they actually did do with 4E, which was an entirely different game system that coincidentally shared some mechanical relationships and existed in the same general world-space). I'd be keen to see what sort of organic development a hypothetical 3.5 would look like if someone worked it over in a way that kept the 3.5 core intact while trying to address issues with it. Pathfinder, of course, does that but maybe in a way that feels a bit less like a "fix" and a bit more like a "work-around."