Eberron: Forge of the Artificer to Be Priced at $29.99

Dungeons & Dragons is returning to the splatbook era. Today, Wizards of the Coast announced pre-orders for Eberron: Forge of the Artificer, a new "rules expansion" focused on Eberron. Buried in the pre-order announcement is that the physical version of the book will cost just $29.99, suggesting a much thinner page count and the lowest price point for a Fifth Edition book released by Wizards of the Coast.

Wizards previously teased that the new Eberron book would be different from other D&D sourcebooks, but the $29.99 price point is about half of the current $50-$60 price point for current D&D rules manuals. No page count has been confirmed for the new Eberron book, so we'll have to see just how much of a splatbook Eberron: Forge of the Artificer ends up being.

 

[tetrasodium]

The lower price point might be to encourage the gamer culture to purchase setting books.

All the flavor is in the setting choice. The core rules aim for setting neutral. It might take time for the gaming community to get used to the idea of looking for the flavor in the setting books.

I kind of agree. A setting book needs enough gm & player support to build characters that fit the setting's baseline themes and tone while supporting the gm in running a campaign atop the foundation of those themes and tones with enough lore but not so much lore that the players feel overwhelmed or the gm is feeling like players are clobbering them with lore too often to justify the setting. Imo some of that support needs to be in the form of establishing rules expectations doing the lifting for the GM, but a few side bars or couple pages could probably carry most of those need

 

[Yaarel]

I am thinking of 5.24 settings.

I just noticed the new Players Handbook mentions Dark Sun. Surprisingly. This seems to me, WotC decided not to discontinue it after all. I doubt they are rushing to publish it, but are open to it when they find ways to resolve some of its difficult content.

So, there is variety of D&D flavors.

Heh, one can have Vanilla, Natural Bean Vanilla, Homemade Vanilla, or French Vanilla: Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, or Nerath.

Then there are other distinctive flavors: Spelljammer-Planescape, Dark Sun, Eberron-Ravnica, Strixhaven-Witchlight-Feywild, Ravenloft-Shadowfell, Exodus space opera.

Now that the core really is setting neutral, I suspect some of the vanilla settings are free to diversify into neapolitan, chocolate chip, maybe even chocolate chip mint.


Whichever setting a table chooses will be the flavor of D&D.


I assume there will be a strong effort to make it easy for the options in one setting to import, and plug-and-play in an other setting. There will be advice for how a DM can do this for some of the more eccentric bespoke mechanics. In other words, 5.24 might be making the mythical 'modularity' a reality.


Right now, Eberron and maybe a new vision for Forgotten Realms are a good idea to reach most players. Forgotten Realms tends to appeal to traditionalist gamers and Eberron to modernist gamers. I suspect both will do deep dives into the flavors within the setting. Some of these deep dives will evolve via adventures for a setting. The two settings are a good start to getting the community into the habit of choosing a setting.

For the old school and easiest flavor, DMs can use the Greyhawk setting in the DMs Guide.

 

[tetrasodium]

I am thinking of 5.24 settings.

I just noticed the new Players Handbook mentions Dark Sun. Surprisingly. This seems to me, WotC decided not to discontinue it after all. I doubt they are rushing to publish it, but are open to it when they find ways to resolve some of its difficult content.

So, there is variety of D&D flavors.

Heh, one can have Vanilla, Natural Bean Vanilla, Homemade Vanilla, or French Vanilla: Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, or Nerath.

Then there are other distinctive flavors: Spelljammer-Planescape, Dark Sun, Eberron-Ravnica, Strixhaven-Witchlight-Feywild, Ravenloft-Shadowfell.

Now that the core really is setting neutral, I suspect some of the vanilla settings are free to diversify into neapolitan, chocolate chip, maybe even chocolate chip mint.


Whichever setting a table chooses will be the flavor of D&D.


I assume there will be a strong effort to make it easy for the options in one setting to import, and plug-and-play in an other setting. There will be advice for how a DM can do this for some of the more eccentric bespoke mechanics. In other words, 5.24 might be making the mythical 'modularity' a reality.


Right now, Eberron and maybe a new vision for Forgotten Realms are a good idea to reach most players. Forgotten Realms tends to appeal to traditionalist gamers and Eberron to modernist gamers. I suspect both will do deep dives into the flavors within the setting. Some of these deep dives will evolve via adventures for a setting. The two settings are a good start to getting the community into the habit of choosing a setting.

For the easiest flavor, DMs can use the Greyhawk setting in the DMs Guide.

I think that if these sub-30$ setting books are simple paperback/digital things multiple players at the table feel justified in needing enough to justify a normal volume where it's common to see 2-3 of them per average 3-5+gm player that that they could go even further than that. A. FR game set in & around water deep or something else fairly close to generic FR with a twist like moonsea(?) where the elves live should have a wildly different feel _ set of needs than an FR game set in Thay where the party is largely expected to remain. The same could be said about an eberron game expected to be generic khorvaire dominated by brelish/karrnath/dragonmark houses and one expected to be focused largely in an area like droaam or zil. That possibility probably goes up if some of those wind up largely being even less expensive digital things or we see seasonal sales for the digital versions

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

∆ a conversation someone relayed in a thread a couple months back between a player and gm talking about an agonizing yoyo healing impasse in their 2024 game

I remember that!
Turns out the DM wasn't applying the rules correctly IIRC.

I assure you it is eminently possible for characters to die in D&D 24.

I assume the 'Gnolls' are actually Shifters, were-hyenas.

I would love the Shifter species more, if it can fully become the animal, like the actual wolf or lion or bovine or bear or hyena, that the character derives from. It would be so cool for each Shifter to an Alternate Beast Form. The Alternate Form of each Shifter would a unique, identifiable, individual.

That isn't really what Eberron shifters tend to be about, although you could definitely do that as a shifter Druid. While those gnolls look somewhat more humanoid than they are generally depicted, were-hyenas don't seem to have a known presence in Eberron. Probably due to the Gnolls of the Znir Pact occupying a similar niche, but being much cooler at it.

 

[darjr]

Wrong thread

 

[Reynard]

An aside: I wonder what the economics of book sizing is. What is the basement floor price to print a hardcover of any length, and how much does increase as the page count goes up. I don't think a 128 page hardcover would cost twice as much as a 64 page hardcover to print, but I don't actually know. Of course, it would likely double the development cost (writing, art, editing, etc) but I don't know how much of the final cost is dependent on development versus printing.

 

[Azzy]

I'm curious whether WotC will release more less-expensive products like this. Could be in their interest considering a likely economic recession incoming.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

SCAG 2.0?

Except the work load lore for this edition has been done in E: RftLW, where as the SCAG had to be both in a far too small package.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

An aside: I wonder what the economics of book sizing is. What is the basement floor price to print a hardcover of any length, and how much does increase as the page count goes up. I don't think a 128 page hardcover would cost twice as much as a 64 page hardcover to print, but I don't actually know. Of course, it would likely double the development cost (writing, art, editing, etc) but I don't know how much of the final cost is dependent on development versus printing.

AFAIK adding pages is not very expensive when it comes to printing (though that may be changing). The initial set-up costs, paper stock (& cover), binding, and print-runs make more of a difference, or so I've heard. There's certainly sweet-spots, when it comes to page count, though.

Like you say, page count makes more of a difference from a production stand point, I think, than it does from a print stand-point.

 

[DavyGreenwind]

There's some clues about page size from some of the page previews. Chapter 1 is the Artificer, and Chapter 2 (character options) starts on page 23. With 20-something feats and 17 backgrounds, and 5 species, that's probably 21 more pages. Three adventures DMG style will only be about 6 pages. 20 monsters is about 20 pages. Give about 10 pages for Airships and bastions, and that puts the total at 80. I imagine it'll be 80 pages, hardback.

Perhaps, if I'm underestimating some of these, it'll be 96. But my money is on 80.