[UPDATED] Has ADVENTURER'S HANDBOOK Been Cancelled?

Today's official announcement about the Elemental Evil storyline mentioned Princes of the Apocalypse, a new DM screen, miniatures, video games... but not the Adventurer's Handbook! This could mean nothing, of course. The book was first announced last year, back in August; but the below screenshot from Edelweiss shows it as cancelled. The mystery deepens!

UPDATE: WotC's Mike Mearls answers "We can't cancel a book we never announced!" So that sounds like the Adventurer's Handbook will definitely not be appearing. WotC certainly wrote ad copy and designed a cover for the book (see below). Mike added "we've played things close to the vest is that it's a huge, open question on what support for the RPG should look like... we do a lot of stuff that may or may not end up as a released product. For instance, we now know that the high volume release schedule for 3e and 4e turned out to be bad for D&D. It wasn't too many settings that hurt TSR, but too many D&D books of any kind. lots of experiments ahead..."

Here's the cancellation screenshot. Now, that could mean a number of things - maybe it's been pushed back, maybe it's been renamed, or maybe it's just an admin error. Princes of the Apolocaypse has been pushed back from March 17 to April 7.

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What do we know about the book? We have a description from August 2014 and a more recent cover image. Right now, anything could be true; I haven't heard anything about a cancellation or a pushed back release date. If I do, I'll be sure to report it.

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Adventurer's Handbook (March 17, 2015; hardcover; $39.95) -- A Dungeons & Dragons Accessory. Create Heroic Characters to Conquer the Elements in this Accessory for the World’s Greatest Roleplaying Game​ Not inherently evil, elemental power can be mastered by those with both malevolent and benign intentions. The Elemental Evil Adventurer’s Handbook provides everything that players need to build a character that is tied directly into the Elemental Evil story arc, with skills, abilities, and spells meant to augment their play experience throughout the campaign. Additionally, valuable background and story information provides greater depth and immersion. An accessory that expands the number of options available for character creation for the Elemental Evil story arc, providing expanded backgrounds, class builds, and races meant specifically for this campaign. Provides background and setting information critical to having the greatest chance of success. Accessory design and development by Sasquatch Game Studio LLC.​ ​

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[Halivar]

Then why not just kill it all together, Why did they even bother making a 5e if they arn't going to give us 5e material? If the focus is on the video games and the fiction and the board games why spead all this time making a new edition.

Because no previous edition is undiluted enough to use as an evergreen product that will serve as a gateway into the greater money-maker.

I like splat books, I love to read them. I want about 1 a month.

I sincerely hope that never happens again.

If they arn't going to publish more books than this for 5e how long till 6e?

The idea is to stop the treadmill right here for as long as possible.

UPDATE: And why not kill it? Because it has the potential to be an explosively profitable brand if they stop putting out pulp crap and sell crappy knick-knacks instead. Nobody says Avengers suck because their Avengers lunch box fell apart. If D&D ruins the books, though, it ruins the entire brand.

 

[dream66_]

I just dont understand why people who don't want the treadmill can't simply get off. You only want the core books.. fine buy them an done, why is it nessicary to say I can't have 1 book a month in order for you to not buy them?

 

[bmfrosty]

I don't buy this.

All you have ever needed to buy was the core three and nothing else. There was nothing you needed to penetrate through. Once you had the PHB, DMG, and MM you were set.

That's kind of like going to a buffet style restaurant and giving out because there is so much food to choose from. Pick what you want and leave the rest for those who want it.

Me in 1995 walking into a store and thinking about what the whole AD&D thing was about. I see the following 2nd edition books:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...oks#Advanced_Dungeons_.26_Dragons_2nd_edition

I turn around and walk out of the store. Don't even want to start.

I do the same sometime during 3rd or 4th edition again - same results.

I start investigating again last year in September or October after some good press and see like 4 books are available. This is much more transparent to me and easier to sort out. I can put an hour or two into seeing what it's all about.

Before this, I know a few people who played and had like 50 books. This is much more manageable and easier to get into.

This gets me - the somewhat interest potential customer - to take a look. Potentially becoming a real customer. I bought a players handbook and skimmed through it. I've registered to go to DunDraCon with the intent of playing some beginners 5E games.

I wouldn't be doing this or be on this board if 5E hadn't gotten the press it did last year, and it wasn't easy to see where to start, I wouldn't be going. No way, no how.

I suspect that it will do the same for others.

EDIT:

I would love to see displays up in game stores and book stores that carry RPG stuff for the Players Handbook stating "This is all you really need to play D&D". Full stop.

Anyone ever read "Blue Ocean Strategy"

 

[Halivar]

I just dont understand why people who don't want the treadmill can't simply get off. You only want the core books.. fine buy them an done, why is it nessicary to say I can't have 1 book a month in order for you to not buy them?

Because the quality of the books I *do* want goes in the crapper, such as every previous edition, ever. Pathfinder only puts out one big splat every couple years, and it is doing quite well keeping new crunch only in the relevant AP's. And it is growing, not shrinking like D&D would be at this point in its life-cycle.

 

[Trickster Spirit]

Which is an bad strategy. Just the sales from the 5 Fighter Handbooks they could have sold for the 5 editions they could have put out during these 25 years alone certainly make more revenue than the latecomer buying the 20-25 year old PHB during the last 5 years. Not even talking about all the other books they chose to not sell during that time. They're not making new books and after a few years they're not selling their old books anymore either.

Increasingly smaller fractions of the player base purchasing each subsequent Fighter's Handbook mean that splatbooks are always a matter of diminishing returns; chump change to the makers of Magic and quite frankly of a questionable level of quality that will only harm the brand they're working so hard to turn into The Next Big Thing™.

But they only serve it once to each customers, hoping that there will be still be coming new customers from somewhere after all fans of chinese food have eaten at their restaurance once only.

Wizards of the Coast does not care about D&D book sales. Let me repeat that:

WotC does not care whether they are leaving money on the table by not producing D&D splatbooks for us.

The reason being that even if those books sold very well for non-core D&D books, it'd still be just a drop in the bucket compared to Magic. No WotC edition has ever made bank off of splatbooks - the inevitably end up having to put out revised corebooks or a new edition if they want to see a steady profit. This time, they're saying screw making money off of D&D books, that's not worked out the last couple of editions, this time we're going to leverage great stories and cross-media events to turn D&D into a juggernaut brand like Lord of the Rings or Star Wars, with successful movies and novels and videos games and yes tabletop rpg books, but the focus is on the whole, not the pen and paper line. D&D is already more than halfway there, with dozens of best-selling novels to draw from and a huge base of lapsed players and non-players who've nevertheless been exposed to D&D through the internet, video games and nerd culture in general.

Then why not just kill it all together, Why did they even bother making a 5e if they arn't going to give us 5e material? If the focus is on the video games and the fiction and the board games why spead all this time making a new edition.

I like splat books, I love to read them. I want about 1 a month. 1 a year or if they're only publishing adventures it feels like the edition is already dead, If they arn't going to publish more books than this for 5e how long till 6e?

The same reason Marvel puts out comic-books, despite the fact that they've long since ceased being Marvel Entertainment's bread-and-butter. Indeed, the comics are probably the least profitable venture for the for the mass-media empire - movies, the tv shows on ABC and Netflix, toys and costumes at the Disney Store... the comics tie that all together and are the "origin" of the brand.

Theoretically they could cancel The Avengers print run and still have decades of stories to draw on, but the comics serve as a continual farm for new properties - last summer's Guardians of the Galaxy was based on a new line-up from the 2009 reboot series.

Wizards wants there to be "one D&D" going forward to serve as a stable foundation for that brand; the aim is for there to never be a 6E, just a 5E that draws in new players the same way new X-Men storylines draw in new comic book fans. They're playing the long game with this edition, and are ignoring small-time cash in the short-term (bloated splatbook sales that will hinder a "timeless" D&D edition) in favor of banking on bringing in the Big Bucks when a Drizzt movie gets made (or a hugely popular Planescape MMO, or an Eberron tv show on HBO, or even just a solid D&D video game like the old Baldur's Gate series, etc.)

 

[Mirtek]

Because no previous edition is undiluted enough to use as an evergreen product that will serve as a gateway into the greater money-maker.

Neither is 5e. The tabletop RPG is so unimportant that 98% of the people they're trying to sell the brand too with all this tie-in will have never picked it up. Almost no Neverwinter player will care or even know which edition is current and how many books it has or even that the RPG is still being made and not something that D&D started with but has long since abandoned.

I turn around and walk out of the store. Don't even want to start.

As opposed to someone walking into a store in 2016, seeing that this edition only has three rule books to it's name and decides better not to buy it because it seems to be already discontinued?

Sell one book; make it evergreen. Sell multimedia tie-in's

Except that's not how it works. It's the tie-ins who might help sell some of the books, which are otherwise unknown by the vast majority of your tie-in customers.

It's the Marvel method, and it is proven to work

Actually Marvel is still releasing dozens of comics every month

where putting out "Player's Guide 3" and "Complete Commoner" have utterly and spectacularly failed.

They have made more money than just putting one book out that almost no one is going to buy after at most a year and have virtually no impact on your tie-in, as these target group doesn't know how many books exist anyway

Then why not just kill it all together, Why did they even bother making a 5e if they arn't going to give us 5e material? If the focus is on the video games and the fiction and the board games why spead all this time making a new edition.

Indeed. It's not as if the RPG books are contributing in any significant way to the success of the multimedia tie-ins.

If D&D ruins the books, though, it ruins the entire brand.

Not at all. Most brand customers won't ever hear or care about what happened to the books. Heck, most people wanting a Baldur's Gate 3 don't even know that the FR have advances a 130 years since then as they never bought a single D&D book.

Neverwinter MMO is still full of 4e terms (applied to mechanics that have nothing to do with the 4e RPG, even while 4e was the current edition) and the vast majority of players don't even know that these are technically outdated as far as D&D is concerned

 

[skotothalamos]

I don't buy this.

All you have ever needed to buy was the core three and nothing else.

Sure, if you hate Barbarians and Bards and Druids and Monks and Gnomes and Half-Orcs, that's a great way to get into 4e.

 

[Kramodlog]

This is wy we have heard litterally nothing about an OGL.

Actually, we literally have heard something about the OGL. From Chris Perkins aka the Prince of Words Spoken that Mean Nothing. http://www.enworld.org/forum/conten...Return!-And-Other-Short-Stories!#.VMAhUvl5OT8

Is it official? No.

Is it something? Yes.

Does it means it will happen? Hahaha!

 

[Morrus]

Actually, we literally have heard something about the OGL. From Chris Perkins aka the Prince of Words Spoken that Mean Nothing. http://www.enworld.org/forum/conten...Return!-And-Other-Short-Stories!#.VMAhUvl5OT8

Is it official? No.

Is it something? Yes.

Does it means it will happen? Hahaha!

You missed the important question.

Is it "announced"?

 

[Joe Liker]

Just a note on this -- both the missing mislead spell and the lack of any concentration indicators were fixed in the second printing of these cards.

Small consolation for anyone who paid good money for the first printing.

It does not speak well of a company's ability to deliver quality product when errors as big as these have to be caught by the customer.

Should I therefore wait until the second printing of everything gf9 produces?