I think its great having three different CRB's. Near the table we can have 1 of each, all the basics are in there, but we don't have 3 identical books. i don't like looking up stuff during sessions, but during breaks or before and after its nice to have.

It's a common complaint from people who don't think very hard about money. Dividing up a ~450-page setting-specific core book into a 200-page rule book plus a 200-page setting source book (whether the fringe, the Rebellion, Jedi, etc) would each retail for at least the same as the current 150-page region source books: $40.

1 Setting-specific sourcebook: 60.

1 Core setting-neutral rule book + 1 setting book: 40 x 2 = 80.

1 Core setting-neutral rule book + 2 setting books: 40 x 3 = 120.

2 Setting-specific sourcebooks: 120.

1 Core setting-neutral rule book + 3 setting books: 40 x 4 = 160.

3 Setting-specific sourcebooks: 180.

You'd only save money if you go all-in and buy four books. And if you're already devoted enough to aim to buy four rulebooks you're kidding yourself to claim you wouldn't have bought them for $20 more. At Amazon prices the whole set would be ~$120 either way so no discount going for the money-savers.

*Slides books off table, walks out the door*

Whoops!

It's a common complaint from people who don't think very hard about money. Dividing up a ~450-page setting-specific core book into a 200-page rule book plus a 200-page setting source book (whether the fringe, the Rebellion, Jedi, etc) would each retail for at least the same as the current 150-page region source books: $40.

1 Setting-specific sourcebook: 60.

1 Core setting-neutral rule book + 1 setting book: 40 x 2 = 80.

1 Core setting-neutral rule book + 2 setting books: 40 x 3 = 120.

2 Setting-specific sourcebooks: 120.

1 Core setting-neutral rule book + 3 setting books: 40 x 4 = 160.

3 Setting-specific sourcebooks: 180.

You'd only save money if you go all-in and buy four books. And if you're already devoted enough to aim to buy four rulebooks you're kidding yourself to claim you wouldn't have bought them for $20 more. At Amazon prices the whole set would be ~$120 either way so no discount going for the money-savers.

*Slides books off table, walks out the door*

Fun!

This is why I said:

c. you think that route would have been cheaper (it wouldn’t have been by the way and your math is way off).

A core rule book is 41.37, at Miniature Market. Assuming that the release of F&D is at the end of August (right around Gencon), that's 6 months. If you cant salt away six dollars and 89 cents a month between now and then, you've got worse financial issues than whether you can afford a game book or not.

That's the price of a double tall soy hazelnut late a month. Give up your starbucks and you're golden.

Well mate there is more than just the RPG, I'd have to give up every (other) addiction I have.

OMG... Star Wars geekgasm has happened.

Just like the trilogy... the first book was great, the second was ho hum and the third looks awesome. j/k.

I can't wait till this comes out.

I hope by the "second" you mean the prequels...

Also, AoR is pretty amazing if you ask me.

And if you're already devoted enough to aim to buy four rulebooks you're kidding yourself to claim you wouldn't have bought them for $20 more.

*Slides books off table, walks out the door*

Let's assume for a minute that the prices you listed above are set in stone and simply, absolutely cannot be mitigated at all. Let's concede that for the sake of the discussion.

I'm kidding myself to claim that I wouldn't have bought them for 20 more? So, part of your argument, along with your asserted price listing is something along the lines of "whatever, it's not that big a deal, you'll pay it anyway?"

Do you have a tree in your back yard whose foliage and/or fruit consists of legal tender? Is a by-product of your daily digestion the excretion of gold nuggets? Are you otherwise inclined to just pay whatever for whatever under circumstance whatever?

If half the core book consists of rules you already have, and you buy all three core books, and the book costs about 50 or 60 bucks after tax the math works out pretty easy, it needs no second look and it needs no polemics to figure out that you are spending money for something you already have.

If that's okay with you, fine. I think it's sloppy. I think instead of wasting pages on rules I already have, the Devs could get modern. Many games are externalizing their core rules into a central document that other books attach to. It is more flexible and doesn't...again...force you to buy the same stuff more than once if you want the stuff in the same book that's not reprinted.

Are you folks really, really REALLY telling me you'd rather not see books filled with more material rather than rules reprints? Because that's what I'm talking about here. No matter how it's torqued, that is the central point - because the Devs think you don't mind (and few here seem to) they will do this again with 2nd Ed and 3rd Ed and so on. Well, if everyone on this forum doesn't mind so be it, but *I* mind, and I will make my voice heard, and if people want to make a facile dismissal of me as a "troll" so be it. Personally I think that's intellectually lazy as hell but to each their own.

I'm more concerned with whether or not the text is legible, because with the first two core rulebooks I had a hell of a time making out much of the text. Font was too small, color too light to provide proper contrast against the background graphics of the page. I hope they fix that - 'course I know there isn't much chance they will. Maybe someone will remember when it comes time for 2nd Edition.

Unless you have some vision disorder that gives you complications the print is just fine. Maybe better glasses might work? Update your prescription?

What I have is a huge library of game books that stretch back a number of years - decades really - and while I do admit I wear glasses with a strong prescription, I have worn them all my life. My prescription hasn't changed, and I have been able to read all the other game books I have - with the exception of some of the headings in Wraith The Great War because they are in a heavy Bavarian script that's awful to read.

The FFG Cores and some of the supplements have been the ONLY game books in almost 30 years in the hobby I've had trouble reading. And just to make sure that maybe my vision hadn't gotten worse, I went back and read some of them again - fine. Perfect. I may have had to squint a little, but not much. In short, I am not Mr. 'effing Magoo. The problem does not exist with my eyes. The problem exists with the size and color of the font on the FFG SW books, and that in many cases the gloss on the page conspires to make things worse.

I realize YOU can probably read it all just fine and that's grand for you, but all I am asking for like, a little more size or contrast.

I understand one of the great draws to these books is that in many ways the whole book is a piece of art and often text decisions were made keeping that in mind, but frankly I can see SW art anywhere, what I NEED from a core book are the rules and I need to be able to read them all the time and the art interferes with that in places.

If they split the core rules off from the setting portion, then expanded the setting content past the region sourcebook size and towards the length of the core rule books, then that's a different issue and they would charge even more than $40 for such a book. It's more of a question of paying for it now or waiting to have it refined and placed in a supplement. That's just FFG's pricing on page counts.

I on the other hand really don't give a crap about reprinting rules, I don't see much of a difference in paying an extra 12% for the full set (at retail, which I don't) and having to lug around 3 large books instead of 4 medium ones will be a minor inconvenience offset by not having to flip between two different books just for rules and career info. On top of that, FFG probably sees the bigger picture on the advantages of producing and selling a product presented in this manner so I'm not going to claim that despite its success so far they are doing it wrong. It's all a very dismissively skewed false dilemma that just doesn't match up to their model.

>>If they split the core rules off from the setting portion, then expanded the setting content past the region sourcebook size and towards the length of the core rule books, then that's a different issue and they would charge even more than $40 for such a book.<<

Price isn't the problem. I will pay money for stuff. I have no issue paying money for stuff. My issue is paying money for stuff I already have , and I am mystified as to why I seem to be the only one with that problem...

>>It's more of a question of paying for it now or waiting to have it refined and placed in a supplement.<<

So, in order to have stuff that's "refined" (or as people on my planet refer to it - done properly) you have to pay for rules reprints? Does that make sense to you?

>>I don't see much of a difference in paying an extra 12% for the full set (at retail, which I don't) and having to lug around 3 large books instead of 4 medium ones will be a minor inconvenience offset by not having to flip between two different books just for rules and career info.<<

Well, first of all, I don't see career info as being part of the core mechanics. But you really mean to tell me that - assuming each core book costs about 50 bucks before taxes (and since y'all don't pay retail we'll just knock them pesky taxes off the equation) and you're gonna buy the set then you don't mind shelling out an extra 17 bucks for the privilege of not having to open a second book? Boy that's a steep price tag to pay to avoid moving your hands about 25 cm to the right or left and lifting a few hundred grams in the air...

>>On top of that, FFG probably sees the bigger picture on the advantages of producing and selling a product presented in this manner<<

Oh I can easily imagine they do! They get to charge you for stuff you already have. They don't have to fill 400 pages with new material past the first Core, they only have to fill 200 or so - much easier. So, basically you're paying 50-60 bucks for 200 pages worth of material. Under any other circumstance we would think that was some sort of interesting trick - apparently not here.

>>so I'm not going to claim that despite its success so far they are doing it wrong.<<

I have no idea how you could substantiate that claim unless you were a stockholder in the company or somesuch.

>>It's all a very dismissively skewed false dilemma<<

Apparently it's not a dilemma at all...though I simply cannot imagine why not.

Apparently it's not a dilemma at all...though I simply cannot imagine why not.

Because many people see it more as a value than a detriment. Either because they are only interested in one aspect of the Star Wars universe and only want one core book or because even if the core rules are reprinted they find that useful rather than repetitive. Or some other reason that may be the case, but those two tend to be the big ones why it is not an issue. People would complain no matter the format anyways. Again, you can not please everyone. Sucks when you're in the unhappy demographic but that's life.

And if they are trying to make money with the multiple core books I hope it is working, because if the alternative is that it is not guess what happens?

>>And if they are trying to make money with the multiple core books I hope it is working, because if the alternative is that it is not guess what happens?<<

I dunno, they make money with supplements containing original instead of reprinted material? Which is what they're doing?

Is there any evidence that the current reprinting rules practice is somehow necessary for their business model? Lord I hope not because sooner or later people will get fed up buying the same game three times. Especially if FFG follows the Microsoft model of a new set of Core rulebooks every five years or so. That's not a lot of time between editions...people may be okay with it now (though I doubt as many people are okay with it as Mouthymerc suggests - rather I think they simply aren't presented with the choice and are putting up with it) but in seven years when they look at a shelf where their book's redundant page count starts climbing maybe then they'll start pushing for a more modern paradigm.

Nobody else sees it as a dilemma because nobody else thinks the rules would be cheaper in a separate book.

From my perspective, I've spent about 80-some bucks to get Edge of the Empire and Age of Rebellion. If FFG 'saved' me from buying the basic rules twice with a separate book, by my estimates I'd have spent 90-some dollars to obtain it and the two primary settings so far. Unless each divided book would have less than 150 pages each, I'm not convinced they'd retail for less than $40. Until then, I'm sticking to my math and the money I've saved so far by 'paying for the same 200 pages twice'.

Nobody else sees it as a dilemma because nobody else thinks the rules would be cheaper in a separate book.

From my perspective, I've spent about 80-some bucks to get Edge of the Empire and Age of Rebellion. If FFG 'saved' me from buying the basic rules twice with a separate book, by my estimates I'd have spent 90-some dollars to obtain it and the two primary settings so far. Unless each divided book would have less than 150 pages each, I'm not convinced they'd retail for less than $40. Until then, I'm sticking to my math and the money I've saved so far by 'paying for the same 200 pages twice'.

I think you're making some rather polemic assumptions and being a bit fast and loose with your accounting.

For one thing, if you're using 40 dollars as your set price for a core rulebook you're already skewing the math because while you might not buy-em retail I and a lot of others do. You need to compare apples and apples. In Canada, by the time you factor in tax, you're easily looking at close to 60 bucks, not 40.

We don't know how much FFG would want for a book with the basic rules, so how can you decide it's only gonna be 10, which seems to be what your math comes to. Now I understand anything more than 10 bucks doesn't exactly endear players to my POV, but keep in mind that the mechanics ARE the game. I know people will disagree vehemently with that but once you have the numbers and the clickey-clickey, you can do anything you want with them - so my point is you're not getting nothing for your hard earned ducats.

And you also seem wholly unwilling to grasp that I'm not necessarily advocating you being given what amounts to three halves of a single Core book - the 200 pages you're pulling out of the current cores can be replaced with more material. New material. Material for running games. Stuff. You follow? The core mechanics-less books can be pushed back up to 60 bucks but now they're filled with stuff you don't already have instead of stuff you do.

And yes, that means you're now paying for an extra book with game mechanics. Yes. So technically if they reinflated the books with more non-core mechanics stuff and you bought all three you'd be paying - I dunno, maybe more than 210 bucks for the lot. But the lot would have a lot more useful material in it, why? Well, say it with me friends "you're not paying for the same core ruleset repeatedly".

As far as making the books smaller and the floor of how cheaply they could be made, these decisions don't come from Almighty God. They are not etched in stone. They can be changed as book sizes change. so 40 dollars is no more an automatic number than any other is.

Oh, and one more thing, when you surround the phrase 'paying for the same 200 pages twice' with quotation marks, you not only sneer at it in derision but you question its accuracy. The first I will ignore, the second I will not. When you sell multiple books with an identical portion of pages in them, you are asking the consumer to pay for the identical portion(s) more than once. That is not incorrect, much as I'm sure you'd like it to be.

Nobody's saying it couldn't have been done differently. And whether or not it would be better differently only the armchair game designers can speculate. And we would probably have the same amount of people complaining even so. Sucks to be the minority.

I'm sure we would also prefer if the source books all had another hundred pages containing three times as many items and ships, another dozen alien species and were released more often, but is FFG being greedy and lazy by failing to do so? Or are they factoring in more things than price and page count?

Or are they factoring in more things than price and page count?

Such as?

And now you're muddying the waters. I'm not talking about the supplements, which can be of varying sizes and page counts and prices. They aren't core books, and as far as I can tell there has been very little reprinting of the same stuff from one supplement to another so...what exactly does that have to do with the price of Spice on Nal Hutta?

You're doing your level best to shove me into this little box marked "crazy guy who wants pie in the sky and can't be made happy no matter what and if you gave him an inch he'd take a mile/never be satisfied anyway" and I have no business being in such a box, because I only have a handful of complaints about this game line and once they're settled I won't find something else to complain about, because regardless of what you might think reading said complaints, they are not what I live for.

And maybe Mouthymerc's right, maybe I can complain until my Tauntaun freezes and naught will happen, who knows, but I can give you a Beskar-clad guarantee if nobody says anything and KEEPS saying anything, nothing is sure to happen.

I can give you a Beskar-clad guarantee if nobody says anything and KEEPS saying anything, nothing is sure to happen.

Which is absolutely fine by me! See this is what rubs me the wrong way about your posts thus far, it is not that you çlaim not to like something but that you claim it is wrong and needs to be different. Maybe the reason "nobody says anything" is because nobody, hardly anybody, or at most a tiny minority agrees with you?

I can see your POV, Corradus. One book, around 200 pages, with three other books of 200 pages of setting, etc. Then you can pick or choose which setting books you grab and which you leave behind. Or, one book with basic setting stuff, then three other books with AoR, EotE, or FaD stuff extras in them, where the page count is ~200.

I can't comment on the economy of that, and, for me, having the core rules reprinted along side the different setting stuff works at my group's table, because we share the rule books, and having different content but three 'core rule books' means easier access across the table.

I will add my 2

Selling the rules separate to any setting g material is not a new idea. GURPS has been doing it for years, and I do not like it. Why? Convenience.

Look at the following a new player accessing the system.

Bobby browses through the shelves at a FLGS looking for a new system. He has ran system x for his mates for a few years and now feels like something else. He can......

1.Buy a Core rule book get home and realise he needs special dice, an app or to sit and work out symbols from regular dice.

Or

2. Buy a Core book and have to buy setting and dice just to play. He may be able to buy dice but I can see the conversation when he gets home from the other half. "Why did you have to buy more than 1 book?!?!"

"Well babe they only put half of what you need in that"

Now there are ways around that. A box simmilar to the d&d 4e with core, setting and a set of dice in as a "starter pack" but that is now extra shelf space in your FLGS and juggling how many starter sets vs just setting books for each 3rd to make.

At the end of the day core books need to be aimed at people entering the system first. Those looking to expand from 1 to the other well we will have to take a back seat to them. After all if you are a group Mike buys EOTE as gm, Thom wants to play a rebel so grabs AoE and Sally wants to swing a light stick so buys F&D. Mike is still running but Sally and Thom both now have core rules and if they run latter can focus on one of the others.

I can give you a Beskar-clad guarantee if nobody says anything and KEEPS saying anything, nothing is sure to happen.

Which is absolutely fine by me! See this is what rubs me the wrong way about your posts thus far, it is not that you çlaim not to like something but that you claim it is wrong and needs to be different. Maybe the reason "nobody says anything" is because nobody, hardly anybody, or at most a tiny minority agrees with you?

Fact is neither you nor I can know for sure.

Forums for games and game companies are notorious for their club-house atmosphere - which is perfectly natural. This is where the tribe comes to speak their praises, ask their questions and share their ideas. So frankly, it's not likely to be populated by people who think the game company/writers/devs are doing much of anything wrong. That's not to say no criticism EVER occurs here, of course some does - but it tends to be rare and it tends to be couched and it tends to be very heavily policed by the others. If I'm looking for the Templars of the Faith as it were, I'm much more likely to find them here than anywhere else. It takes a particularly hard head to keep arguing with people, and most people just don't wanna. I don't blame them. After all, it's just a game, right?

I don't expect to change anyone's mind here either - but it could happen. I also know that sometimes somebody from the company takes notice - and maybe they'll dismiss my points and maybe they won't, but it don't cost nuthin' to take a swing once in a while.

As for saying something's wrong and needs to be different, well, obviously that's my opinion. I'm not the Emperor of Earth, I'm not Almighty God, obviously this is opinion. But in my opinion, it is wrong and it needs to be different. And in any other setting, in any other circumstance I believe the very people in this Forum telling me I am in a minority of one and that I can't do basic math would be agreeing with me...but this here is about the tribe - and when one dares speak against the tribe one must do so extremely rarely, one must couch one's criticisms and one must be ready to shut up forever when one is told that one is wrong or one earns the disdain of the tribe. It is like that in any RPG forum anywhere, why should here be different?

But I still think my point is valid on its face. And I'll still say so once in a while.

I will add my 2

Selling the rules separate to any setting g material is not a new idea. GURPS has been doing it for years, and I do not like it. Why? Convenience.

Look at the following a new player accessing the system.

Bobby browses through the shelves at a FLGS looking for a new system. He has ran system x for his mates for a few years and now feels like something else. He can......

1.Buy a Core rule book get home and realise he needs special dice, an app or to sit and work out symbols from regular dice.

Or

2. Buy a Core book and have to buy setting and dice just to play. He may be able to buy dice but I can see the conversation when he gets home from the other half. "Why did you have to buy more than 1 book?!?!"

"Well babe they only put half of what you need in that"

Now there are ways around that. A box simmilar to the d&d 4e with core, setting and a set of dice in as a "starter pack" but that is now extra shelf space in your FLGS and juggling how many starter sets vs just setting books for each 3rd to make.

At the end of the day core books need to be aimed at people entering the system first. Those looking to expand from 1 to the other well we will have to take a back seat to them. After all if you are a group Mike buys EOTE as gm, Thom wants to play a rebel so grabs AoE and Sally wants to swing a light stick so buys F&D. Mike is still running but Sally and Thom both now have core rules and if they run latter can focus on one of the others.

If you have a game group where every member is likely to wanna try their hand at running a game then your analogy works - but I submit that many game groups don't work that way. Running a game isn't like playing in one, and not everybody at the table has the chops to run a successful game. Some do but won't run anyway because it's a lot of work and they just don't wanna invest the time. For such folk, one or two books is all they'll ever buy and with the proliferation at the gaming table both of electronics and the proliferation of free online dice rollers for FFG's system, most really don't need to worry about paying for dice. It's also been my experience that game groups where every single player will bother to buy any of the books in the game at all are also not that common. I have run games for groups for years where I was the only one who had a copy of the rules, such that I often had to buy multiple copies, one for me, and another as a "table copy". That means that there's a lot of borrowing going on and reading over people's shoulders because it's been my experience that - particularly when we get older - gamers do their gaming when they do their gaming, not before and not after. Why should they buy a copy of the rules if they're never gonna read them because they're too busy?

So under those circumstances really it becomes the guy who's always running who introduces a player to a new system - not the LGS. So how many books and how much space taken up on the shelves and whether or not there's a box set becomes less of a turning point for decision.

I know there are still people who like everything in one book, but, imagine how honked off you'd be if every single GURPS book was printed with the basic rules in it. Could you imagine that? Gurps has...what...**** near 100 Supps out, maybe more? How long would Gurps fans put up with paying extra for rules they already have? You might not like the idea of a separate core document for the mechanics but I would bet my **** spleen you'd like to see the basic rules reprinted in every supplement even less. Even if you only ever bought five or six...you'd very quickly ask yourself just what the hell there needed to be basic rules in with the Space Atlases for anyhow?

Just looking at the prices FFG charges for their supplements it should be clear to anyone with an incling of honesty in its argumentation that the way Corradus is proposing would have not been a cheaper alternative. It wold have in fact (and others have done the math earlier in this topic) been more expensive.

As for the "club house atmosphere" and the "the tribe"like feel to these boards I don't think that is actually the case here at all. Sure more people will like the game than not but that is pretty normal for a group of people on any specific forum but I am seeing a lot of reasonable discussions (which I do not count this one towards) in many, many topics and no one here is afraid of being critical towards the game at all.

FFG has always been upfront about how they were going to "do" their SW game and have thus carried that out to its conclusion, you might not like it but snarky comments to spark a dead horse of an issue back to semi-life just for the sake of it followed by numerous larger posts of being the misunderstood poster are just a show. I am in fact pretty sure you were trolling for us to comment and we failed to sidestep it. And now as a consequence had you rain on the parade that was this topic.
Con ******* gratulations.