When you are looking to purchase material for Pathfinder, which do you prefer, a selection of small supplements to pick and choose from, or a big book with lots of things in it?
When you are looking to purchase material for Pathfinder, which do you prefer, a selection of small supplements to pick and choose from, or a big book with lots of things in it?
Big Book in PDF Form. Thats what I like.
Preferrably with easy to use Bookmarks.
I love the AP format. Periodical with samples from all the different types of books.
I find it much easier to integrate small chunks of info into my campaign. If there's a monster in a Pathfinder AP bestiary that I like, chances are I will notice it and use it sooner rather than later. Processing the hundreds of monsters from the bestiary 2 is something I still haven't really finished.
I want a little bit of every different part of the game, on an intravenous drip. Big books are like heart transplants for my campaign; they might be a great improvement but they are risky and invasive!
I like a mix. But I usually only bring 3 hard covers and 1 or 2 softcovers to game. Usually that means Core + APG + [either Spell Compendium or a Bestiary] + current adventure.
Anything else I tend to like having the PDF of so I can compile and print out a few pages of relevant notes. But it really depends on the purpose of the product. Feats, classes, and other character development stuff can stay home most of the time. At game I need spells and monsters handy.
Prefer big book, running after a bunch of little books with the "where the heck is that" mentality does not make me happy.
I'd like some "hand books" actually tho, like the size of a traveling bible, with some smaller print but handier to thumb through, that would be really cool.
Would both formats be a good idea? Releasing product as a bunch of small supplements and also having it available collected in one book?
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Small supplements, quite often, completely fail to deliver on their subject, unless the subject matter is similarly small in scope. The Genius Guides, for example, focusing on 'Ice Magic' or a new 20 level class, are fine at their size, but the Player Companions, focusing on an entire nation or an entire race, feel terribly anemic to me.
The Osirion Companion and the Elves Companion, perhaps because they were the first in their respective subject lines, were particularly disappointing to me. The Halfling Companion benefitted, I think, from the Halflings not having a country like Kyonin also eating up pagecount, in the middle of the racial Companion.
I much prefer the Chronicles books, and, even then, some of them feel like they had to be ruthlessly cut down and a bunch of stuff left on the editing room floor. (I got that impression mostly from Absalom and Kaer Maga/City of Strangers, but the River Kingdoms went right back in the direction of trying to do too much with too small a product, giving one or two page writeups of places that might have been better served with four pages, or none at all, since they all ended up feeling underdeveloped, to me, like sitting down in the theatre and watching two dozen trailers, but getting no movie.)
I like big books and I cannot lie.
I just like the "weighty tome" feel, plus it feels like you're getting your money's worth.