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.

 

[Gradine]

Maybe because I am Spanish and my History is different, and then the sensibilities about certain threats may be different.

Also this is way outside the realm of this thread or even this forum but I would be fascinated to learn at some point how Spanish schools/society grapple with their own legacy of participation/facilitation in the Atlantic Slave Trade, because you have brought this point up before in conversations about your own personal approach to Dark Sun, and I know and you know that you can't speak for all Spanish people, but also I have studied Latin American history and so it seems weird that there wouldn't be any kind of natural cultural revulsion to the idea of slavery

 

[Parmandur]

I don't recall ever feeling like official D&D books were overpriced, in any edition. If anything, given the scale of their print runs, they might tend to underprice their books, putting pressure on competitors.

I have seen folks at Paizo say as much, that theory prices are deflated by needing to he competitive with WotC.

 

[Parmandur]

Also this is way outside the realm of this thread or even this forum but I would be fascinated to learn at some point how Spanish schools/society grapple with their own legacy of participation/facilitation in the Atlantic Slave Trade, because you have brought this point up before in conversations about your own personal approach to Dark Sun, and I know and you know that you can't speak for all Spanish people, but also I have studied Latin American history and so it seems weird that there wouldn't be any kind of natural cultural revulsion to the idea of slavery

I don't know a lot about it, but I do have a friend who is a professor of Spanish literature at a California State University, and from what he says the Portugese and Spanish approaches to the topic are kind of shocking to an American POV.

 

[darjr]

I thought maybe it was going to be a soft back, but it doesn’t look that way.

@FitzTheRuke can you order them now? Can you tell how many per “box”? That might give us a hint at it’s size/page count.

 

[Bolares]

Also this is way outside the realm of this thread or even this forum but I would be fascinated to learn at some point how Spanish schools/society grapple with their own legacy of participation/facilitation in the Atlantic Slave Trade, because you have brought this point up before in conversations about your own personal approach to Dark Sun, and I know and you know that you can't speak for all Spanish people, but also I have studied Latin American history and so it seems weird that there wouldn't be any kind of natural cultural revulsion to the idea of slavery

It's hard to use "Latin America" as a blanket term in this sense because the history of different countries will be very different inside the continent. Here in Brazil the native population was all but decimated, and the bulk of slave trade was made with african people. In fact Brazil today has one of the biggest african american populations (reaching almost 50%). The topic of slavery is heavy here, but the country is to big to say there would be one singular natural cultural revulsion to that idea in a game...

 

[SteveC]

Wait, I'm not saying you can't discuss the price. Why would I do that? I'm just stating my opinion that the price is more about the size of the book and the fact that it's a suplementary book to Rising.

I'm absolutely not implying you shouldn't have whatever opinions you like! That's what drives discussion and makes EnWorld interesting. I was just explaining why I think it's a worthwhile topic to discuss. It's honestly not something I'd bring up in a general thread about what's in the book.

The big thing to me is that this is looking like it's going to be a smaller book, and WotC/Hasbro has pretty much ceded that marked to third party publishers. When the Psionics book for 3E came out, the author excitedly talked about how big the sales were to someone at Hasbro, who asked in turn why they were even bothering with something that small. That's why I think it's interesting.

I'm absolutely not trying to tell anyone what to discuss or not. Promise!

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I thought maybe it was going to be a soft back, but it doesn’t look that way.

@FitzTheRuke can you order them now? Can you tell how many per “box”? That might give us a hint at it’s size/page count.

Interesting idea! It says 22 where the PHB says 10. So less than half as thick, approx?

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Obviously, this is an imperfect guess but that would put it at anything less than 174. Which makes as much as 160pgs not impossible. Even 128 would be possible, but they could easily fit 25 in a case if it were that small.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

It occurs to me that comparing it to the PHB (a fat book for its price point) might be a bit much, so I tried the same ratio against Phandelver (14 per case) and got 142 pages instead of 174. So 128 to 160 are both in the running and it is unlikely to be smaller than 128.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Thinking about it some more, the 22 hard covers will take up more space in relation to the pages inside them, so it's more likely to be at the low end of my estimate than the high end, so we're back to the smart bet being 128 pages. It makes the most sense, with everything that we know.