Surely you’ve read by now that, come April, Wizards of the Coast will be releasing reprints of the AD&D Players Handbook, Dungeon Masters Guide, and Monster Manual.
This is exciting news, even if I’m not entirely sure that I’m interested in purchasing reprints. I mean, I don’t need them. I’ve got my original books and I picked all of the old AD&D books up as PDFs back when WotC was selling them at RPGNow. I’m also not quite sure how I feel about the idea of new “commemorative” covers for these editions, but that will ultimately depend on the covers once we see them.
I’ll cop to having balked at the prices when I first saw them late last night, but in retrospect they’re not at all unreasonable. Assuming the books are solidly put together, that is. I’m inclined to believe they will be, of course. But it’ll be awfully hard to beat the bindings that were done on the originals. Those things might as well be wrapped in titanium!
So that’s that. It’s definitely a nice thing to have happen. And very surprising. Now if only WotC would put PDFs of all the old material back on sale. That would be truly awesome.
I’m still tempted to buy the damn things- my original, second-hand, copies are pretty battered by the ravages of age, mould, sticky fingers and spilt beer…
I also looked at buying the 4th Ed core rule books- only to discover there’s like six of them and all at $50 Australian a pop.
It just feels like wizards trying to make a buck!
The worst part for you, Gobbo, is that the reprints are not going to be available outside of US hobby stores, apparently. Getting them in Oz has the potential to be a challenge. Of course, you do know someone stateside who would more than likely be willing to help out on that if you decided you wanted to get copies. Just sayin’ 🙂
I can’t help you with the 4e stuff, though. That’s an awfully big investment for sure. But maybe now that 5e has been announced you can pick ’em up on the cheap?
How about gifts or beater copies?
I know people who don’t have them but should. It theory this could make it easier to get a game going.
Oh yeah, there’s definitely potential uses for the new printings. And, odd as it may seem, I think I’d be more inclined to see my old copies as beaters/loaners and the new printings as collectible things to be sealed away in lucite. I mean, WotC told me right in the catalog listing that these might just turn out to be collectible 🙂
You’re definitely right about this making it easier to get a game going, amigo. Of course, I’ve also got OSRIC, LL/AEC and S&W Complete to help with that challenge as well. Still, freshly printed AD&D does sound kinda yummy.