Post originally by George Jackson at 2003-09-11 01:39:45
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Precisely so. The print version of the book is coming out with a $19 US price, and the content (in my opinion) is not worth that. Had Monte shoehorned it into the main AU book and hiked its price by ten bucks, I'd have lavished all the more praise on such thoughtful inclusions in my review for AU. For nineteen, however, I'm left with a 'where's the beef?' sensation. As I wrote, cool ideas are free. For cold, hard cash, I want details.

Mind you, I don't expect or desire the level of minute detail that can be found for the Realms, but I would have appreciated more details about such important locales. The areas that receive mention in the book aren't tiny cubbyholes, they're vast geographic features in the world. Since such features tend to have fairly profound effects, I would want more than a paragraph for each.

For example, here's a free cool idea: A vast desert of fine, ever-shifting sand in which rocky 'islands' float, and all of the cities in the area are built upon these roaming islands. Pretty neat, huh? Except now there are several vital details of great bearing to the inhabitants and neighbors of this desert. How do people cross it? How do they find any of the settlements when the settlements are constantly moving? Why is anyone living in such a freakish place in the first place? Those aren't minutiae that can just be glossed over, they're very important questions that have a huge bearing on that area of the world. Do travellers cross it, or do they have to go around it? Does that isolate some parts of the world from the more populous areas? Is it an army-proof political border?

So, bottom line, I don't care about little details, like the exact locations of abandoned temples of evil, but I do expect enough information to have a working world 'out of the box'. At least when taking the cover price into account.