Unified Spell Guidelines?

[YR7]

@Wanderer

spare the effort anyway. Such a guideline is indeed useful ONLY insofar as it is indeed unified, i.e. it has all the guidelines in one place, core and supplement alike. Having the extra stuff only is rather useless.

I must admit I pretty much agree with this assessment. Not useless, perhaps, but of far less value.

I yearn for the day Atlas will embrace what IMO is a modern approach to the current realities of the RPG market and will release PDF copies of the corebook and all the supplements, too, on a regular basis, like many other RPG publishers currently do, so this silliness will become a thing of the past.

I like PDFs a lot, although frankly I prefer hardbound for ArM. I prefer PDF for adventures, which ArM is extremely lacking in, but not so much sourcebooks. Unless they are free, which is perhaps the wave of the future - free (or nominally priced) online/digital content when you purchase the dead-wood version. That's essentially what Wizards is planning for D&D 4e. But that's a long way off for ArM, I think.

What I am really yearning for is the day where I'll have a good, durable and cheap digital book, so I could carry all my RPG books with me to a session without needing a trolly.

@Erik Tyrrell

John has in the past said that he has examined this possibility. looked at the numbers, and decided that it was an unwise decision.

I can't say I disagree with Atlas' decision - in this or on the matter of the united guidelines. And I wouldn't presume to tell John how to run his buisness. On the contrary - I am very pleased with how Atlas operates, and would like to take the opportunity to thank Atlas for its accesability, kind nature, obvious love of the game, and not the least the success that is ArM5.

@Cuchulainshound

The highlighted area is, imo, a contradiction in terms. The fact that it is such a help implies that it has intrinsic value - the fact that it has that value, and that you have paid Atlas nothing for it

Which leads me to wander - perhaps Atlas could simply SELL a pdf with all the guidelines? Some extra collated works perhaps too, for the aforementioned Wizard's Grimoire (I'd pack in The Great Apcrypha Collection). It would require relatively little expense, and if it is fairly cheap it would provide a solution for the recurring issue of requests for such a compilation.

Atlas - are you listening?

The only problem I see with this proposal is that the guidelines presumably present a large part of the rules, so Atlas wouldn't want someone to have the ability to purchase it at low cost instead of purchasing the core book (both at a higher cost and increasing its circulation, which has indirect advantages). But I'll leave such considerations to the professionals.

What a compilation does ~not~ do is include the specifics of the rules that go along with each set of additional guidelines - faerie magic for the faerie guidelines, and so on.

Errg, actually my file did include that. It's the complete spell guidelines, complete with everything needed to implement them (discussion of the elemental forms, faerie spell parameters, and so on).