So, the Spelljammer "bundle" was three 64 page D&D books + one DM screen and map. It was also $70 in places if you don't have a discount.

I don't know what you guys think, but well I loved the content; the adventure was great and it was awesome to see Thri-Kreen and Giff as races in play, I was frustrated by how high the price tag was. Three 64 page books equates to 192 total pages, which if anything, would actually be a bit small for one D&D book. All three of the core rulebooks have more pages, but Tasha's and Xanathars have the same page number, so I guess it's certainly not tiny. Either way, the "bundle" with three "books" are certainly not larger than the average one D&D book.

I looked at the DM screen, which costed $10, and compared it to the Spelljammer one, and the Spelljammer DM screen was not that much sturdier. I don't think that the DM screen is worth the $20 additional dollars extra in the bundle. It is also especially annoying to people like me who already own a DM screen, and don't need a second, that the DM screen in the bundle is responsible for such a high price raise. Also, I'm pretty sure the DM screen is not included on DDB, but it is still 20+ dollars more expensive then Tashas, Xanathars, and M3's.

The large map comes in many books without price raises, and overall, while the content in the Spelljammer bundle may be awesome, there's actually that much of content in it. At least to me, I don't think this should merit the large price raise.

Edit/note: The "RU" in the poll stands for "Are u," but the poll was capping of the amount of words I could put in it so I had to use this abbreviation.

I've heard that the physical copies are nicer products than previous books in some way or another. I don't know, I don't have em. Still, if it's going to be, like, a deluxe edition, there ought to be a basic version too.

At the end of the day though, if people are going to pay for it, no amount of complaining really counts for anything. We knew the page counts in advance.

Not a fan of the landscape screen, makes me feel I'm running a kids game, ahem.

Packaging was nice, but not really well thought out.  Sure it was a slip case and that usually means "3 books" and I guess there are requests to divvy up the players options at least from adventures.  I don't know if it really needed to be divided up into three slim hardback volumes.

Lastly, the big lack of thinking in the packaging is if you have a perfectly good slipcase why are they perpetuating that b.s. with a map perforated attached to the inside of book.  Tal Dor'el, another press I know, got it right by putting the book in the pocket.  The perforated stuff increases the likelihood of damage to the product before even used, and the map could have easily been inserted into a slipcase nicely (maybe even made a little bigger.  Hell, they should've done, player book, DM/bestiary/adventure book, and used the cost for the third binding to produce the map and a set of adventure maps or deckplan battle maps in a map case that tucks in the slip case.

I don't mind the idea of the slipcases, but this seems to be a lot of packaging that could have been thought through better.  No comment on the DDB edition as I'm not a purchaser, nor do I see any reason to.

Gee: I've always wanted to pay more money for objectively less product!  Especially when it's packaged in such a way as to ensure that everyone at the table has to buy all of it instead of just the bits that are relevant to them!  That sounds like such a great deal! 

...

Yeah; no, WotC is clearly trying to just get more money from this stone...  Which is insane considering they've been riding high on an unprecedented wave of popularity when it comes to D&D for most of 5e's lifespan.

I think comparing prices of anything precovid to postcovid is a fool's game. A company's import costs are several times higher than they were (let alone all the salary and other inflation-related increases). imo...the only question worth asking is 'is this item worth $70 to me today'.  If the answer is yes, great. If not, move along.

I paid $96 canadian for the physical copies and honestly I'm frustrated with what I got; The player options were pretty much free thanks to UA, there was  critical shortage of information for operating a spelljammer, phenomenon in wildspace and/or the astral plane and the ships all kind of had a samey vibe.

The monster manual was great, and if they had offered it up on it's own I would have loved it.

The module feels like a rough draft that was never given editorial review which is a shame because I can see how it could have been great if properly developed (Or had some of it's frills and extra's shaved off). With how railroady, GMPC laden and "Failure contingencies" it allows for it feels very much like a GM would have to put in a lot of work to make it worthwhile, and for the ammount of effort that would take I could probably do something from scratch.

The GM screen is...fine.

Really, my biggest concern is that WotC is using this as a test balloon to see what the consumers will tolerate; a dog's breakfast of a product that is reliant on nostalgia to get people to buy in. Which is really, really frustrating for me both as someone who read the original novels and is given to understand that the original setting had so much more to offer... and as someone who thought this was the perfect setting to reveal their lore agnostic philosophy.

With that in mind I strongly advise that people not buy this. It certainly has some good ideas and what not, but if I'd known what the state of this was going to be I wouldn't have spent money on it.

Quote from HeathSmith >>

I think comparing prices of anything precovid to postcovid is a fool's game. A company's import costs are several times higher than they were (let alone all the salary and other inflation-related increases). imo...the only question worth asking is 'is this item worth $70 to me today'.  If the answer is yes, great. If not, move along.

 This is the objectively wrong philosophy for two reasons:

1. the increased cost of the materials is included in digital copies which have no shipping/manufacturing requirements.

2. Making excuses for inferior products is a good way to get quality to drop like a rock.

Quote from HeathSmith >>

I think comparing prices of anything precovid to postcovid is a fool's game. A company's import costs are several times higher than they were (let alone all the salary and other inflation-related increases). imo...the only question worth asking is 'is this item worth $70 to me today'.  If the answer is yes, great. If not, move along.

 I don't think we can blame covid for this. They've been releasing ordinary-priced products constantly since it began.

You're right about the question worth asking, of course.

Quote from ChoirOfFire >>

 I don't think we can blame covid for this. They've been releasing ordinary-priced products constantly since it began.

You're right about the question worth asking, of course.

 i'm not blaming covid...i'm saying a huge variety of factors have changed from the 5e era before covid (which is when all the products he's referencing were released) to now (which is after covid).  Generally speaking of course....TCE was released in Nov'20, which is technically 'during covid'....but close enough for the comparison since it really had a precovid price structure.

As with most polls on D&D Beyond, I generally wish there was an option for folks who have no strong feelings in either direction--then folks can view the results even if they do not wish to skew the data by picking an inaccurate option.

Personally, the price did not bother me all that much--it came with a lot of new races (which I like having as options available to my players), and a bunch of fun little monsters where I can easily remove the "space" connotations and use as, say, regular sharks or the like.  Overall, I would not say I am "happy" with the price increase, but I do not feel I got ripped off, so am firmly indifferent on the subject. 

Quote from Ashla_Mason >>

1. the increased cost of the materials is included in digital copies which have no shipping/manufacturing requirements.

This is an argument that is frequently made when discussing the cost of digital products--it is not a good argument.  For starters, inflation, chip shortages, and other issues are increasing the cost of cloud storage, which means hosting a digital site like D&D Beyond IS getting more expensive as well. 

Even beyond that, digital products are a double-edged sword--while they make Wizards money by allowing Wizards to sell directly to the consumer (now that Wizards owns D&D Beyond at least), they also cut into sales of physical books--which means they cut into sales of local game stores.  Wizards has been pretty clear that they see ensuring the long-term survival of local game stores as an important component of their business model--they discount digital a bit because it does not require the production and distribution of physical product, but they are not going to leave digital prices static while physical prices increase, as that would only further drive purchases of physical books toward digital and away from spending money at their LGS. 

Quote from Ashla_Mason >>

 This is the objectively wrong philosophy for two reasons:

1. the increased cost of the materials is included in digital copies which have no shipping/manufacturing requirements.

2. Making excuses for inferior products is a good way to get quality to drop like a rock.

 objectively philosophizing here...but your #1 only takes into account half of what I said ....and your #2 has nothing to do with the conversation.

I can see why they charged more for the three books rather than one...I wish they'd provided a standard book option as well. I don't need to pay nearly double the amount just to have it in separate bindings. I'm not convinced that three separate bindings would drive up the cost that much.

Regardless, it's a bit much. I'll reserve judgement on content for if I ever actually get to see it.

Quote from Linklite >>

I can see why they charged more for the three books rather than one...I wish they'd provided a standard book option as well. I don't need to pay nearly double the amount just to have it in separate bindings. I'm not convinced that three separate bindings would drive up the cost that much.

Regardless, it's a bit much. I'll reserve judgement on content for if I ever actually get to see it.

 If they had offered the Monster manual by itself for like, $25-30 It'd have been a good deal imho.

Quote from Caerwyn_Glyndwr >>

As with most polls on D&D Beyond, I generally wish there was an option for folks who have no strong feelings in either direction--then folks can view the results even if they do not wish to skew the data by picking an inaccurate option.

 If you look on the right side of the black title bar of the poll, there should be a button that says 'view results' without requiring you to vote. Does it maybe not appear in mobile unless you're in landscape?

I think this is more complicated of a question than just yes and no.  Splitting it in to 3 separate books will increase the cost and the paper quality most likely increase the cost itself.  So just for the physical product I think the increased cost is fine.

Now for the content of the book that is up to each person to decide if they are ok with the cost increase.

I pretty much exclusively buy digital, and I'm not paying $50 for that Spelljammer set. Not worth it.

I understand why WotC is pricing it that high, though - the higher price of the physical version more or less forces them to make the digital more expensive.. if the digital set was $30 like other books, the price discrepancy would be too big.

Over priced. It came a premium price point, the DM screen is nice but would have been better as a separate product... I don't know why the put one normal books worth of content in 3 different books only adds to price. The book is missing a lot of what expect to need to run a Spelljammer game worst to is there is no lore or world building... I haven't run Spelljammer airship combat yet so can't comment on that other than I've heard Doom and gloom from people who have tried 

The content provided was not equal to the pricing at al.  I distrusted them after Monsters of the Multiverse and now it's complete.  I certainly will not preorder again, and will only buy a book again based on the reviews of several people I feel I can trust.

To put it into another perspective; SCAG was the first supplement for 5e and while somewhat pricey for it's relative size, I feel that  it ultimately brought more to the table by way of providding information on the various regions of the sword coast in specific and to a lesser extent the broader forgotten realms while still offering us a handful of class options for barbarian, fighter, monk, wizard, cleric, paladin, sorcerer, warlock and rogue as well as around a dozen backgrounds, all of which are transferable to non-realms setttings.

All for $50.95 canadian and 159 pages.

Hmmm... We have 27 votes so far, and right now the consensus seems pretty clear among both posters and voters that $70 is higher than what the bundle should be. I wonder whether this will change with more votes since 27 votes isn't much, but again, the consensus among those 27 is pretty clear.