Unless I'm mistaken, the hardcover BBB when the way of the dodo in SR3. My softcover version takes such a beating, I opted to buy the PDF version of SR3. However, I can never seem to get my hands around an e-book and would gladly pay a premium for a hardcover edition. Just wondering if anyone else feels the same?

I'm still unsure if I'm goign to pay for an SR4 at all, so I can't really answer this yet.

If I were to buy SR4, I would gladly pay like $10 more for a hardcover. Softcovers are a waste of time as they are trashed in like a year or less.

I wouldn't pay a premium, and neither should you. The currentbook is paperback and sold at a hardback price.

Yeah, there's absolutely no hardcover game books that cost more than $30.

SR4 is going to be hardcover, absolutely.

well, except for those "limited eddition" 3.5's WoTC made and sold for what, 70?

I'd be confident in saying that the majority of non-WotC hardcover RPG books are more than $30. Eden Studios stuff, GURPS fourth edition, most books from Mongoose, Guardians of Order, the new Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying.

Pretty much everything from White Wolf's press is around the $30 mark.

Of course, some of us are willing to pay a premium for limited editions printed in devloper blood on developer skin, but I believe this is a bit of a niche market (unless you guys really fuck this one up).

$34.99 for Vampire: the Requiem and Werewolf: The Foresaken, and $34.99 for the new Exalted hardbacks like The Autochthonians and The Dragon-Blooded.

I'm more taking issue with pushing 40 and up.

Most definatly yes. If only to give a stable platform to stack my other books on when I put them in the sack for a road trip.

It'll be a birthday present, so I guess whatever my dear wife likes : P

Question though, will the idea of bundling the pdf and the book be settled by August? If SR4 is bad, I'll just want the book for reference sake. If it's good, I'll want the pdf as well so I can actually use it during the day. But whether I can buy them bundled, or use one to buy the other will determine how I buy them.

Umm, the CoC 6th Hardback is 60 something.

Thats just the leather bound special edition version though. My copy of CoC is hardback, and I only paid about 30. However, my LGS has (last I checked) one of the leather bound copies with the Elder Symbol on the front, and they want $70 for it.

it depends, is FanPro gonna get someone who actually knows how to bind books instead of going the FASA route and getting someone who does it part-time real cheap by using watered down nasal snot for glue?

I thought they had already announced that SR4 was going to be done in hardcover. I was jazzed about until I saw WTF they were doing to the rules, and totally ruined my enthusiasim. WTF good is a hardcover Shadowrun book I'm almost never gonna use?

Check the fourth reply.

So far, SR has a crappy reputation of books falling apart. I'd bet the hardcover outlasts the binding.

I never had problems with SR-books falling apart - neither the american nor the german versions. I love hardcovers, so i would buy a SR4 hardcover, even when it cost close to 40 bucks.

You are rare, then.

SR's North American print runs can easily be said to have utter crap for bindings. Maybe FanPro D has always used better printers?

Honestly, since the FASA crash, the bindings HAVE gotten better. Just remember the old Matrix book... count pages per hour on that one.

All my books are stored in my living room, where people smoke, drink and listen to loud music. Doesn't affect the books.

And i have a lot of english books, which are probably printed in the US?

I wouldn't buy a hardcover version, they're too difficult to read at the gaming table for looking up rules. Unless you happen to like the spine-cracking noise when you open it so it stays

Memorize all needed rules so you don't need your books anymore

regarding the bindings: yeah, they were crap. The content was usually outstanding, but the books would fall apart way sooner than any others I'd ever seen or used. As for Fanpro using better stuff, I'm not so sure, at least with the BBB. A buddy of mine treats his Fanpro version BBB like gold for the most part, and just last night he looked at me and said his BBB was beginning to end up like mine, the first of the color plate archetypes had fallen out (weren't those always the first ones?). As for mine, I finally just got pissed off enough and ripped the pages out and hole punched them and put them in a 3 ring binder. Yeah, it looks kind lame, but problem solved, plus, I get to use dividers for marking the sections.

The binding problems also remind me of another buddy's Aztlan book. He bought it in bulk at a game store and didn't actually look through it before buying, but when he got it home the cover was glued in a different direction compared to the the rest of the book. Which means, when you look at the cover right side up and then open the book, you're looking at the content upside down and starting from the back. I don't know much, but I can gauran-damn-tee that I would know how not to glue stuff in the wrong way.

As for the usability of hardcovers while gaming, I use my D&D 3.5 PH every week with no problems at all. Actually, I even remember my old AD&D 2nd Eds not having any problems with awkwardness or page loss.

Ill add my horror story of bindings. Ordered a copy of matrix off of ebay, examined it from the outside, and it looked alright, aside from a small crease, oddly enough, foing in a sort of diagonal across the spine. Randomly opened it up, snap, crackle pop, and out comes a section four or five pages long.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've had my core book for about a year now I think and it's not showing any signs of death at all...

The only books I had problems with was SR3 (of course) and Man & Machine but only becase I spilled Mt. Dew inside my waterproof book bag and the spine of M&M soaked in it for an hour before I realized it. It had held up fine up until then.

I'm just joining the crowd saying I'm not even sure if I'm going to buy the 4th ed. If I do it is just for the update on the world and so it will not be getting the wear and tear of travel since my group has already prtetty much decided we'll stick with 3rd ed rules. So if i do buy 4th ed, then I certainly wouldn't pay "extra."

I'd buy it if I was around when it was there, but only in the hope that it would not fall apart like the older books have.

I have the same negative experience as many here, color pages falling out first, then clumps of other pages.

I'll definitely buy the book, but probably won't get the hardcover. I just plan to get it spiral-bound at Kinkos anyway.

At this time, there are no plans for a softcover release.

That's fine.

i personally like hardcovers better, they stand up better. Right now my two SR books have to go behind the dnd books simply because of the support.

I like the image of WOtC supporting FanPro.

Open License?

I've had suppliments fall apart but never one of the main SB's

I don't know, Those elf chicks are hot, but there are some things I never want to see trolls doing, I guess there is someone out there into that. . .

hardCOVER SR4, oh. . . um. . . Nevermind.