I bought both Bigby's and Fizban's digitally during the Cyber Monday sale on D&D Beyond and I have to admit I'm much more satisfied with Bigby's. As a DM, I think it's one of the best products WoTC has put out in a while (so long as you ignore the print price). It took me only a couple of sessions to fold it into my home game. Personally, I think the print price is not just a case of greed, it's also strategic. By making the print version such a bad value in comparison it helps push people towards D&D Beyond and away from print.
I tend to watch reviews AFTER I buy the book, which is weird, I know. You’re the second reviewer I’ve seen cite $70, so maybe I missed some promotional material somewhere y’all are looking at but I bought one of the initial print books on release, in store because I wanted that beautiful alt cover. I just rechecked the suggested retail on the back and it definitely says $59.99. The size is definitely disappointing, and am thrilled to see the new Vecna book a whole +60 pages, but honestly Bigby Presents is one of my favorite lore books wizard has released yet for 5E based on it’s content. And I wasn’t even that excited for giants.
Pretty sure one of the reasons the physical copy is overpriced is to push people to go digital. Also my main takeaway from the video is, pick it up on sale because it's not worth full price.
Between price gouging, lay offs, AI trash, Pinkertons, ogl, and nearly every other decision they’ve made… I’d like to enjoy this book but they’ve put up too many barriers. I’ll keep an eye out at second hand book shops in a few years. Maybe I’ll get lucky. And maybe it’ll be a second print run with less atrocious ai images.
I love the book's topic, but the small size & limited info inside seemed like a bit of a rip-off. I also disliked them making Bigby into a gnome. Seemed disrespectful to the original Greyhawk lore. I still bought it as I love giants & rune lore. In retrospect, I wish I'd only bought the digital copy, but there's something about a hard back book on the shelf I can't ignore.
