Sort of prompted by the new expanded four against darkness coming out and the hardcover being available before the softcover, thought I’d go hardcover…
My current collection is a mix of all kinds of bindings and covers… But I was interested to see what people preferred. Disregarding spiral bound, and digital (and assuming high quality / professional binding). If you could choose a hardcover or softcover, which is your preference in RPG books?
I’m not so prolific a ttrpg player as to have a suitable answer in any case, but I’m also too finicky to answer with only these options 
A 100pg softcover/perfectbound tome is quite different from a 30pg softcover/saddlestitched zine, for example. Then you’ve got weird varmints like Tephrotic Nightmares that have hard coverboards but whose spine is unusual so that it lays flat better than a perfectbound. So I fall into analysis paralysis and abstain, for personal reasons.
I prefer hard covers. I don’t mean to sound cheap, but it’s usually the price that makes the choice for me. If there’s only one or two books, I’m happy to put in the little bit extra for the hard cover.
When I wanted to order all 7 of the D100 Dungeon books I went softcover. It just added too much cost to getting all 7 books. Of course I also discovered I wasn’t a huge D100 fan after I got it, and ended up selling them all after only actually playing with 3 of the books anyways. Oooof. Lesson learned.
Needs another option - spiral bound! All RPG books should be spiral bound. I’m a huge fan of function over form when it comes to RPG books.
I agree completely, but I was kind of narrowing to eliminate that for the purposes of the exercise. If there was no other option… Which would you choose!?
Otherwise everyone would put - it depends on how big the books is, or just pick spiral bound, or any number of other options!
Good points, well made.
I probably should have also said assuming a certain page count say around 200 to 300 pages… or at least excluded zines.
I cannot for the life of me, learn that lesson 
I bought all of the PDFs in one big bundle a couple summers ago. I already have a mix of hardback and softback books. What I find is that I might prefer some small section of a books, which I use all the time, even one page. Then some books, like the “twisted” books, I use almost all of the book, all the time. So my thought is to work from a handful of core books, then print and add to a half-page ring binder any of the cherry-picked content from PDFs.
Also, I get Daniel’s point about spiral bound books. They are objectively more functional. But for me, nothing beats a hardback tome. I don’t mind the thumb fatigue, and reading over hills of paper. And most importantly, I cannot abide a spiral bound spine on my bookshelf.
As Daniel has said above, more creators need to offer spiral bound editions IMO. You can do hardcover spiral bound books as well which can still look high quality but are much more functional than “Perfect bound” books, which is such an oxymoron lmao. They are far from perfect, especially for ttrpg’s which you need to lay open on the table for easy pursuing.
Hi. I got the hard-cover more so because the retailer I used Amazon Canada at the time only had the hardcover available. The binding is tight so doesn’t stay open unless you hold it down. Curious to know how the soft-cover compares. Otherwise, the printing is top-notch.
Here’s the thing. Softcover books are flexible. If the page area is large enough the mass holds down the page so it doesn’t flip closed. Hard cover is a challenge. I usually find that I need to hold the book pages down somehow. Regarding spiral-bound, yes I thing this is the optimal choice. However, if there are too many pages there is the chance of the pages getting snagged on the coils.