It includes all three original rulebooks and all four supplements. Each booklet has new cover art, but is “otherwise a faithful reproduction of the original, including original cover art”.
As you can see, the mock-up promotional picture shows eight booklets. I’m guessing that’s an error. OTOH, if WotC had somehow convinced Rob Kuntz to finish Supplement V: Kalibruhn (the original unfinished manuscript of which Noble Knight auctioned off a few years back) so that it could be included in this thread, I’d be spending the next nine months drooling. (Or maybe they’ll include either Chainmail or the Swords & Spells supplement, although neither is listed among the current contents.)
My guess is the 8th ‘book’ will be the Reference Sheets. The image even sort of looks like them.
It’d be nice if it were Chainmail, since that was kind of necessary to run OD&D. For that matter, the Outdoor Survival map would be nice too (and as long as I’m dreaming, throw in Swords & Spells just to complete the set).
I was wondering about Swords & Spells but Chainmail would make more sense. That said, I’m betting Matthias has it.
Obviously they bought the rights to Supplement V: Carcosa from Geoffrey McKinney.
Watching the eyeballs melt out of the Hasbro executives skulls when they realized they just published child snuff magic rituals would be worth the price of admission.
I think this is an attempt at offering some kind of ‘mea culpa’ at people who were really into RPGs and left after the unholy abomination that is 4E. I haven’t been blessed with enough motivation to find out how well 4E did after it launched, but I can’t imagine that it was worth the price, since just about every tabletop gamer I know said that WotC could attempt carnal relations with the Tarrasque (there’s only supposed to be one per plane) before they’d ever consider paying to play a tabletop MMO.
That having been said, I think this is just one step in an overall attempt to repackage (and relaunch) classic D&D. By the time they get around to it, 3.5 will be the stuff of legend, and that will then be available as a relaunch, or it will get repackaged (with a few tweaks) into 5E.
BLUF: They don’t like any of us. They only like our money.
Matthias is correct. The 8th “book” is the reference sheets.
It does appear to be a nice artifact, considering most of (all?) the rules are available now legitimately online. I can’t quite imagine spending that much on something that I would be afraid to use. My advice is too keep it in the original unopened (Amazon) shipping box, so you can resell it in 5 years as mint for a handy profit.