Wolfpack48
Adventurer
I'll need to pop in my monocle first.
Last edited:
Should a TTRPG have a singular Core Rulebook or more?
payn
He'll flip ya...Flip ya for real...
General_Tangent
Adventurer
Now that's a whole other paradigm shift
Celebrim
Legend
My answer is complex.
The fundamental rules of play sufficient to play the system should be in a single handbook. This should cover chargen, core game mechanics, and sufficient rules to play the game at a basic level.
However, no system worth playing for a long time can be fit into a single book.
That first book should generally be bundled with a supplement that is an introductory adventure. Adventures and not rules are the core of any successful system. Until you have multiple adventures out there you hardly need anything more than a core gameplay book.
The second book of the system should be a GM focused book that covers complex scenarios that can arise in play but which a new group is not likely to encounter quickly. This can include things like chases, detailed vehicle operation, travel, weather and environmental hazards, detail underwater rules, detailed flight rules, dynastic play, economics, crafting, lairs, social encounters, and so forth. Depending on the system, some of these things are possibly part of the core gameplay book because the game focused on those things, but no game system can possibly cover all of this in the core book. Depending on your adventures, some of these rules could have been first introduced in one of your adventures, but here it can be presented as a single compendium of GM focused rules. This book being GM focused should also discuss in detail running the game over long periods and how to prepare to play the game, how to design challenges, how to keep the game fresh, how to keep up your interest as a GM, and how to deal with common table problems.
The third book of a system is likely to be a bestiary of some sort focused on the needs of GMs that are making their own content, and bestiaries should be themed and comprehensively cover some aspect of the setting - "Creatures of the Natural World", "Typical Inhabitants of Society", "Unnatural Things", whatever makes sense in your setting. Some of this might recap things first introduced in the core rules or in adventures, but this should be expanded and comprehensive. Additional Bestiaries can be added over time.
The fourth book of the system should be a comprehensive equipment guide. Basically, this is the price of everything in a typical setting of your game along with advanced crafting rules for making and selling any of those things, as well as a discussion of trade and what happens if your PCs start running a business. This is your treasure guide. This is your crafting guide. If your game is a sci-fi or modern setting game you absolutely have to have this because this is your tech guide. In fact, you probably are going to need more than one of these in a game with enough scope, but you absolutely need one in any game and so many publishers drop the ball on this and either don't do it or do it very badly.
The fifth book of the system should a be comprehensive setting guide full of deep lore for people who don't want to make up their own lore.
The sixth book of the system should be a comprehensive mass combat guide focused on war as the campaign and the campaign setting. It should talk about different ways to stage mass combat from players as participants to players as commanders and how to scale the rules out for encounters of any size or degree of detail needed. (This is of course the idealized version of a book.) Any long running campaign will have battles in it too large to run in a tactical combat system so you do need to think about this. Designers I'm talking to you.
If you are a fantasy game, the seventh book of your game should be a comprehensive guide to how magic works in your game world. This is your full grimoire. Magical systems are diverse and exactly what this book includes can depend on the setting but it should include things like who can acquire magic, how magical people are typically trained, how society deals with the presence of magic and defends against it, if magic is a technology how it is researched and developed, how spontaneous magic happens, what the underlying physics of magic are, what are the rules for magical locations of various sorts (shrines, temples, nodes of power, ley lines, sacred sites, etc.), plus any expansion on magical options that you couldn't fit in the core rules.
The eighth book you should have is a dynastic play guide. If dynastic play was already a part of your core rules, this is where you give options for different sorts of dynasties - maybe merchant princes, criminal organizations, secret societies, noble military houses or whatever wasn't core to your assumptions of play. This is where you have rules for holdings, lairs, economies, taxation, and whatever strategic assets that players can acquire that give them advantage in the setting. If you are Blades in the Dark with core dynastic play, this is where you get into the nitty gritty of making wholly different sorts of crews and settings than the default one. If you are Pendragon this is where you have advanced rules. If you aren't, this is where you tell a GM how to turn your game into dynastic play if you want. For example, if you are CoC, this is the rules for having players part of secret societies or rules for the PCs to founding their own secret societies.
After that you start worrying about expanding the core rules by focused rules that extend areas of the core rules you now find lacking or offering alternative setting guides. By this point you probably have 10 to 15 core books, plus twice that many published adventures. If you got this far congratulations, you are a successful game. If you published a bunch of crap that isn't the above eight books or you don't have 10 to 15 highly successful and well-regarded adventures, you are doing it wrong even if you are a successful game - succeeding despite your shortcomings as a system. No system for me hits all the main points well. Pendragon, D&D, Pathfinder, Traveller and a few others make a good try of it and have different things to recommend them, but I've yet to see the game system that just wows me by going after this well with broadly useful rules that are all well-done.
The fundamental rules of play sufficient to play the system should be in a single handbook. This should cover chargen, core game mechanics, and sufficient rules to play the game at a basic level.
However, no system worth playing for a long time can be fit into a single book.
That first book should generally be bundled with a supplement that is an introductory adventure. Adventures and not rules are the core of any successful system. Until you have multiple adventures out there you hardly need anything more than a core gameplay book.
The second book of the system should be a GM focused book that covers complex scenarios that can arise in play but which a new group is not likely to encounter quickly. This can include things like chases, detailed vehicle operation, travel, weather and environmental hazards, detail underwater rules, detailed flight rules, dynastic play, economics, crafting, lairs, social encounters, and so forth. Depending on the system, some of these things are possibly part of the core gameplay book because the game focused on those things, but no game system can possibly cover all of this in the core book. Depending on your adventures, some of these rules could have been first introduced in one of your adventures, but here it can be presented as a single compendium of GM focused rules. This book being GM focused should also discuss in detail running the game over long periods and how to prepare to play the game, how to design challenges, how to keep the game fresh, how to keep up your interest as a GM, and how to deal with common table problems.
The third book of a system is likely to be a bestiary of some sort focused on the needs of GMs that are making their own content, and bestiaries should be themed and comprehensively cover some aspect of the setting - "Creatures of the Natural World", "Typical Inhabitants of Society", "Unnatural Things", whatever makes sense in your setting. Some of this might recap things first introduced in the core rules or in adventures, but this should be expanded and comprehensive. Additional Bestiaries can be added over time.
The fourth book of the system should be a comprehensive equipment guide. Basically, this is the price of everything in a typical setting of your game along with advanced crafting rules for making and selling any of those things, as well as a discussion of trade and what happens if your PCs start running a business. This is your treasure guide. This is your crafting guide. If your game is a sci-fi or modern setting game you absolutely have to have this because this is your tech guide. In fact, you probably are going to need more than one of these in a game with enough scope, but you absolutely need one in any game and so many publishers drop the ball on this and either don't do it or do it very badly.
The fifth book of the system should a be comprehensive setting guide full of deep lore for people who don't want to make up their own lore.
The sixth book of the system should be a comprehensive mass combat guide focused on war as the campaign and the campaign setting. It should talk about different ways to stage mass combat from players as participants to players as commanders and how to scale the rules out for encounters of any size or degree of detail needed. (This is of course the idealized version of a book.) Any long running campaign will have battles in it too large to run in a tactical combat system so you do need to think about this. Designers I'm talking to you.
If you are a fantasy game, the seventh book of your game should be a comprehensive guide to how magic works in your game world. This is your full grimoire. Magical systems are diverse and exactly what this book includes can depend on the setting but it should include things like who can acquire magic, how magical people are typically trained, how society deals with the presence of magic and defends against it, if magic is a technology how it is researched and developed, how spontaneous magic happens, what the underlying physics of magic are, what are the rules for magical locations of various sorts (shrines, temples, nodes of power, ley lines, sacred sites, etc.), plus any expansion on magical options that you couldn't fit in the core rules.
The eighth book you should have is a dynastic play guide. If dynastic play was already a part of your core rules, this is where you give options for different sorts of dynasties - maybe merchant princes, criminal organizations, secret societies, noble military houses or whatever wasn't core to your assumptions of play. This is where you have rules for holdings, lairs, economies, taxation, and whatever strategic assets that players can acquire that give them advantage in the setting. If you are Blades in the Dark with core dynastic play, this is where you get into the nitty gritty of making wholly different sorts of crews and settings than the default one. If you are Pendragon this is where you have advanced rules. If you aren't, this is where you tell a GM how to turn your game into dynastic play if you want. For example, if you are CoC, this is the rules for having players part of secret societies or rules for the PCs to founding their own secret societies.
After that you start worrying about expanding the core rules by focused rules that extend areas of the core rules you now find lacking or offering alternative setting guides. By this point you probably have 10 to 15 core books, plus twice that many published adventures. If you got this far congratulations, you are a successful game. If you published a bunch of crap that isn't the above eight books or you don't have 10 to 15 highly successful and well-regarded adventures, you are doing it wrong even if you are a successful game - succeeding despite your shortcomings as a system. No system for me hits all the main points well. Pendragon, D&D, Pathfinder, Traveller and a few others make a good try of it and have different things to recommend them, but I've yet to see the game system that just wows me by going after this well with broadly useful rules that are all well-done.
I don't subscribe to this view, but thank you for your detailed and thoughtful reply.
TwoSix
Dirty, realism-hating munchkin powergamer
Yo, real word describing important attributes of TTRPG play. Sorry it makes you uncomfortable.
Wolfpack48
Adventurer
“Important.”Yo, real word describing important attributes of TTRPG play. Sorry it makes you uncomfortable.
I don't get it. I was just commenting on the tendency of folks to leap on and repeat terms that have come into fashion, regardless of whether they are appropriate or even if they really know what they mean.Yo, real word describing important attributes of TTRPG play. Sorry it makes you uncomfortable.
TwoSix
Dirty, realism-hating munchkin powergamer
That's fine. But evolving my games to focus on less metagame progress and more progress via diegetic elements is one of my main focuses right now, so I tend to use the word a lot precisely because it is relevant to my interests.
Im glad you are enjoying your hobby. But what does that have to do with the "real world"?
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