Should a TTRPG have a singular Core Rulebook or more?

[MNblockhead]

I could run a game for years just using the core Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4e book. Well...I could if they had spent more time play testing the rules so I didn't have to buy later books that fixed the issues in the core book.

 

[Autumnal]

Experiences so different than my own always make me want to sit in on a game just to figure out what other people are doing and what they call play.

I share this urge.

 

[Celebrim]

Most of my personal experience with successful long running (1+ year) games has been with mostly just sticking to the core rulebook in games like Vampire: The Requiem, Exalted, Classic Deadlands, Changeling: The Lost, Demon: The Fallen, Legend of the Five Rings 5e, Infinity, Dune 2d20, etc. Granted our games tend to focus more on social conflicts, characters' personal lives and intrigues. Violent encounters are rare and fair fights damn near nonexistent. Our year-long weekly Infinity game saw maybe 8 combats and very minimal exploration but featured well over 30 named NPCs (at least half of which had direct associations to at least one of our 3 PCs).

For me long running means a game that goes more than 120 hours. So yeah, if you really meet 50 times in a year that would count.

The style of play you describe is called "Low Melodrama". I have never played it except online in MU* environment where because everyone was a PC conflict was discouraged (no NPCs to kill). It is usually associated with systems that have very complex and deadly combat so that to successfully play the game requires an unspoken agreement to avoid combat, but you can play it with pretty much any system. My current player group would have absolutely no interest in this style of play. I also have six players and find it hard to weave low melodrama into large groups of players because it's hard to divide the spotlight up well when you have that many players doing scenes with NPCs of significance to one or two of the players.

My currently running campaign is now almost three years old and at 54 4 hour sessions. We try to play every other week but sometimes skip weeks because of real life intervening. There are over 250 named NPCs in my notes, but few NPCs reoccur and the PCs have not really developed close relationships with any of them. The PCs are bounty hunters so the typical story arc is the PCs are given a job by the Guildmaster with a few clues to go on, some background information, and a bounty puck loaded with hopefully the image and genetic code of the acquisition. The PCs spend a few sessions exploring a small sandbox looking for clues and getting into fights with locals of various sorts interested in for reasons of their own seeing the PCs fail. Eventually they gather enough clues to chase the acquisition which leads to a large climatic conflict. The NPCs encountered along the way are named and have stories of their own, but usually little reason to interact with bounty hunters and it's a big galaxy. The PCs are travelling to entirely different worlds with millions and sometimes billions of inhabitants. There is the possibility of reoccurring villains or allies but that hasn't really developed yet because really I consider 220 hours of play to be pretty short to develop longer story arcs. Those 220 hours of play only cover about six months of their lives and are heavily focused on the chases that have occurred not on personal lives or social conflict at the personal level either with NPCs or with each other.

Primary styles of play are Exploration and Hack N' Slash with a touch of High Melodrama (big events of social or political significance as opposed to events of personal significance). And as High Melodrama their reoccurring relationships are more with factions than with individual NPCs.

 

[Autumnal]

That sounds like a ton of fun.

 

[Buzzqw]

@Celebrim​

please share your notes

BHH

 

[Celebrim]

@Celebrim​

please share your notes

BHH

a) I am always hesitant to share my notes in an ongoing campaign because I never know what the players don't know will come back into play.

b) There is a part of me that is holding out hope that the brand manager of whatever the current Star Wars RPG is will come to me and go, "We want to publish a bounty hunter campaign and we heard you are the guy to contact." and it will end up spinning off into a Disney+ show about the adventures of some bounty hunters that will seriously be cooler than The Mandalorian because actual bounty hunters doing actual bounty hunting and situations with real stakes and a story arc that isn't over by the third episode and villains that actually make sense, etc.

c) Even if those concerns aren't realistic, my notes never get more than at best about 80% of what is needed to communicate the scenario. I never have the energy to put in that final bit of effort to make the notes publication worthy. I leave a lot up in my head because by experience I never know exactly what the players are going to do anyway.

d) I'm intensely afraid of judgment. I know my players enjoy my game, but like if they saw how the sausage was made behind the GM screen would they really admire the game/me as much? shudder I've seen my notes. Those dungeons where half the rooms were left blank because I was hoping they'd either never go to the location or wouldn't explore the whole thing. All that stuff I was making up on the fly and then recording for posterity. Maps that are just circles with arrows between them or large sections just simply left off the map to make up if and when needed. Etc. Sure 40,000 words for an adventure sounds impressive until you realize it's only about 40% of the adventure.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Hmmm. I certainly see no reason I couldn't run a pretty long campaign with Champions Complete. That doesn't mean there'd be nothing that couldn't benefit from some extra books, but it'd definitely be possible. Mind you, I think Celebrim would be arguing I'm doing my own add-on there because of all the villains I'd be making, but the majority of opponents in superhero games I've used have always been original, so...

(Now that I think about it, back in the day that'd have been true with Danger International, too).

 

[Reynard]

Hmmm. I certainly see no reason I couldn't run a pretty long campaign with Champions Complete. That doesn't mean there'd be nothing that couldn't benefit from some extra books, but it'd definitely be possible. Mind you, I think Celebrim would be arguing I'm doing my own add-on there because of all the villains I'd be making, but the majority of opponents in superhero games I've used have always been original, so...

(Now that I think about it, back in the day that'd have been true with Danger International, too).

Not only do I think that the vast majority of RPGs could be presented for infinite play in one book, I think most of those could be presented ina book of less than 100 pages.

 

[kronovan]

I'm not sure how many books, just that I prefer player and GM content being in one core book, with additional genre companions books for a universal TTRPG, or a separate bestiary book for a single genre TTRPG. In the former model, the appropriate bestiary would be provided in the genre companions. I dislike the way the books were handled for D&D 5e, with all those magic items that players want to read and access being only available to the DM via the DMG - to give just one example. I like the way book content was handled for Pathfinder 1e and Savage Worlds.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

I voted something else mainly because I think it depends on the game. It's pretty difficult to justify a 3 core rulebook method for something like Masks. But it would be pretty hard to pack everything for D&D into a single volume. And even a lot of one core rulebook games have lots of supplemental rulebooks and sourcebooks to provide the utility that the DMG and Monster Manual/Bestiary provide for D&D/Pathfinder games.

this is the correct answer