Tovec
Explorer
To which I'm sure you replied, "No, of course not, you need to worry about your character sheet. I do the heavy lifting as a DM and even I don't need to read all of this." Or I guess not, since..No, but the last time I introduced the game to a bunch of kids, they saw the (3.0e) core rulebooks, asked "do we need to read all of that?",
And thus Christmas was ruined. Because reading is hard.and I watched the interest die in their eyes.
The other way to look at this, for any edition, is that the larger the book the more information you have when you need it. If 3e released a book only 100 pages long, you would constantly have to go looking in other books for spells, items, races, feats, etc.Whether you need to read it or not, the mere existence of those 300+ page rulebooks is a barrier.
I think it doesn't matter how big the books are as long as the quality is there. I would probably like smaller books over all, assuming the same cost and quality, if only for the transportation issue but as far as getting into a game; I think what matters most is if the information is there so that when something comes up I can find it instead of having to guess at an inappropriate answer. "The DC to hide behind a barrel? Um... 35? That sounds good, right? I don't have the skills book yet."
And not for nothing but if WotC doesn't sell a hardcover book (resorting to sell only PDFs or some other god awful electronic media format only) then I won't buy their books. I have learned over a series of years that electronics at the table are death. I don't want to FORCE it in order to run a simple game. Give me a physical book please, or I simply will not buy it.