jester47
First Post
I was reading the tipping point and one section of it has hit me as really important. Apparently there is a lot of research that says that human beings can only keep track of 150 relationships. If you were to count the people that you considered close friends you would not go over 15 and most people sit at 12. This is because keeping track of 12 friends and how they relate to each other yeilds 154 things you are keeping track of. (12+144 is 154). Also, the number of aquaintences that you keep track of are also about 150.
This got me thinking. Most bands never play more than 12 songs in a set. Back in my DJ days, I only really paid attention to about 12 tracks at a time. When you mix records, you need to keep track of how each track relates to all the others.
So then I realised, the same thing is true for D&D books. When you get a new gaming book, you need to keep track of how the new informaiton relates to all of those books. Since the books don't relate to you, I wold suspect that you could handle about 13-16 books. After that stuff starts to gather on the shelf and I would suspect that the frequncy of use per book would start to drop off drasticly.
Indeed it seemed that somewhere between The Mannual of the Planes and the Epic Level Sourcebook things seemed to get unweildy. Doing a quick look at the online catalog, it shows that between that time the number of supplements for just the core game reached 12+ If you were using FR stuff, the number of supplements contianing new rules passed that just before the arrival of the Manual of the Planes. And it was around this time people started to complain that there were too many feats and PrCs.
So in my own collection I see the rule of 12. I am starting to think I have too much 3.x realms info and that to expect to even think of using it all together wold be silly. I regularly only really keep in mind 12 books. Much more than that and I find that stop using a book enough to merit its cost.
It seems that developmentaly game designers have the same problem. They start to loose track of how the books in a line relate to other books. Looking at 1st ed, there were not more than 15 hardcover books. This tells me that perhaps, the only way to maximise enjoyment of D&D is to limit your rules expanding books to a range of 12-15 books in a session or campaign.
I find this interesing. What is your experience?
This got me thinking. Most bands never play more than 12 songs in a set. Back in my DJ days, I only really paid attention to about 12 tracks at a time. When you mix records, you need to keep track of how each track relates to all the others.
So then I realised, the same thing is true for D&D books. When you get a new gaming book, you need to keep track of how the new informaiton relates to all of those books. Since the books don't relate to you, I wold suspect that you could handle about 13-16 books. After that stuff starts to gather on the shelf and I would suspect that the frequncy of use per book would start to drop off drasticly.
Indeed it seemed that somewhere between The Mannual of the Planes and the Epic Level Sourcebook things seemed to get unweildy. Doing a quick look at the online catalog, it shows that between that time the number of supplements for just the core game reached 12+ If you were using FR stuff, the number of supplements contianing new rules passed that just before the arrival of the Manual of the Planes. And it was around this time people started to complain that there were too many feats and PrCs.
So in my own collection I see the rule of 12. I am starting to think I have too much 3.x realms info and that to expect to even think of using it all together wold be silly. I regularly only really keep in mind 12 books. Much more than that and I find that stop using a book enough to merit its cost.
It seems that developmentaly game designers have the same problem. They start to loose track of how the books in a line relate to other books. Looking at 1st ed, there were not more than 15 hardcover books. This tells me that perhaps, the only way to maximise enjoyment of D&D is to limit your rules expanding books to a range of 12-15 books in a session or campaign.
I find this interesing. What is your experience?
Last edited:
