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<blockquote data-quote="eamon" data-source="post: 5907383" data-attributes="member: 51942">Not necessarily.&nbsp; Or at least; there are ways of mitigating it.&nbsp; I'll bet lots of people know the card-game dominion, which currently has lots of options and expansions.&nbsp; Yet, the effect of that bloat is quite limited as in each individual game only a small set is ever used.&nbsp; Similarly, in RPG's settings and the like aren't bloat; they don't cause overuse.Another alternative is to limit the amount of content.&nbsp; If you do want to release new options that aren't mutually exclusive to old ones, then you can choose to release few options that interact in an interesting way with existing content, rather than hundreds of unrelated minor specializations.&nbsp; In other words, keep the number of choices down even where you do release new choices.&nbsp; A splatbook needs to appeal to lots of customers, but you can do that by letting the feat or power appeal to lots of customers rather than writing lots of hyper-specialized feats or powers appealing to tiny segments of the customers.&nbsp; Less but higher quality new content helps.Finally, you can suggest default balancing rules for the DM; i.e. each player can use core books and no more than 2 splatbooks per character.&nbsp; Alternatively, each player can propose a splatbook and the entire party gets to use material from all proposed splatbooks.&nbsp; In any case, the choice is simplified by being hierarchical: first choose the splatbook, then the details.Finally, rather than release an aggravating constant stream of almost irrelevant errata, you can see that as a business opportunity, and fix only urgent problems by errata but instead re-release revisions of the base periodically (e.g. 3.5).Sure, there will be some bloat. But just because it's unavoidable doesn't mean you can't mitigate it or reduce the extent of bloat.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="eamon, post: 5907383, member: 51942"] Not necessarily. Or at least; there are ways of mitigating it. I'll bet lots of people know the card-game dominion, which currently has [I]lots[/I] of options and expansions. Yet, the effect of that bloat is quite limited as in each individual game only a small set is ever used. Similarly, in RPG's settings and the like aren't bloat; they don't cause overuse. Another alternative is to limit the amount of content. If you do want to release new options that aren't mutually exclusive to old ones, then you can choose to release few options that interact in an interesting way with existing content, rather than hundreds of unrelated minor specializations. In other words, keep the number of choices down even where you do release new choices. A splatbook needs to appeal to lots of customers, but you can do that by letting the feat or power appeal to lots of customers rather than writing lots of hyper-specialized feats or powers appealing to tiny segments of the customers. Less but higher quality new content helps. Finally, you can suggest default balancing rules for the DM; i.e. each player can use core books and no more than 2 splatbooks per character. Alternatively, each player can propose a splatbook and the entire party gets to use material from all proposed splatbooks. In any case, the choice is simplified by being hierarchical: first choose the splatbook, then the details. Finally, rather than release an aggravating constant stream of almost irrelevant errata, you can see that as a business opportunity, and fix only urgent problems by errata but instead re-release revisions of the base periodically (e.g. 3.5). Sure, there will be [I]some [/I]bloat. But just because it's unavoidable doesn't mean you can't mitigate it or reduce the extent of bloat. [/QUOTE]

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