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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5125050" data-attributes="member: 4937">It depends very much on what you mean by complete. No edition of D&D can be condensed to under 300 pages.  That's not an opinion, that's a fact.  With earlier editions of the game, the general way of selling the game was to sell a relatively slim volume which was not a complete game.  AD&D did this by selling a 'Player's Handbook'.  If you only bought the 'Player's Handbok', you lacked sufficient rules to play the game.  The entire combat system and all the tables necessary to play, to say nothing about necessary notes on how many of the spells worked, were in the 'Dungeon Master's Guide'.  And even then, you still didn't have a truly complete game because a complete description of the monsters were in the monster manual and many systems which we would now consider necessary parts of a game system (environmental hazards, skills, etc.) where yet to be described.  Likewise, with D&D, they did sell a single slim volume (the 'basic rules book') that contained all the rules, but this was also not a complete game.  Those rules only took you up to 3rd level, and contained little or no information on conducting wilderness adventures.  To advance your game you had to buy another volume, and then another.  When these rules were collected together in a single cyclopedia, they came in at just over 300 pages.  And, while this is a remarkable achievement, I don't really consider D&D sufficiently generic or universal to ever be considered 'complete'.I think the Pathfinder rules are appropriate in scope - far more appropriate than 3e or 4e with its endless specialized supplements.  My attempt to make a complete set of house rules indicate that the total rules at the table might well exceed 1800 pages and just indicating which players options are available is daunting (which is how the project started in the first place).   I think I'm far from alone in having a rules set that in practice is actually, "Everything in the PH (with some modifications), plus the Shaman's Handbook pages X-Y, plus the 'Book of the Righteous' pages X-Y (but with these changes) and the Unholy Warriors Handbook (but with these changes), plus the feat list from Sword and Fist (but not...) , plus these selections from the Netbook of Feats, plus..." and so on and so forth.  Frankly, any time you are asking for a 'Rule Light' system, I'm inclined to here unintentional irony.  No one needs to provide a rules light system for you.  Sit down with a rules set and trim out everything you don't want.  In terms of the work involved, it's a far easier matter than including everything that you want to include.  Take an srd and start cutting pages and trimming out rules if that's what's good for your table.No 'rules light' system survives in the market place long though.  Even if it is somewhat successful, the fact that after they've sold the 'complete rules' they've sold all there is to sell dooms the game system.</blockquote>

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