Do you think core rule books shrinkage is a good thing ?

[Wombat]

Besides the points brought up in the poll options...

It is a bad thing for more heritage players in that they will ask, "But where is X?"
It is a good thing for new players in that they will not be stymied by "I have to know all these rules?"
It is a good thing for the general public, in that comprehension of longer sentences and lengths of material is drastically down worldwide.

 

[Odhanan]

Means to me less rules, potentially more efficiency and less blabla... so yeah, that's a good thing.

 

[Wormwood]

Means to me less rules, potentially more efficiency and less blabla... so yeah, that's a good thing.

^ What he said.

 

[jaerdaph]

I was just thinking that even the definition of "magazine-like" has changed over the last twenty years. Magazines today are much more like printed Web pages with short articles, "sound" bites and lots of pictures.

 

[00Machado]

None of the above. While I think the rules will be simpler, and have less text, I don't think they'll take up less space. I think diagrams, etc will have them taking up as much or more space.

I think we'll see fewer, or possibly combined rules though.

I think we'll see fewer spells. Fewer magic items. Supplemented by some content for taking the written material and expanding it into your own spells and items.

I will wait to see whether the reduced page count ends up being a result of efficient design and great editing, or the company cheaping out and giving the writers fewer pages to work with (while not commensurately reducing customer cost per page, cost per word, etc). I can conceive of either the positive or the negative being the case.

 

[jdrakeh]

It could mean a lot of stuff. Phoenix Command was less than 200 pages long and still manages to make Hero FRED look like Risus (PC has rules for individual bullet trajectory, for gawd's sake). I think that there might be some very valid options missing from the poll.

 

[Keldryn]

Page count doesn't mean a whole lot... there are vast sections of all three core books that I almost never use.

Remember when the 2nd Edition PHB and DMG were "revised" and re-released with black covers in the mid-nineties? I saw the ads for "33% more pages" in Dragon and thought that was cool, maybe the added some stuff from the "Complete" books into the core rules.

No, TSR just put in new (mostly better) artwork, increased the font size, and made it into a 2-column layout instead of 3-columns. Now that was a cheap move.

 

[ThirdWizard]

I think we'll see a lot less spells and magic items, to be used instead in supplementary material. So, they'll have the most iconic spells and "Core" spells in the PHB and the same with magic items in the DMG, but those aspects of the game will be saved for their own books. Really, that makes more sense. The Spell and Magic Item Compendiums are great. The PHB being 1/3 spells is not.