There are many superlatives I would apply to the verbose purple prose of Gygax.
"Smaller, leaner" would not be amongst them.
I want smaller, leaner core books.
- Thread starter Reynard
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There are many superlatives I would apply to the verbose purple prose of Gygax.
"Smaller, leaner" would not be amongst them.
Esau Cairn
Explorer
The original Twilight: 2000 booklets were 24 pages for players, 32 for the gm. Perhaps the best example of lean game prose I've encountered in 40+ years involved with rpgs. Of the additional material for first edition published, the page count exceeded 48 only once in 22 modules—with the Small Arms Guide checks in at a whopping 56 pages!
LePiotr
Villager
I could not agree more. Who has the time to read endless rulebooks? I want short and simple mechanics that don't get in the way of playing (Barbarians of Lemuria?). Publishers should rather focus on story content: cool adventure plots, cool characters, cool places, cool conspirations, etc BUT all in a concise format. However I like evocative illustrations which help setting the tone (Free League?). I sure won't pay more if the page count is higher, but I may be in the minority. That's the heart of the problem I think.
Me. I love big thick meaty rulebooks with esoteric rules like castling and impasse in chess. And several hundred pages of spells. Art I really don’t like. I don’t like an artist forcing his interpretation of what a setting looks like on me. Very detrimental to the experience. I would be more interested in a version of the book without art.
delericho
Legend
I am hugely impressed with the rulebook included in the Essentials Set - 64 pages, five races, five classes, six levels. (I should note that there are no monsters. Those are in the adventure booklet.) It even manages to fix my biggest beef with Clerics, simply by the expedient of only including a small subset of spells.
That said, I suspect that would get very limiting, very quickly.
I do think, though, that there's something in what the OP says: I'm really not keen on rulesets that 'require' nearly 1,000 pages to explain just the core rules of the game. I'm inclined to think some creative cutting down would benefit the game. Amongst other things, most of the 5e DMG could easily just be dropped without issue.
That said, I suspect that would get very limiting, very quickly.
I do think, though, that there's something in what the OP says: I'm really not keen on rulesets that 'require' nearly 1,000 pages to explain just the core rules of the game. I'm inclined to think some creative cutting down would benefit the game. Amongst other things, most of the 5e DMG could easily just be dropped without issue.
embee
Lawyer by day. Rules lawyer by night.
Well I think you just found the "problem" (so to speak) right there.
A 64 page softcover cahier that sets forth 90% of the rules does not, on any plane of existence or in any parallel universe or on any alternate Earth in this or any other dimension or using any form of arithmetic that has ever or will ever be devised, equal an MSRP of $49.95. It just doesn't.
And when you strip away things like 921 different feats or 19 variants of Cambion/Drow/Tabaxi hybrid or the 497 different subclasses for bard, that's what you have.
So, this is hyperbolic to the point of obscuring the issue. The PHB doesn't have Cambion or Tabaxi. It has two subclasses of bard. But the PHB isn't exactly lightweight, either.
embee
Lawyer by day. Rules lawyer by night.
But is it hyperbolic?
Sure, the D&D5e PHB doesn't have that. But the Pathfinder 2e CRB is over 600 pages long and weighs more than 4 lbs. It's the biggest rulebook of any game that you'll never use because HOLY COW!! THE CORE RULEBOOK IS OVER 600 PAGES LONG?!?!?
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