No More Massive Tomes of Rules

[Reynard]

Aside: it's really frustrating that it isn't easy to find a .docx or .rtf of the 5.1 SRD, and exporting the PDF to one creates an Abomination. Also, I don't know what markdown is.

 

[Pedantic]

So how many clean, concise, broadly applicable universal resolution systems do we need?

Because it would be really great to finally reach market saturation there, so I can go back to buying my monthly supplements full of new rules. It's weird to see complaints about the current state of affairs being too heavy, when it mostly looks adrift and lacking ambition to me.

 

[Celebrim]

This is just the kind of scenario that makes me want clean, concise, widely applicable rules that I can use to deal with whatever BS the players come up with. It wouldn't really help me if there were rules for athletic contests if they were in some obscure supplement, anyway.

There is nothing wrong with having widely applicable core proposition resolution rules, such as a well thought out skill system. I'm just highly skeptical that such a thing can be created that well treats with diverse situations. Invariably, you are going to introduce abstractions and simplifications into your core rules that work well with your core gameplay loops, but which won't work in situations where the underlying nature of the thing being approximated is fundamentally different than what you envisioned.

It would vastly help me if there were as well thought out of supplements as, "Rules for Chases" or "Rules for Athletic Contests" (or maybe just contests) or a well play-tested "Tome of Natural Hazards" or "The Big Book of Equipment and how to Craft It". Heck even such things as, "Yes, we have a climb skill but what's are your options when a player proposes to climb a 500 foot cliff?" or "Yes, we have a stealth skill, but how should you run stealth based scenarios?" are things that I'd love good discussion of in a game system. How is it that those things wouldn't help you? How is that after 40 years of gaming, you haven't run a game of Luna rules Zero-G football? How many experiences do you think you and heck everyone are short on? Because I feel like I'm short of a lot despite 40 years of regular gaming.

Do we really need another variety of game inspired by BECMI to do the same sort of gaming that was possible with BECMI?

One of the best thing about both the 1e AD&D era and the 3e D&D area is that people were looking for niches to publish in. And in both eras I encountered rules niches where, even if the rules weren't as well thought out as I'd like, they made me realize that there were whole areas of storytelling I was unconsciously avoiding because the rules were silent on them and so I'd given them no thought. I was running with what was possible under the rules or what was easy under the rules, and I'd assumed that was all that was possible.

As early as my late teens, I had lucky eureka moments where I realized that I could do better when running an arm wrestling contest than have it come down to a single die roll and I invented the concept of what we would later call a skill challenge on the fly because I realized that the players would have more fun with it if it was ran like a contest with incremental successes and failures leading to an outcome. It would be more dramatic. And it was. Nothing in the rules of 1e AD&D could have told me to do that, I just happened to make the right call in that moment.

At this point, designers should be able to get there ahead of me, and too often they find they don't. I spend way too much time having to rethink rules in popular systems, and a lot of time wondering why people's passion project is just another lightweight system that doesn't do much and leaves most things up to fiat. I read rules that are often pretty well organized but all they are doing is some pretty basic proposition->fortune->resolution loops. And yes, that covers the majority of what happens most of the time at most tables, but it doesn't cover everything.

 

[Maggan]

About long campaigns. As far as I am concerned there's nothing preventing a long campaign for "smaller" sets of rules. And historically, we have several examples of this.

• Call of Cthulhu has Masks of Nyarlathotep, Horror on the Orient Express and Beyond the Mountains of Madness.
• Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay has The Enemy Within. Although I might be strecthing the definition of "smaller" set of rules for WFRP.
• Forbidden lands has Raven's Purge, Bitter reach and Bloodmarshes, three books that each has enough adventure material for a year or more of adventuring.
• Dragonbane has a full campaign with thirteen adventures, enough for over a year of playing. An older version of Dragonbane had The Konflux Suite, five adventures that formed a campaign that takes years to play through for most groups. And The Cleansing of Nidland, an epic campaign in three installments.

And there are lots and lots of other examples. The length of a campaign is not in my mind intrinsically tied to the amount of rules a game has.

 

[HaroldTheHobbit]

What I enjoy reading: Phat heavy crunch tomes made out of whole trunks of dead trees. What I enjoy in actual play: GMing my own long campaigns using a light-mid crunch system with lots of room for GM fiat and on the spot improv. Hence, I only use Savage Worlds these days, but still enjoy reading Pf2 and similar stuff.

 

[GothmogIV]

After sitting down and reading through the Dragonbane rulebook last night, I have realized that I just don't want to pour through 1000 pages of rules to run/play D&D anymore. Therer is no reason that 5E (or any other edition for that matter) can't be presented in a concise, complete, robust form like Dragonbane.

Do you like games in "long form" -- by that I mean the multiple rulebook, dense prose form common in the industry and exemplified by D&D and Pathfinder? Do you prefer a singular book but of the same form, like we usually get from Free League and Modiphius? Or do you like short and concise books?

I think Shadowdark is a nice compromise for me: the rulebook is 300 pages, but also A5 sized, and much of it is inspirational tables. The actual rules could easily fit in 100 pages.

I may revive a project I was working on during the pandemic: 5E in 100 pages. Not a deeply cut "basic" version in 100 pages, but an honest to goodness full version of 5E from the SRD in 100 pages.

I ran a Dragonbane mini-campaign this spring, and we enjoyed it. The rules are simple, and I found the lack of crunch made the players more willing to roleplay (rather than bring their characters to life via mechanics). Dragonbane is based on Chaosium's BRP system, which is my favorite.

 

[Celebrim]

About long campaigns. As far as I am concerned there's nothing preventing a long campaign for "smaller" sets of rules. And historically, we have several examples of this.

• Call of Cthulhu has Masks of Nyarlathotep, Horror on the Orient Express and Beyond the Mountains of Madness.
• Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay has The Enemy Within. Although I might be stretching the definition of "smaller" set of rules for WFRP.

I felt you were stretching the definition of a smaller set of rules to count BRP/Cthulhu. CoC has always needed a bunch of supplemental material that until 7e I don't feel was very often included. The Keeper's guide in 7e is 448 pages, with a supplemental Investigator's Guide coming in at 265 pages. The best thing in 7e IMO is that they finally published a Grand Grimoire of all CoC magic in a single place. That comes in at 200 pages. Throw in the Pulp CoC rules which I feel are really recommended for "globe hopping" style CoC campaigns and that comes in at 272 pages. Throw in the two volume monster manual for the game and that's 216 and 264 pages respectively. That totals out at 1665 pages which is I think a good size for a game. Granted, there is a good amount of overlap in content, but also I don't think even the above books complete the game for me.

It would be highly recommended IMO to have setting guides for 1890s, 1920s, 1930s, and say 1990s listing common prices of goods in that area and the available technology, typical gun laws, and how travel was accomplished in each era. Each of those would be a book of about 200 pages. A game set in 1923 is radically different than one set in 1938. Additionally, CoC benefits from having a comprehensive weapons guide IMO, so let's call that at least another 200 pages. And above all, one thing that has been missing from CoC from the start is a comprehensive guide to CoC tomes that gives more details rather than leaving all that hard work up to the Keeper. Let's call that another 300 pages. That would add say another 1300 pages, and look, lo and behold that would mean for me a complete version of the CoC game would run at 2965 pages - just shy of the 3000 I said game publishers should be aiming for.

 

[Maggan]

I felt you were stretching the definition of a smaller set of rules to count BRP/Cthulhu.

Well we played Masks of Nyarlathotep using the second edition rules. No problems for us. On the train now so I don’t have it at hand to look up page count but I remember it to be around 100 pages or so.

Plenty of rules for us to make it work.

EDIT: Btw 200 pages of weapons for Call of Cthulhu? Two pages is plenty for that, IMO.

 

[Reynard]

Just to reiterate: this thread isn't really about numbers of rules. it is about presentation, clarity and conciseness. You cna do chase rules in 100 words. You can even do Luna Rule Futbol in 100 words if you want.

 

[Celebrim]

EDIT: Btw 200 pages of weapons for Call of Cthulhu? Two pages is plenty for that, IMO.

As a handout to starting players, sure. But suppose you are a keeper that wants to set a scenario during the Chaco War and you want period accurate and realistic weapons for both sides, up to and including things like a Vickers tank. With your two page supplement as your only guideline, you are going to be going to wikipedia and then doing your best to translate the information you find there into rules hoping that your knowledge of guns is enough that you are making reasonable rules. This process will take you hours of your time. If some professional has done this work for you, you just flip to the appropriate page in the weapons tome and you spend your time actually writing your scenario rather than doing research and rules smithing.

And note, "just use wikipedia" is itself a very modern solution. In the past this required dozens of hours of research in college and public libraries.