No More Massive Tomes of Rules

[aramis erak]

Related to doing the 5E SRD in 100 pages: I think they intentionally crippled the SRD PDF so it is a giant PITA to get the text out. I was going to do an example with the Dwarf race entry and
every
word
was
on
its
own
line
after
cut
and
paste

That can, if it's not password protected, usually be bypassed in Acrobat Reader 6 or newer by holding <alt> while selecting the text, and then pasting into a (non-wordprocessor) text editor, then copying the text from that and pasting into the word processor.
I'm using a linux flavor as my daily driver (tho' Win 11 is still installed on the HD just in case)... and installed Acrobat Reader 9 for linux solely for that one feature. (routinely do this to consolidate tables in a game line onto a single monolithic doc as I get more and more rulebooks.)

 

[Emberashh]

Something else to consider here is that formatting makes a difference even with big systems.

As an example, I recently, in a bout of depression impostor syndrome spurned on by breaking my diet, ended up examining the PF2E PHB, comparing its equivalent section on Combat to my own Combat document. (I was basically freaking out at imagined terminally online nerds saying my system was too complex)

And some interesting stats appeared.

For one, both have a page count roughly around 43-45 pages. And despite this, I can honestly say my take on Combat is simpler, if very different compared to most systems. Less math or weird particulars, but more procedural, and I'd argue a similar depth when taken as a whole.

But here's the stickler. PF2E has a word count of around 38k Words. Mines roughly half that at 21k.

Where PF2E uses what I believe is a 10 or even 8pt font, as well as a double column approach (and not to mention pretty long paragraphs) on each page, mine utilizes a larger 12pt font size, and no columns.

It I utilized the same formatting, I could probably condense my whole combat system to 20 pages or less.

Especially so if I also dropped the Addendum sections I have included (to give more context to the system) that wouldn't be there normally. Dropping that alone cuts the page count down to 24 just off the bat, and with the same formatting I bet I could halve that again. If I extrapolated, I bet if I did that, I could condense everything in my game that touches on Combat (re: the Combat rules, and a lot of like 3 or 4 other Pillars of the game, including all the Character options) to around the same page count PF2E uses just to lay out its combat rules by themselves.

So the thing to remember about really big rules text is that they can obscure how simple they might actually be. After all, while PF2E has its detractors still, most who aren't simply hostile to it recognize the game is fairly simple to play in spite of its density, even without online tools like the Archives or builder apps.

My game, despite the not so imagined people who jump to the conclusion that it won't be, is going to be even more condensed than that, but while also providing a similar depth across all of its experiences rather than just combat. My books by the end will probably be comparable to 5e or PF2E in size, but will be much more densely packed in terms of the gameplay they can deliver on.

 

[Thomas Shey]

So animals frequently fall into that category of low challenge opponents that you really aren't meant to fight beyond the "rats in the basement" stage of learning the game, but there is plenty of opportunity to distinguish animals from each other by size, speed, mode of attack, mode of movement, sensory capability and special attack forms. Some animals attack in coordinated packs; some animals are venomous; some animals are stealthy; some can track by scent; others have low light vision; some animals are resistant to damage because of armor or padding; some animals can fly and others are aquatic. Some animals grapple and others maul. If you've seen animals made interesting, it just sort of is unsatisfying when they aren't. And this goes double for things that are often as not, not the background color of a setting.

I think part of this is, again, you're using "stat block" really oddly. Things like movement and stealthy will absolutely be expressed in most stat blocks formats I've ever seen, as will size, speed and mode of movement. Sensory capability will too to the extent its liable to be relevant during the actual combat portion of encountering them (i.e. mostly things that deal with lighting/concealment issues). Same for anything having to do with natural armor. Most of that's pretty much basic elements of defining the animal. Its not what I think of as special abilities in the sense its usually used (other than maybe some of the sensory things or venom).

D&D is something most people are familiar with and in this case - as with the hit point and the class - I think this is an underrated element of D&D design where D&D does it really well. It's not just that cRPGs and TTRPGs are copying D&D because D&D did it first, but that the design of

The problem is your phrasing makes a lot of assumptions about progression that aren't true of every game. A starting RQ or Fantasy Hero character cares about a bear, but so does an advanced one. Leaving behind caring about a creature that's a serious threat to humans just isn't something that usually happens in those. That tends to be a thing that's an artifact of zero to hero games (in a few cases in some games a PC probably doesn't care about them in the first place, but either way its not a beginner/advanced dichotomy).

If you're like dropping that and saying, "Eh, not important to me.", then you are losing out I think. Imagine you'd spent 30 years playing a game with monsters without gimmicks and then coming to one where they had it. I think your mind would just be blown. It's not like game designers whether in cRPGs or TTRPGs have been going, "Well, we've learned that's pointless. Everyone gravitates the games where the monsters are generic."

The problem is that in the games I'm talking about, you run into opponents with gimmicks early and late, and creatures that don't have them early and late. Same with humanlike opponents.

 

[Celebrim]

I think part of this is, again, you're using "stat block" really oddly.

I think that we are getting side-tracked in abstraction. Let's be concrete. It's my contention that fights with a pack of rats, a pack of wolves, a snake, a crocodile, a boar, and a brown bear should all be distinguished by more than simply how many hit points they have or how big their attacks are. Each should have some sort of signature features that makes fighting with that creature feel immersive, believable, and rich.

So the pack of rats should highlight that the rats are small and relatively hard to hit, and that they have some sort of swarming attack where they climb foes and try to use the foes own body as cover to make them even harder to hit. And the pack wolves should have some sort of teamwork benefit where they are skilled at working together and get a benefit from doing so. And maybe they make trip attacks if they successfully bite a target. And snakes should be hard to see and should inflict venomous wounds. And crocodiles should be adept at moving in water and grapple when they bite a target. Boars should be particularly effective when making a charge attack and perhaps have extra armor when attacked from the front so that they weak to flanking or surprise attacks or something. And bears should maybe have reach with their claws and perhaps the ability to shift between upright and four-legged stances, or something of that sort.

Exactly how you manage that is going to depend on the system. It could be that you can build this by adding some combination of common well-defined features to the stat blocks - features or generic abilities that lots of but not all creatures may have. Perhaps if you are skill based some of the features may relate to skills, though I doubt you could entirely relate the sort of things I describe above purely to a generic skill system or as emergent properties of a skill system without creating a system that was overly complex to resolve.

The more that a bear or a boar or a crocodile is still an end game threat that your characters don't "outgrow" then the more important I would think it is that these non-generic features exist. If they are all just generic stat blocks... yeah, that's suggesting to me some sort of problem with the system.

It's worth noting that my favorite whipping post 1e A&D despite often doing a really good job with giving most things a feature did in fact fall down with regard to this in the general case, as the simple system of AC, HD, and Move just really didn't give you enough to run the creature as robustly as in more modern systems. For example, how stealthy something was really wasn't be a thing, and it wasn't until 3e that you had generic abilities like the 'scent' feature.

 

[Reynard]

Naw, you still can, because you can fail to see what the probable result of your attempt to get to that output will do. As you say, that's less likely the better you understand the core system, but applying it to situations that have no parallel within the game as-is is still fraught. That's why I use stealth as an example; its very unlike a lot of other resolutions you'll see outside of extended one that usually have much more attention paid to them.

I simply disagree. There is never a reasonable excuse to intentionally include a "crappy result" as an outcome. It's counterproductive to the whole process. What the hell are you doing if you think an unsatisfying, anticlimactic, boring result is a reasonable outcome?

 

[overgeeked]

I simply disagree. There is never a reasonable excuse to intentionally include a "crappy result" as an outcome. It's counterproductive to the whole process. What the hell are you doing if you think an unsatisfying, anticlimactic, boring result is a reasonable outcome?

Simulating reality?

 

[Thomas Shey]

I simply disagree. There is never a reasonable excuse to intentionally include a "crappy result" as an outcome. It's counterproductive to the whole process. What the hell are you doing if you think an unsatisfying, anticlimactic, boring result is a reasonable outcome?

Who said anything about doing it intentionally? Or even that the GM is going to automatically realize its crappy before he does it? There are people out there who produce what they think of as good climbing or stealth systems that are anything but that, but that doesn't mean they set out to make them bad.

 

[Reynard]

Who said anything about doing it intentionally? Or even that the GM is going to automatically realize its crappy before he does it? There are people out there who produce what they think of as good climbing or stealth systems that are anything but that, but that doesn't mean they set out to make them bad.

But as I said, you start with the result you want to see. If you do that you can't end up with a ridiculous result.

 

[Reynard]

Simulating reality?

Why? Nothing else in play does that.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think that we are getting side-tracked in abstraction. Let's be concrete. It's my contention that fights with a pack of rats, a pack of wolves, a snake, a crocodile, a boar, and a brown bear should all be distinguished by more than simply how many hit points they have or how big their attacks are. Each should have some sort of signature features that makes fighting with that creature feel immersive, believable, and rich.

I guess I'm just having a combination of seeing what you describe negatively as being relatively rare in games I mostly engage with (including in their stat blocks) and in the cases where it does occur, its because the target is supposed to be capable but not terribly distinctive. Big cats will fight different than bears--but a black bear and a grizzly won't fight that different from each other, and that's true of other creatures in broad strokes. And some of the differences aren't even that different mechanically, so much as in usage--canids (barring foxes) almost all use pack tactics, but is it necessary to bake that into the creature's specs, or just be aware of it when using them, and take advantage of whatever multiteaming process already exists?