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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 6103481" data-attributes="member: 177">Yes, and they have been trying it, too, but you've said you don't want anything to do with "renting" content or using computers in the game.  You may need to be open to the idea that the other way that works may not be what you want.I am fairly convinced that the basic modes of business available are limited by the niche-nature of the market.  And that's not due to game design, or marketing, but due to the nature of the activity.  Just as not everyone enjoys model trains as a hobby, not everyone enjoys RPGs.  That means market saturation will always be an issue for publishers, making a game based in a single-small book unlikely to be economically desirable for the publisher.Plus, I think you overestimate how many gamers are really interested in having such a game as their main option in the hobby.  Of the niche market, a great many of the potential players are, for lack of a better term, "gearheads," for whom fiddling around with the rules is a major part of their fun with the game.  For these folks, a game that is too simple with relatively few moving parts and fiddly bits will be unsatisfactory, leaving that single-book game to be, in essence, a game for a niche within the niche.  So, I think you'll find that, for both players and publishers, the truly successful and viable games (you didn't satisfactorally define what you meant by those terms, so I'm using my own feelings on the words) need to be rather more complicated.I don't think that's so, largely because it isn't really true.  I, for example, am running Classic Deadlands, a game with something like a dozen books.  I, as GM, have a stack of books.  Of my players, however, I think only one (maybe two) out of the six of them even owns the player's manual, and certainly only one of them ever references the book during play.  We open a rule-book maybe once per session, on average.The many books are there for those who want them (which is a considerable number, admittedly).  But they aren't necessary for everyone - from 3e onwards, so long as the group as a whole isn't focused on powergaming it has been entirely possible to make a perfectly viable and interesting character with just the PHB.  I daresay that games where the majority of folks are referencing a horde of books in play is not particularly prevalent, making your image here a bit of a bugaboo.So, those extra books are required for economic viability for the publisher, and to give enough options to the game so gearheads are attracted to play alongside folks like you - these two together are required for real "success" and "viability" for both the publishers and players.  But I don't think those extra books are actually intimidating folks and causing them to stay away from the game.</blockquote>

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