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<blockquote data-quote="Bilharzia" data-source="post: 8476639" data-attributes="member: 6970322">Freelance writers get paid by the word, so until that changes (which I don't see happening) RPG publishers will continue to release excessively verbose books. The exceptions I have seen is with the smaller publishers who are usually also the writers. An example is Gavin Norman of Necrotic Gnome, which released the Dolmenwood zine, Old School Essentials, Winter's Daughter and so on, you can see a much more concise style which lends itself to the adventure material being easy to use if you are running the adventure, rather than reading it. The Questing Beast channel calls it 'control panel' layout <a href="http://questingblog.com/control-panel-book-layout-osr/" target="_blank">&quot;Control Panel&quot; Page Layout in the OSR - Questing Beast</a>I don't think the verbose style will go away because of the audience who buys RPG books to read and not play - which is what happens to most RPG books. There might be an imaginary meta-game that goes on in the heads of the audience for the books, where an imaginary game is being played as the book is being read, but which never materialises. The verbose style is better for conjuring up that experience, but it is terrible for using the book as a tool to run a game.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Bilharzia, post: 8476639, member: 6970322"] Freelance writers get paid by the word, so until that changes (which I don't see happening) RPG publishers will continue to release excessively verbose books. The exceptions I have seen is with the smaller publishers who are usually also the writers. An example is Gavin Norman of Necrotic Gnome, which released the Dolmenwood zine, Old School Essentials, Winter's Daughter and so on, you can see a much more concise style which lends itself to the adventure material being easy to use if you are running the adventure, rather than reading it. The Questing Beast channel calls it 'control panel' layout [URL='http://questingblog.com/control-panel-book-layout-osr/']"Control Panel" Page Layout in the OSR - Questing Beast[/URL] I don't think the verbose style will go away because of the audience who buys RPG books to read and not play - which is what happens to most RPG books. There might be an imaginary meta-game that goes on in the heads of the audience for the books, where an imaginary game is being played as the book is being read, but which never materialises. The verbose style is better for conjuring up that experience, but it is terrible for using the book as a tool to run a game. [/QUOTE]

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