in the video of How I'll Run WotC for Elon for RPG pundit say that should not release book that allow you fighter to be a better fighter. and I intrepet that as Elon should not release crunch books.

crunch books are book that its main attraction are new options for player characters, such as subclasses, spells, feats or even new classes.

the reason is to avoid powercrep and This will make the game last longer but the problem I see is that it can be boring for the players. I consider myself an optimizer although you may call me a mix-maxer or a munchkin and I like went new player options come. I know that settings books can have player options but  much less than in a crunch book.

Pathfinder second edicion have launch more content that D&D 5e and  still exists. it is true that they released the remaster but that is for the OGL drama (I dont want to talk about that). I don't know if this means that more content can be released or if paizo has a secret that I don't know.

In my view, splatbooks (which is the name I'm familiar with for them) is one of the reasons 3e collapsed under its own weight.

I think Dragonbane's creators intend to release an "advanced" book but that's a pretty light game with no HP bloat and pretty minimal progression comparatively.

As I see it, 5E's player culture pretty much demands them, so I'm not sure how a leaner game will be viewed by the audience

There are some theoretical design constraints that make crunch books usually a bad idea.  If a game has a really tight design, there isn't room for much more crunch.  If a game has a more loose design (such as B/X D&D), then there is room for new classes for an archetype/race/etc. However, in that case, it doesn't take much space to do a new class.  It's more like a few pages in a setting book where the new class fits.

The real problem, however, is the iron grip that Sturgeon's Law has on this kind of crunch coming out at a pace to "keep the game afloat".  To wit, 90% of it is crap.  Worse, most of the best stuff has already been curated for the first release.  Which means that the second book is a few good things that didn't fit or were mistakenly left out for the crap in the first book--then filled with the stuff that didn't make the cut the first time.  Sure, 5 years in, lots of play testing, a few things released in small supplements, you might have a valid "best of supplement crunch" book for people who want that sort of thing.  Once a year or more frequent is just admitting it's mostly crap.

The one good way around the crunch crushing the system that I've seen is for systems like HERO where they had things like the UNTIL Powers Guide.

It didn't add new mechanics; it just provided a lot of examples of how to use the existing power system with advantages and disadvantages to create powers along different themes.

They were technically crunch in that you could certainly add them to your characters, but it wasn't adding complexity. In fact, it reduced a lot of the design load since instead of trying to think up and build all the cool fire powers you could think of you could just use the example ones with all the point values already calculated for you.

In defense of crunch I think that if a game dont have crunch  can aslo die because player want more new option and if they see that dont have more option then they will play other games.

Quote from: antonioGUAK on December 16, 2024, 12:16:28 PMIn defense of crunch I think that if a game dont have crunch  can aslo die because player want more new option and if they see that dont have more option then they will play other games.

Plenty of long campaigns went for years in simple systems or those with little to no mechanical progression.
You can incorporate crunch via magic items, special training (which they have to quest for) and such- not to mention diegetic advancements

5E was built to enable a certain amount of expansion but WotC misused that.

For example they could have released a book of Backgrounds & Archetypes/Primal Paths/Domains/etc for Forgotten Realms. These could be designed to provide color and connections to the setting. Instead they added this sort of thing to Xanthars and aimed for power gamers and all the extra mechanics and complexity required to inflate PC power.

They could have done that sort of thing for any setting book or created a book with multiple settings worth of that stuff. Xanthars was such a mistake all around if you ask me.

The big reason for splat books is to keep folks interested and involved in the game, and to make money for the company.  If you want a vibrant community they're pretty important.  Mechanicswise they can be challenging to do well.

Companies need to keep churning out content in order to stay solvent and keep the game in the public consciousness. Otherwise the company goes under and the game gets forgotten. So you have to keep churning out garbage and repackaging shit year after year until you get sick of it and move on to something else.

Quote from: antonioGUAK on December 16, 2024, 04:19:17 AMthe reason is to avoid powercrep and This will make the game last longer but the problem I see is that it can be boring for the players.

This approach creates terrible games, terrible players, and terrible GMs who run linear railroad APs. It arises from a cynical corporate need to sell more books - to Monetise the Player Base - and creates a highly dysfunctional play style. It trains players to be bad players.

The good news is that there are so many players, it's easy for a good GM to find players happy to focus on game elements other than charop.

What about the idea of a crunch book but with the world getting more deadly in proportion?

I think if you're making a game, you can choose what to focus on, but you should ask your audience what they want and try to supply it to them.

If your customers want splat books, provide them. If they don't, focus on what they do want. You can't try and force a certain audience to be interested in what you make , so you might as well focus on making what they do want (something the current heads of WoTC haven't learned, or have forgotten)

So like, me personally? I used to like books like the monster manual, but now I feel like they're a waste. I know some people like them, but I feel like time would be better served doing monster entries in the adventures you write so that those adventures can be sold as stand-alone products.  And maybe having some general guidelines on how people can make their own monsters for your game. Of course as your library of monsters increases, the temptation rises to put everything you have already made into a new compilation/product to try and sell, so you have to resist that urge, or roll the dice to see if it ends up being worth it.

I'm not a big fan of splat books, except for monster books, which I'll buy, but don't absolutely need.  I used to be really into extra character class compendiums, but those don't interest me as much anymore.  As I've gotten older I've come to appreciate having everything in one book, even if the book is big.  I loved the second edition of the Hyperborea game, for example, but just couldn't get into 3e in part because they broke it up into separate books.

Quote from: Banjo Destructo on December 17, 2024, 05:06:37 PMI think if you're making a game, you can choose what to focus on, but you should ask your audience what they want and try to supply it to them.

If your customers want splat books, provide them. If they don't, focus on what they do want. You can't try and force a certain audience to be interested in what you make , so you might as well focus on making what they do want (something the current heads of WoTC haven't learned, or have forgotten)

So like, me personally? I used to like books like the monster manual, but now I feel like they're a waste. I know some people like them, but I feel like time would be better served doing monster entries in the adventures you write so that those adventures can be sold as stand-alone products.  And maybe having some general guidelines on how people can make their own monsters for your game. Of course as your library of monsters increases, the temptation rises to put everything you have already made into a new compilation/product to try and sell, so you have to resist that urge, or roll the dice to see if it ends up being worth it.

Personally I think not putting monsters that are needed for a given adventure in the adventure is a big miss step. Or at least border line assinine.
That said I know one splatbook that has been missing from 5e from what I've heard was rules for makeing monsters.Not haveing baseline rules to make gm driven content is an obvious flaw if for no other reason then it increases the load on the gm.

How about releasing 1 big "optional" splat book, for your RPG.  Put the word "Optional", clearly on the front cover.

Then the DM can choose to run a game, either with or without the optional content.

The problem runs rampant, when you add multiple books full of splat.