I look upon the DCC RPG book and despair. The core book is 480 pages. I enjoy the game, and certainly the art is pretty, but I believe we are keeping new players away with giant art books.

Quote from: RunningLaser;862169Also, there's a lot of people who buy games that seem to think page count equals quality, or that if the book can't be put on the coffee table as a piece of art, that it's not worth it.  These people are shitheads.

Sadly, that's those people drive the current market (and the current market drives away new players).

Quote from: Ravenswing;862184Beyond that, since most texts in our culture -- including, peculiarly enough, the fiction works that are the underpinning of the hobby -- aren't jammed packed with pretty pictures, I'm curious why tabletop gamers are considered so juvenile these days they can't be expected to tolerate a gamebook without them.

Damn good point!

BX gets the job done in about 60 pages each. But they are art lite and cram quite a bit into those pages without being actually crowded.

5e Basic actually gets the page count down fairly well too.

TSR had this down to about a science with their boxed sets. Gamma World, Star Frontiers, Boot Hill, BX D&D and so on.

Quote from: Omega;8622055e Basic actually gets the page count down fairly well too.

I'm curious to know if 5e was written with a 10 level max and dropping spell level 6 and above would bring it down to around 96 pages. Doing that and cropping out most of the racial fluff would probably drop it down around 64.

Quote from: Spinachcat;862201I look upon the DCC RPG book and despair. The core book is 480 pages. I enjoy the game, and certainly the art is pretty, but I believe we are keeping new players away with giant art books.

Given how abhorrent reading seems to be for a lot of kids I know, I'm anticipating at some point there will be a rules set delivered primarily as a video tutorial... and maybe a quick reference booklet... if that hasn't happened already.

Quote from: Spinachcat;862201I look upon the DCC RPG book and despair. The core book is 480 pages. I enjoy the game, and certainly the art is pretty, but I believe we are keeping new players away with giant art books.

I don't know...I normally would agree with you but DCC is kinda it's own mutant thing and a lot of stuff that wouldn't work for other games works for it. Having a big, thick fucking hardcover tome seems to fit DCC's "Palace of excess" philosophy and aesthetic.

Quote from: snooggums;862216I'm curious to know if 5e was written with a 10 level max and dropping spell level 6 and above would bring it down to around 96 pages. Doing that and cropping out most of the racial fluff would probably drop it down around 64.

I think curbing levels would not change anything really. Basic pares it down about as far as it can go. You can though lose a few pages to the Faction stuff as its nearly useless.

Basic is 114 pages for the PHB and another 63 for the combined DMG/MM.

Little bit more than BXs 120 pages. But not too far off really. BX had less spells to cover. But got more done in those 120 pages.

Quote from: Ronin;862197While I agree with you. I see the purpose or art is also to fill white space. Which evidently according to layout people is the devil. Do you foks agree with that of have I been mislead?

Having been a layout editor, I agree that white space IS the devil; you're not wrong there.

So make a smaller book.

Hell, I've got my personal version (tailored to my campaign) of GURPS Lite down to 39 pages, including the TOC ... and that's at 12-pt type with a space between each paragraph.  That's less than 2/3rds the size of the company's version, and less than a tenth the combined size of the two corebooks.

Quote from: Ravenswing;862246Having been a layout editor, I agree that white space IS the devil; you're not wrong there.

So make a smaller book.

Hell, I've got my personal version (tailored to my campaign) of GURPS Lite down to 39 pages, including the TOC ... and that's at 12-pt type with a space between each paragraph.  That's less than 2/3rds the size of the company's version, and less than a tenth the combined size of the two corebooks.

You took a 32 page rule set and bloated it to 39 pages with superfluous padding....  you bastard.

Quote from: Ravenswing;862246Having been a layout editor, I agree that white space IS the devil; you're not wrong there.

So make a smaller book.

Hell, I've got my personal version (tailored to my campaign) of GURPS Lite down to 39 pages, including the TOC ... and that's at 12-pt type with a space between each paragraph.  That's less than 2/3rds the size of the company's version, and less than a tenth the combined size of the two corebooks.

What does one do to avoid a wall of text? Thats equally as bad isn't it? Just curious, interested to know a bit more about layout.

Quote from: RunningLaser;862262You took a 32 page rule set and bloated it to 39 pages with superfluous padding....  you bastard.

Nah, I bloated it with not using 10-pt type -- just that much increased the page count by a quarter -- and with complete TOC and tables.  All of the players in my main group use glasses.  

Quote from: Ronin;862265What does one do to avoid a wall of text? Thats equally as bad isn't it? Just curious, interested to know a bit more about layout.

You don't.  Seriously.

Think about it, after all.  Most non-fiction books out there, let alone textbooks, are indeed wall-to-wall text, barring inline maps or essential charts.  Hell, almost all fiction books are wall-to-wall text.  The average reader, in our culture, is somehow expected to be able to parse through that information without needing inline random artwork to stave off boredom.

A RPG book should be easier than that to handle.  After you've gained a reasonable mastery of the rules, you don't need to reread the thing every time you use it -- you just need to be able to make a quick reference to that rule you wanted to double check, or the particulars of that obscure spell or monster.  Elapsed time, seven seconds.

For my part, I like art.  I've got four gig of RPG clipart alone on my computer, just under 25,000 pieces of it.  I've been a contributor on deviantART for nearly a decade.  I just don't see why I ought to have a pound of weight and $5-10 extra cost added to my RPG books to see it.

Quote from: LouGoncey;862125This is me going off for a little bit.

I am 49.  Roleplay at least once a week.  No problem with that.

I read a metric f**kton of RPG books.

Pleading for a return of 64 page books.  100 pages tops!

Do it for my sanity.  Do it for the kind kids!

This is why I absolutely LOVE Whitehack: https://whitehackrpg.wordpress.com/

Wouldn't making it shorter force the games to be simpler or leave out important stuff? Where are you going to put all that lost info?

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;862367Wouldn't making it shorter force the games to be simpler or leave out important stuff? Where are you going to put all that lost info?

Quite a few of the older box set TSR games were small because they didnt have any setting info. Or shuffled it off into the pack in modules. Gamma World, Star Frontiers, BX D&D all have setting info that fits on close to a single page, if even that. Monster info was the bare basics too usually.

In BX for example some of the hazy setting info on "The Realm" was in the first two modules. B1 & B2. And a little more on Karameikos in X1.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;862367Wouldn't making it shorter force the games to be simpler or leave out important stuff? Where are you going to put all that lost info?

The rules -- not the same as the games -- are simpler, obviously, than some other things. Simpler, for instance, than the character generation material in D&D 5e Basic taking 50 pages. Whether that more complicated process is more fun is a matter of preference that varies among people.

Likewise, some people might prefer the more complicated combat rules in GURPS or Advanced Melee to the original The Fantasy Trip: Melee, while others go the other way to original D&D or Tunnels & Trolls.

For battles, the same folks might choose De Bellis Antiquitatis / Hordes of the Things for a day's campaign, or Warhammer to spend all day on a single engagement, depending on what they want to do that day.

Maybe miniatures rules for battles or detailed economic rules for plantations are not "important stuff" to you, in which case you might be glad not to have to pay for them to get the stuff you do want. That's what supplements are for!

Quote from: Phillip;862436The rules -- not the same as the games -- are simpler, obviously, than some other things. Simpler, for instance, than the character generation material in D&D 5e Basic taking 50 pages. Whether that more complicated process is more fun is a matter of preference that varies among people.

5e Basic has, not counting the equipment section, 37 pages devoted to character generation. The Race section alone devotes 9 pages. BX does it in a single page. Classes takes up 13 pages compared to BXs 3.

You could probably trim off around 4 pages of fluff from Basics race section alone. And I could distill whats left down to possibly a single page. Probably 4 more at least from classes could be trimmed without any loss.

Basic isnt so much more complicated as it is overly verbose in places. A page to get across a paragraphs worth of data.

I really need to sit down and distill Basic down and see what the page count would be after trimming.