Quote from: S'mon;565690I think it's age, and crustiness, and possibly the Internet. I buy old RPGs now and then - Daredevils, TIMEMASTER and Starships & Spacemen are three recent ones - but I always boggle at the rules and never really consider running them. Whereas D&D-based rules like Mutant Future do get played, whether they're short like Labyrinth Lord or long like 4e D&D (eventually) and Pathfinder. I think that's partly because I'm already familiar with D&D, though complexity is a factor - it did take me a year to try 4e.

Honestly, I think I am spending more time with 3.x/Pathfinder stuff nowadays converting the cool things backwards to include in Labyrinth Lord instead of playing them.

Quote from: jeff37923;565706Honestly, I think I am spending more time with 3.x/Pathfinder stuff nowadays converting the cool things backwards include in Labyrinth Lord instead of playing them.

With monsters that's pretty easy isn't it? i mean all you'd have to do for most is rejig the AC and draw a line through the extraneous 4800 lines of each critter's statbook.

Quote from: silva;565600A friend of mine made the above statement when I showed him the new Runequest. At first he got very excited by the game "anthropological simulationist" premise, but when he looked the rules closer it was an almost automatic refuse.

I'm of the opinion that a succinct 128 page Runequest would have been much more preferable. Right now I'm slogging my way through the rule book trying to condense as much as possible into a smaller book that could be used by players.

Quote from: J Arcane;565621Personally, I think the problem stems from list and bullet-point driven design.

Game design has, for some years now, been driven by lists of shit.  Lists of spells, lists of skills, lists of powers, lists of equipment, pages and pages of fucking lists of things that as far as I can tell solely exist so that the back of the book can have a bullet point that says "Over 9000+ garglefrunchits!" because none of it will ever be fucking used but once.

And yet even now, so many games neglect lists of shit for which actual variety is both useful and necessary, like a decent bestiary/monster list or in-game rewards or more variable generators. And they almost never, ever provide the tools they used, if any, to create the lists in the first place so that you can add your own without winging it.

The resulting problem, I find, isn't so much that too many games are too damned long, as that they're too damned long while being filled with absolutely useless shit.

It's been my experience that lists are the easy part. Give me a list that's 90% "useless shit" and I'll give you the "short list" of good stuff in fairly short order. What turns me off are the walls of text that bulk up the actual rules. I don't want an entire freaking sub-chapter on "grappling" thanks very much....

Quote from: Panzerkraken;565625I concur completely, but I think that most of the people talking about rules preferences are doing so from the perspective of GM's.

Nonsense; there are whole forums full of kids that rage with the fury of a thousand suns over things like the old AD&D DMG telling the "real" rules for spells and such.

Most posters here might well think only the GM needs to know the rules, but it's not universal, not that there's anything wrong with that.

Quote from: S'mon;565690I think it's age, and crustiness, and possibly the Internet. I buy old RPGs now and then - Daredevils, TIMEMASTER and Starships & Spacemen are three recent ones - but I always boggle at the rules and never really consider running them.

This. From all games I buy, only 10% end being played, the rest I read for inspiration (from its rules or setting). The problem is: these days I find myself lacking the time and/or disposition to read even those I dont play.    

Quote from: S'mon... Whereas D&D-based rules like Mutant Future do get played, whether they're short like Labyrinth Lord or long like 4e D&D (eventually) and Pathfinder. I think that's partly because I'm already familiar with D&D, though complexity is a factor - it did take me a year to try 4e.

I dont know the others games cited, but I dont think Labyrinth Lord is a "rules-light" game at all - lots of different dice and charts for stats and xp and class/level progression and savings and spells each with its own different sub-rules, etc. For someone with no familiarity with D&D (my group´s case) its far from a rules-light game. I would say its even crunchier than what we call rules-medium games (Vampire).

When we talk rules-light in my group, we mean Over the Edge, Barbarians of Lemuria, Risus, Wushu, Apocalypse World, Lady Blackbird, etc.

Quote from: Gib;565711With monsters that's pretty easy isn't it? i mean all you'd have to do for most is rejig the AC and draw a line through the extraneous 4800 lines of each critter's statbook.

Sadly, yes.

Although sometimes it is nice to know what the monster's average intelligence is for purposes of tactics.

Quote from: Xavier Onassiss;565737It's been my experience that lists are the easy part. Give me a list that's 90% "useless shit" and I'll give you the "short list" of good stuff in fairly short order. What turns me off are the walls of text that bulk up the actual rules. I don't want an entire freaking sub-chapter on "grappling" thanks very much....

I've just long since taken to skipping reading them entirely, or at most skimming them.

I find the good games are still quite playable that way, and the ones that aren't worth the pain in the ass aren't.

In particular, it rules out "system mastery"/"deck building" style games like later D&D 3e and 4e.  Which is nice.

I don't buy or read long rulebooks anymore. Honestly, I'm just not that interested in rpg's these days. I have games I know (early D&D and its clones, Traveller, d6, etc), and they cover what I want. I am still looking for the perfect game, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist.

This is the day for people online whining about what they can't do, and then holding up as some sort of badge of honor.

"I can't read a 200 page rulebook, I'm too old and don't have the time or interest anymore..."

Just wow.

And as if those 200 pages are actually all rules. A modern rpg is is a quarter to half background/setting/fluff. Of what remains, only about 10% is actually rules with the rest being critters, spell lists, equipment lists and the now endless 'how to play a rpg advice' to say nothing of art.

From the way people talk, one would think this wasn't a hobby where people enjoy new things, but the most striking collection of lazy hobbyists even seen.

Oh.. maybe that's just exactly what it is. It certainly explains much.

Quote from: silva;565764I dont know the others games cited, but I dont think Labyrinth Lord is a "rules-light" game at all - lots of different dice and charts for stats and xp and class/level progression and savings and spells each with its own different sub-rules, etc. For someone with no familiarity with D&D (my group´s case) its far from a rules-light game. I would say its even crunchier than what we call rules-medium games (Vampire).

When we talk rules-light in my group, we mean Over the Edge, Barbarians of Lemuria, Risus, Wushu, Apocalypse World, Lady Blackbird, etc.

I have the pdf of Barbarians of Lemuria, it seems much the same as LL to me. Character generation looks more complicated.

But the reason Labyrinth Lord et al were easy for me is that when I was a child I spent many hours on learning & playing 1e AD&D, and LL, cloning BX D&D, is just a simpler version of that. While Mutant Future uses the same chassis.

Quote from: gleichman;565790This is the day for people online whining about what they can't do, and then holding up as some sort of badge of honor.

Who's holding it up as a badge of honour? It makes me sad.

Quote from: Gib;565603I've been this way for over a decade an a half. I don't mind reading longer game books, but I find the more complex systems just bore the shit out of me during prep and at the table.

Quote from: gleichman;565790"I can't read a 200 page rulebook, I'm too old and don't have the time or interest anymore..."

Actually, RPG books are my preferred bed time reading- especially monster and setting books, the longer the better. I'll never, ever like HERO, though, bud.

I am less and less interested in investing in multi-hundred page books of completely brand new game system wankery, yes.

I think there's a part of the age that plays into it, yes, the experience as well, i.e. already owning over a hundred different role playing games, which means that you generally have a good chance of owning a game that is close to this or that game idea you have, with a little fine tuning involved. There's also a part of fatigue in that publishers of course will talk about their game as a revolution and something "really different" and on and on while in fact, in the vast majority of cases, you're either confronted to games that are so different that you might as well talk about a different hobby altogether (storygaming et al.), or facsimile of stuff that's been done before and tries to give the impression that this time is the real deal, they really reinvented the wheel for good this time.

The exception for me is variants of stuff I know that puzzles me one way or another and puzzles me enough for me to want to give it some consideration and really know about it. Like ACKS's take on character progression and the evolution of the campaign's scope and game play, DCC RPG and its own brand of rock'n roll D&D gaming, et cetera. But then again, these are things grounded in the stuff I really know in the first place.

The only 'fatigue' I have is the utter lack of interesting game design for the last couple of decades- endless 'house system' in a different setting games, endless copies of D&D in various uninsteresting flavors, endless Lite-Systems that offer nothing but boredom.

It's not length of rules that cause me any concern, it's lack of interesting games period.