What's the smallest RPG rulebook, in terms of pagecount, that you'd think would be workable enough for you to purchase?
What's the largest?

Quote from: RPGPundit;1048426What's the smallest RPG rulebook, in terms of pagecount, that you'd think would be workable enough for you to purchase?
What's the largest?

I've bought Mini-6 at 36 pages and Pathfinder Core Rulebook at 575 pages. The latter is unpleasantly big. I'd probably buy a 28 page rulebook and would tend to avoid any over about 350-400 pages.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1048426What's the smallest RPG rulebook, in terms of pagecount, that you'd think would be workable enough for you to purchase?
What's the largest?

Well the largest would be Hero System 5th edition. But it primarily a reference and catalog of abilities that the system use so I am OK with that. The nuts and bolts rules are fairly short and straight forward to understand.

The smallest I don't know, what I don't want to do is have to work out all my own "stuff". If I have to come up with stats for spells along with  orcs, dragons, giants, etc, I might as well write my own RPG at that point. For me Fantasy Age suffered a lot due to its skimpy monster section and near lack of magical items. I think at a minimum a fantasy RPG should cover the same range of material as B/X D&D or OD&D. With sci-fi RPGs cover what Traveller covers, with Horror cover what Call of Cthulu covers.

Seems like all the games I actually like are around the 70-100 page range; SW 1st edition is probably the longest at 130+, but that includes a bunch of templates and an adventure. Blueholme is only 55 pages and it's complete. Holmes D&D itself is what, 48 pages? Still a complete game. My first edition Ghostbusters training manual is 24 pages and you don't need anything else to play, really. So, I guess it "depends", but the better the writing, the shorter it can be and still be a good game.

On the flip side, the aforementioned Pathfinder is a monstrosity. I just sold my set because 1) I never played it and 2) it took up way too much shelf space. Other games I recently got rid of include Numenera and The Strange, both gigantic books that look really nice but fuck around with needless exposition. The D&D Cyclopedia is marginally shorter than any of these, but even at 300 pages it still doesn't seem too big, while I feel like I'm wasting my time reading The One Ring which isn't much bigger. I'd say 256-300 page max for me, but that's purely dependent on what the rulebook contains.

The largest I've ever bought would be Hero System Sixth Edition, which comes out to just shy of 800 pages across the two volumes. I find I prefer 5ER's presentation and level of detail, though; 6E is just a bit too bloated with white space and art and overdetailed, although some of the gamemastering advice is a nice addition.

  The smallest ... probably the 16-page (smaller-than-digest-sized, at that) summary of the SAGA Rules System that came with the standalone Fate Decks they sold.

Hero System 6th is the maximum I'd go for. Though it would need one serious fucking sales pitch for me to consider it today (Arduin Eternal anyone?).

The smallest is 1 page. If the idea is gold, i will gladly pay for it.

I know I've skipped on buying an RPG when I looked at it's pagecount and saw it was 48 pages.  I've bought things in that page count range, but when it gets to that pamphlet range I get reluctant to drop money on the stuff.

I can't think of any RPG I've skipped over purely because it had too high a pagecount.

I'd probably not buy a rule book with anything under 70 pages (although I have done in the past). If I want a game, I'd like it to be, not only complete, but have enough info that I can get my teeth into.

As for max page count... Again, I tend to like stuff to be well under 300 pages. Because I'm old and lazy, and don't want to wade through a load of fluff in order to play a game. That said, I have broken that rule as well. It depends on the game I suppose...

Quote from: Gabriel2;1048466I know I've skipped on buying an RPG when I looked at it's pagecount and saw it was 48 pages.  I've bought things in that page count range, but when it gets to that pamphlet range I get reluctant to drop money on the stuff.

Yep...

Quote from: Brad;1048457Seems like all the games I actually like are around the 70-100 page range; SW 1st edition is probably the longest at 130+, but that includes a bunch of templates and an adventure. Blueholme is only 55 pages and it's complete. Holmes D&D itself is what, 48 pages? Still a complete game. My first edition Ghostbusters training manual is 24 pages and you don't need anything else to play, really. So, I guess it "depends", but the better the writing, the shorter it can be and still be a good game.

On the flip side, the aforementioned Pathfinder is a monstrosity. I just sold my set because 1) I never played it and 2) it took up way too much shelf space. Other games I recently got rid of include Numenera and The Strange, both gigantic books that look really nice but fuck around with needless exposition. The D&D Cyclopedia is marginally shorter than any of these, but even at 300 pages it still doesn't seem too big, while I feel like I'm wasting my time reading The One Ring which isn't much bigger. I'd say 256-300 page max for me, but that's purely dependent on what the rulebook contains.

Brad captures the essence of my thoughts on the matter. There is no minimum or maximum in theory, but in practicality it comes down to the fact that a game has to be long enough to be complete, but not so long as to be boring.

I suppose that cost also comes into play. I really don't want to pay $100 for a rulebook no matter how awesome and how padded the page count.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1048426What's the smallest RPG rulebook, in terms of pagecount, that you'd think would be workable enough for you to purchase?
What's the largest?

For printed books, 128 pages is the minimum for me. 260 pages is the maximum.

It obviously depends on the size of the book.  A 6x9 book is obviously going to have more pages in it than a standard sized book.  Anyhoo, the absolute minimum page count for me in a standard sized book is 64 pages.  Any less, and I won't bother.  Slim is good, but there has to be some meat on the bones.  As for maximum size, without setting 200 pages.  With setting, 400 pages.

Preference wise, I'd prefer something around 128 pages without setting, or 256 pages with.

128 pages minimum in general. Something smaller would have to be extra special. Max.. not sure I have one - Pathfinder and Hero 6th were both quite comfortable for me.

I had a look through the games I've bought and the smallest (excluding the old 16 page BRP booklet that came with many Chaosium games) was The Morrow Project at 64 pages. The largest is HERO 5th ed revised at 592 pages.

These are soft limits as I have bought larger, but 256 pages is about as large as I like, with 312 being about my upper limit for comfort. Larger than that and I find they have physical and mental limitations, I'd much rather flip through a set of two or three 128-256 page books with rational divisions, than a single 300-500 page book.

I don't really think I have a minimum so long as it felt complete and well written. I have a hard time imagining a game book smaller than 32 pages doing that, and 128 pages is plenty to fit a whole game into. Second edition Runequest was only 112 pages.

I wouldn't dismiss a game based on it being too small although smaller than 64 pages and it might not attract my attention without an outside force pointing me to it (reviews, word of mouth etc).

Paperback, 96 pages minimum
For Hardback, at least 150 pages

I buy physical books for the look, so I'll go hardback until about 700ish, that starts getting too big. But for most games, I would want glossy pages, which I've only seen Pinnacle, Paizo, and WotC do.

For PDFs, yeah still about a 96 pages minimum. I may get smaller ones with a bundle.