Do you have any opinions on how large a TTRPG sourcebook should be?The GURPS Fourth Edition Basic Set comprises 575 pages, and is split into two separate books with consecutive page numbering, titled Characters (ch. 1–9) and Campaigns (ch. 10–20).In contrast, the ACKS Second Edition Revised Rulebook comprises 548 pages, but is consolidated into a single book, even though splitting it like the GURPS Basic Set (ch. 1–5 and ch. 6–12) would be fairly simple.The D&D First Edition Rules Cyclopedia is a single 304-page book. Dark Dungeons X is a single 410-page book.The Lord of the Rings is around 1200 pages long. Internally it is organized into six "books". Should it be published as six volumes rather than as three?
>>96526396As many pages as it takes to lay out all the necessary rules to make characters, play the game, run the game, and create additional material for it. Ability to do so in an efficient way is a different matter, but in some cases being too exhaustive is worse than being unclear.
>>96526402t. can't read
>>96526396Length isn't really as important as writing and organization.I hate when I'm reading a rulebook and trying to find the specific rule I want to reference, and I have to flip past page sized lore dumps and massive play-by-play examples of basic shit.And sometimes the rule just gets bundled up with some other random rule so I'll miss it if I skim or it just gives me a page number and so I have to page through the book looking for that page to see where the rule actually is.>>96526406If I open your rulebook and it's just lord of the rings then it had better be just as good a read, and even then I probably won't run it because paging through the entire lord of the rings to find the rules for fall damage or jump distance or whatever shit is going to annoy the fuck out of me.
>>96526396The thing you have to learn from LotR (which you have never read, faggot) is there two schools of thought here. The cutesy meta one where Bilbo is writing the Red Book which then through an unnamed editor is delivered to us, the readers. And the actual useful one where the appendices contain SHORT historical texts and the maps DON'T list every little bumfuck town or regions three continents over but only the ones important to the story.It goes without saying that rulebooks should follow the latter.This nigga >>96526446 gets it.
>>96526396Completely subjective, but I've found that most rulebooks I like end up being between 250 and 350 pages for a "complete" game. More than 350 pages usually ends up being poorly laid out.As other have pointed out, though, layout and indexing matters more than size. The new 5e book has such dog shit indexing it's embarrassing.
>>96526483>The new 5e book has such dog shit indexing it's embarrassing.Really? 2024 is breddy good. They bold the game terms first occurence and the index tells you the site. Makes it a whole lot quicker.
I really like core rules in A5 around 60 pages, that way I can print them and staple them with no issues. Obviously this doesn't work for systems like GURPS that need more space, or that Gamma World that was card based. But some crunchy systems could leave the details on an app and give me a smaller thing to have on the table and flip around.
>>96526446I hate Free League for this.Running Blade Runner, asking Wallace Corp for a brain scan is listed in the things to spend your cop points in character creation. What a brain scan consist of (how long it takes, how much info you can get) is spread between the Wallace Corp lore section and the police procedures section. It's a single process spread between 3 independent sections 60 pages appart.
>>96526495Yeah, except for the things that it doesn't. It's fucking horrible. You get entries like >Grappling: grappling gives you the grappled condition.
>>96526396About tree fiddy.
>>96526396>split into two separate books with consecutive page numberingTwo separate volumes, fren.As an example, while single volume editions are common now as are seven volume editions, LotR is one novel that was first published as three differently titled volumes comprising two books each plus appendices in the last.
Depends on the kind of rulebook.If we are talking about just rules and running a game? 200 or so pages will cover most shit fine. If we are talking about the same content PLUS world building, lore dumps, bestiaries, a shit ton of tables, and other stuff? That's when it stops being a book and becomes a tome.
>>96526396Should fit into a smartphone
272 pages. A concise table of contents and an index. 8-10 extra pages of unnumbered tables, charts, lists, templates, and adverts. Once you cross the 300 page mark you need to rethink your product.
>>96526396My personal limit of convenience would be like 500, but I read research papers for a living.For normal people it's probably in 250-300 range. Even less for Americans.
>>96528198>Even less for Americans.Based and truth-pilled.
>>96526396Large books are split into multiple volumes by publishers for money. That's why Lord of the Rings is published in 3 volumes. That's why GURPS is published in 2. That's why the PhB, DMG and MM are published in 3. Publishers are private corporations that seek to make money off of their products.Whatever. Buy the ones you want. The difference between buying 2 or 3 or 1 volumes for something you wanna read isn't much difference at all.
>>96528557>Large books are split into multiple volumes by publishers for money.There's also some handling considerations, and you can format for cross-reference between them.
>>96528592For sure. There are absolutely additional considerations and nothing is ever as simple as a bumper sticker. But money is pretty big one.
>>96526396It should fit in your pocket.
>>96526524This is always the worst.It doesn't really matter how many pages the book is. If every rule or item or whatever requires flipping back and forth between multiple different chapters, your rulebook could be 200 pages and it'd still be a pain in the ass.
>>96526402This. Also, keep the art to a minimum and keep it seperate from the text. Trying to flip though 100 pages of crap AI filler art and then trying to read a green text superimposed over a slightly less green battle scene is a pain in the arse. We only need pictures as an aid to the rules and to occasionally imagine what the writer imagines. Also, it will help keep the cost down.
Bumping, because I was about to make a new thread to ask this:>How much is too much, inside of a core book?Like, there's the rules, the character races, but, what else is essential, in your opinion?Items? Monsters? Campaign modules? Crafting materials? Spells? Feats?Since not everyone can publish a thousand books like DnD does, how much is too much for a single book?
>>96539706Having a quick intro adventure tucked towards the back can be a good thing, but depending on the complexity of the system, you can probably condense that to a few pages. If you include some enemy statblocks in the core book, then you can put those right beside that intro module so that a GM has a quick reference for them when running that. Items/Crafting materials is heavily system dependent. Some games need less than a page. Some might have it as the whole progression system.Same case with feats/spells/abilities. The case where it becomes too much is really just going to be when new players can't find the answers to their questions, or basically need a GM to walk them through it. Streamlining character creation and player-facing rules can go a long way towards making a book feel less imposing, even if it's still a lot of pages. Avoiding too many loredumps is also key there.Quickstart rules are also a good idea at a certain point, where having a basic/simplified PDF version of the game can bridge that gap.
>>96526396You shouldn't need more than 50 A4 pages of rule text plus another 5-10 pages of tables and sequence of play.Lists of equipment, spells, monsters etc should be separate appendices and not bloat the main rulebook.If you need hundred of pages detailing all the special cases, exceptions and one-off rules the core rules can't actually handle your game and you should rethink.
>>96526396I'd rather have well written 800 pages than shittily thrown together 100 pages rulebook even if they actually contain the same amount of infoit's just better to read a rulebook that has an actual flow rather than requiring you to jump from page 12 to page 90 then to page 43 because neither writer nor editor could be bothered to actually sort shit
>>96526396I don't think there's really a need for a rulebook to be any longer than one or two hundred pages. Just going by games I've read, that seems to be ample space for clearly written mechanical rules.I generally prefer when the crunch and fluff are mostly separated. I prefer rulebooks to have basic information about the setting, just enough for players to know why their characters are doing what they do, and prefer all of the more detailed bits of the world's story to have their own book's worth of breathing room.So, I think that two books, each a couple hundred pages, is ideal. And, as has already been mentioned, a good index and a clean layout make or break a book regardless of how long or short it is.
>>96539706There's no good reason to split the core rules needed to run a single game among multiple books beyond a desire to sell as many SKUs as possible.I think there should be a "core rulebook" that has all of the info needed for everyone at the table to be able to play the game. I think anything less just isn't very respectful of the consumer.It's something I've always appreciated about Pathfinder, even if I don't actually like the game itself all that much. Old-School Essentials's repackaging of B/X did a great job of this style of book in my eyes, as does Dungeon Crawl Classics, even though the latter is laid out a little messily. And Basic Fantasy, of course; that's another good one.
>>96526396400 pages should be good. Anymore than that and you're just asking for rules to be ignored, unless it's filled with lots of full-page illustrations.
>>96528630This is the correct answer. Game rules should be small pamphlets, preferably with a flowchart.
big enough for only autists to flirt with
>>96526396No actual answers here. Whatever works.But people should be clear than a medium lenght RPG is maybe 50 pages, and shit like DND is certainly not a baseline.(in truth you should count the words, but whatever)
>>96526402FPBP, but I would note that formatting is important.If your book is 100 or fewer pages long, but you're cramming 300 pages of rules and it's illegible dogshit, then fuck off.Most of my TTRPGs are between 140-500 pages long, and that's mostly due to formatting to make things clear, easy to read and parse, and easy to navigate. Sometimes, due to images for Species options or similar. Generally speaking, cutting those numbers down would just result in everything being cramped, cluttered, and impossible to read properly. TBF, the higher end is like... one of them, and that has a whole chapter dedicated to a core setting that's about 30 pages, the bulk of those pages are on character creation, options, equipment, and gameplay mechanics - again, formatted for easy reading.
>>9656984150 pages seems very short. What is that, FATE? Some other system that barely has any rules or mechanics?
>>96572814OSE basic is just below 60 page count
>>96526396A5 books with concise rules for table play, honestly if you can cram the GM and Player books into one as a tête-bêche, even better.Anything that can be done on the fly at the table should be in that book, I don't mind long paragraphs but getting people to try out new ttrpgs is a pain, so bullet points and big text is real nice and easy for them.You can have a bigger book to talk about after-dark stuff- liek worldbuilding, recommendations, etc for the GM to read up out of session if they want. It can be bigger since the GM won't be lugging it to sessions
16/32/64/128That’s all you need.
>>96573201Yeah, so a system that barely has any rules or mechanics. And you can forget about actual player options.
>>96579369>tfw no 1024-page book
>>96539706I think this depends on what audience you're going for.As an example I play ACKS - the core rule book for the second edition is 553 pages - if we ignore the indexes, chapters, full page art, character sheets etc it still is around 500 pages of rules and includes almost everything from adventuring to crafting, to sea travel, to politics to army and battle management. I recognise that this is a lot and is more than most games/players etc will ever need but the game is marketed to autists like me, it's not marketed towards the "rules-lite" crowd.On the contrasting side of that there's some game in my RPG folder called "Kids on Bikes" that has a total page count of 80. It's personally not my thing but it's very highly rated on drivethrurpg so it clearly has its fans.If I was to write a core book, I'd think about who the book is marketed towards, if I was aiming towards the simulationist crowd the book would necessarily be longer than if I was aiming towards the freeform roleplaying crowd.
>>96526396>Do you have any opinions on how large a TTRPG sourcebook should be?48 pages MAX. I'm not kidding. If you think that's not enough space, you're wasting space on shit that doesn't matter during gameplay. Like the Cyberpunk Red manual that was 500 pages long but had only 10 pages of useful content.RPGs should not consist of books, they should consist of pamphlets designed for easy referencing on the fly. They're not for sitting down and reading, they're for playing.
>>96579759>muh player opshunsPlayers shouldn't know the rules anyway. If they know the rules they'll start abusing them.
>>96580686Player rule ignorance extending to what their own fucking choices actually do is complete and utter bullshit. If you forbid them from making decisions informed by their own capability, then what you have made is a retarded guessing game.I don't care that this will almost universally result in optimizers. Balance your shit instead of leaving it to an end user to paper over your laziness.
>>96526396>In contrast, the ACKS Second Edition Revised Rulebook comprises 548 pages, but is consolidated into a single book, even though splitting it like the GURPS Basic Set (ch. 1–5 and ch. 6–12) would be fairly simple.You're somewhat mistaken there. ACKS 2nd Edition's core rules are split up between three books, the PHB, DM's Guide, and Monster Manual. Like with older editions of D&D they're meant to be part of the same set and you shouldn't really play without using all parts of it. Splitting up the PHB would be pointless and confusing.Obviously I think it's best for a ruleset to be as big as it needs to be to comprehensively guide and assist the DM in running things. The players may not need as much This is why the player's handbook was always its own thing, but the DM always benefits from having more things to reference and help him run and theres not any real situation in real games where you wouldn't want more rules rather than less
>>96580686>>96582811One decent (if boring) solution it's to give the players nothing except their character sheet, and do the much dreaded "session 0" meme to guide them in their character creation
450 pages. Readers Digest size.The Modern TTRPG books take up too much Space, I'd like a push towards making ttrpg books about the size of a mass market paper back and if you do a book that's exclusively black and white art. DO MMPB.3/4's of an inch Thick8 inches tall.6 inches wide.
