4e is too verbose

[Username17]

12 thousand words is a lot to describe a character class. But 4e goes way beyond that in its over-verbosity. Let's consider the basic core books:

Player's Handbook	200,000 words
Dungeon Master's Guide	150,000 words
Monster Manual	175,000 words
Moby Dick	187,000 words
Atlas Shrugged	540,000 words

OK? That's fucked up. It is not reasonable to expect a 14 year old to read more than a half million words before they can DM a frickin game.

-Username17

[TheFlatline]

Holy shit the PHB can't be 200,000 words... One of those doorstop novels that pass for the Wheel of Time clocks in around 250-300,000 words, and that's like 600 pages hardcover.

To give perspective, your average 400 page paperback fantasy novel is around 120,000 words long

Then again, the print is tiny compared to a hardcover. And there are 2-300 pages in the PHB if memory serves.

This is just... disgusting...

[Username17]

It sure can. The PHB 1 is 316 pages. And it's not a novel sized - but a full sized coffee table book. One of those pages is worth about 800 words. The only reason the word count is so low is because it keeps calling time for full-page art an charts and stuff.

Now, the latter books are more restrained. The PHB 2 and 3 are both 224 pages, and Monster Manual 2 and 3 are as well, and along with the DMG 2 clock in at about 150,000 words each (The DMG 2 is 155k if you care about 3 sig figs). Of course, so is the original Adventurer's Vault.

The XXX Power books are shorter. They are 160 pages a piece and clock in at around 100k words a piece. Adventurer's Vault 2 is one of these.

And then we got the stuff that is only tangentially relevant to the franchise that no one likes or cares about. Open Grave is about 150k, Draconomicon I: Chromatic Dragons is ~175k. Draconomicon II: Fucking Metallic Dragons You Don't Care About is another 150k. Underdark is about 100k, so is Manual of the Planes and its sister publications: The Plane Below, The Plane Above, and The Demonomicon.

Draconomicon II: Chromatic Dragons	175,000 Words
Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide	175,000 Words
Eberron Campaign Guide	175,000 Words
Player's Handbook 2	150,000 Words
Dungeon Master's Guide 2	150,000 Words
Monster Manual 2	150,000 Words
Player's Handbook 3	150,000 Words
Monster Manual 3	150,000 Words
Adventurer's Vault	150,000 Words
Open Grave: Secrets of the Undead	150,000 Words
Draconomicon II: Metallic Dragons	150,000 Words
Martial Power	100,000 Words
Arcane Power	100,000 Words
Divine Power	100,000 Words
Primal Power	100,000 Words
Psionic Power	100,000 Words
Adventurer's Vault 2	100,000 Words
Martial Power 2	100,000 Words
Underdark	100,000 Words
Dungeondelve	100,000 Words
Manual of the Planes	100,000 Words
The Plane Below: Elemental Chaos	100,000 Words
The Plane Above: Secrets of the Astral Sea	100,000 Words
The Demonomicon	100,000 Words
Forgotten Realms Player's Guide	100,000 Words
Eberron Player's Guide	100,000 Words
Player's Strategy Guide	100,000 Words
The Combined Works of the Wheel of Time	3,430,682 words

4e is too verbose. I didn't even include stuff like Hammerfast, because I consider it to kind of be an adventure. Also, I did not include Darksun, because it seems unlikely to ever have its classes addressed in Adventurer's Vault or Arcane Power supplements.

-Username17

[TheFlatline]

What could you possibly have to say about metallic dragons that takes up a 450 page hardcover novel? Especially after they're stated up in the MM (or are they in 4th ed? I remember hearing somewhere that dragons weren't in MM1).

After that kind of infodump I should never have to read another syllable on dragons ever again.

[Blasted]

More to the point, why after the 220 page equivalent masterpiece, do you need a second go at a dragon book?

[Username17]

More to the point, why after the 220 page equivalent masterpiece, do you need a second go at a dragon book?

256 pages. The Chromatic Dragons book is 256 pages and the Metallic Dragons book is 224. The Chromatic Dragons get stats in the Monster Manual1, and the Metallic Dragons get stats in the Monster Manual 2.

I haven't been able to bring myself to read either, just like I have never cover-cover read any of the nWoD expansion splats (Geist is over 240,000 words by itself). But from what I have been told, one of the Dragon books takes time to detail encounters in jungle temples or some shit.

I think it is important to note that the PHBs, the Monster Manuals, and the DMGs are collectively about 1.3 million words long. If you throw in the books like Eberron Player's Guide that have extra core classes, you could have read the combined volumes of In Search of Lost Time by Proust before even touching an expansion option book like Adventurer's Vault or Martial Power.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

Frank, that is just awesome.

If it's not too much trouble, could you do a comparison with the books of other D&D editions? Maybe even other games like WoD and Shadowrun?

[souran]

Hmmm,

How many of those pages in the PHB are rules and how many are powers/magic items?

We all know that a lot of space in each phb is taken up with what are essentially page layouts of magic cards. I am curious what happens if you take out all the power that are presented in list format what the word count is? I seem to remember being able to read through the 4e rulebook in much less time than the 3e rulebook (and scads less time than the dense and painful 2e rulebook) because if you don't read the 4-6 pages of powers attached to each class then "rules" for the game seemed pretty brief.

Perhaphs these pages should all be in a "powers index" similar to the spell indexes of previous editions. However, the 4e rulebooks are fundamentally, NOT supposed to be read word for word. The numerous lists inflate word count and the intention was that you coudl play without reading every power. Without adjusting for this this whole exercise seems like saying you can't play magic without having seen the text on every card in the game.

Honestly, including the monster manual is pretty silly. Thats like saying the National Electrical Code is to long. Its a reference document to be utilzied by its specific subsections. There is no need to read it end to end.

[virgil]

What's the word count on the core book sets for 3.5? If I recall, all three of them were 320 pages; which makes the DMG and MM far larger than their 4E counterparts.

[hogarth]

Wow, that's just crazy how long those books are.

But I don't think the intent is that you read the DMG cover to cover before running a game; it's a reference book, and you refer to it as needed. That would be like reading the entire "Time-Life Guide to Plumbing Repairs" to fix a leaky faucet. Similarly, you don't need to know every power for every class before starting to play a 1st level fighter. You probably should read every power for every class, just so you know how much certain classes will suck in the future, but I don't think that's the intent.

I have a lot of sentimental memories of browsing through reference books (RPG or non-RPG). For instance, the 1e DMG has lots of interesting useless tidbits, from random prostitute tables, to Boot Hill conversion notes, to the reputed magical qualities of gemstones, to bad advice on using monsters as PCs. I spent a lot of hours happily poring through that book. Ah...nostalgia!

[Lago PARANOIA]

In all seriousness, though, this is the problem when you pay writers by word count. They tend to write up too much unnecessary shit on a page. I sort of understand the underlying thought process behind this, what with wanting to get your money's worth. But it's just too cumbersome and too much of an entry barrier into the hobby.

The future editions of D&D basically has these options at this point:

1) Cut down on the florid pose.

2) Make the prose engaging so it isn't a chore to slug through. This is really hard, since people complain about the length of a Harry Potter novel. You can't rely on just this alone.

3) Rely more on pictures and comics. Full-page pictures of whatever locale or monster you want to whinge on about should be the norm. They don't have to be sprawling mosaics all of the time either. You can save people a lot of reading by, for example, instead of taking up a page to describe all of the sights and attractions of the Friendly Arms Inn using that same page to show a zoomed-out isometric map of the floors and doing zoomed-in insets of what's going on in the Inn. So you'd get a depiction of the 1st floor and a single zoomed-in panel would show the bar stocked with all kinds of wicked-sweet booze, another panel would show filthy adventures sleeping on the floor by the fireplace, another panel would show young maidens splashing each other in the artificial bath, etc..

4) Print an 'Introduction Manual' version of D&D which has the same goal as Intro to AD&D or D&D Essentials. But instead of making this seem like an unconnected product line that has nothing to do with the Big Boyz, every effort should be made to integrate it into the core rules.

Probably the most successful strategy would involve some combination of the above but damn, something should be done.

[hogarth]

In all seriousness, though, this is the problem when you pay writers by word count. They tend to write up too much unnecessary shit on a page.

Certainly some of the content of the 3.5 DMG (say) is unnecessary, but I think that having rules for suffocation and forest fires is a good thing, not a bad thing. And yet I don't think its necessary (or even useful) for a newbie DM to read the rules on suffocation and forest fires before DMing his first game. Maybe that kind of stuff could be put into a hypothetical Wilderness Manual, but I don't think there's anything inherently wrong in having it in one book instead of two.

[Josh_Kablack]

Well the 4e power format all but guarantees that each of the key words is used 2-4 times in each power description

Healing Strike Cleric Attack 1
Divine radiance gleams from your weapon. When you smite your
enemy, your deity bestows a minor blessing in the form of healing
for you or one of your allies.
Encounter * Divine, Healing, Radiant, Weapon
Standard Action Melee weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: Strength vs. AC
Hit: 2[W] + Strength modifier radiant damage, and the
target is marked until the end of your next turn. In
addition, you or one ally within 5 squares of you can
spend a healing surge.

[Username17]

Frank, that is just awesome.

If it's not too much trouble, could you do a comparison with the books of other D&D editions? Maybe even other games like WoD and Shadowrun?

That seems pretty reasonable. Other companies have much less discipline than WotC, and two books in the same series will often be off by dozens of pages and as much as a hundred thousand words. Where WotC has essentially 3 Supplement lengths (one of which appears to be discontinued), Shadowrun and WoD will come in with page counts in any multiple of eight.

Shadowrun

SR4	265,000 words.
SR4A	300,000 words.
Street Magic	147,000 words.
Augmentation	128,000 words.
Arsenal	140,000 words.
Unwired	165,000 words.
Runner's Companion	139,000 words.
Ends of the Matrix 4.01	55,000 words.
Emergence	100,000 words.
Runner Havens	119,000 words.
Corporate Enclaves	118,000 words.
Feral Cities	118,000 words.

New World of Darkness

World of Darkness Core	205,000 words.
Vampire: The Requiem	233,000 words.
Mage: The Awakening	301,000 words.
Werewolf: The Forsaken	240,000 words.
Promethean: The Created	205,000 words.
Changeling: The Lost	259,000 words.
Geist: The Sin Eating	240,000 words.
Armory	150,000 words.
Book of Spirits	138,000 words.
Dogs of War	88,000 words.
Ghost Stories	90,000 words.
Immortals	99,000 words.
Chicago	323,000 words.
Inferno	116,000 words.
Innocents	204,000 words.
Midnight Roads	90,000 words.
Mysterious Places	100,000 words.
Reliquary	118,000 words.
Second Sight	122,000 words.
Shadows of Mexico	137,000 words.
Shadows of the UK	151,000 words.
Skin Changers	94,000 words.
Tales From the 13th Precinct	103,000 words.
Urban Legends	92,000 words.
Night Horrors: Immortal Sinners	100,000 words.
Ancient Bloodlines	113,000 words.
Ancient Mysteries	120,000 words.
Belial's Brood	101,000 words.
Bloodlines: The Chosen	95,000 words.
Bloodlines: The Legendary	100,000 words.
City of the Damned: New Orleans	99,000 words.
Clan Daeva: Kiss of the Succubus	76,000 words.
Clan Ventrue: Lords Over the Damned	92,000 words.
Clan Mekhet: Shadows in the Dark	81,000 words.
Clan Nosferatu: The Beast in the Blood	78,000 words.
Clan Gangrel: Savage Macabre	79,000 words.
Damnation City	114,000 words.

You know what? I'm not even half done with the WoD books, but I think I have made my point.

Religious Texts

The New Testament (Greek)	138,000 words.
Mission Earth (all 10 volumes)	1,200,000 words.
Koran	80,000 words.

-Username17

[Crissa]

I wanna go back to when the Monster Manual was bigger than the DMG and PHB combined. Because it's like an encyclopedia or dictionary - you seriously aren't expected to know every damn monster; but you will need to know most of the PHB.

-Crissa

[TheFlatline]

I wanna go back to when the Monster Manual was bigger than the DMG and PHB combined. Because it's like an encyclopedia or dictionary - you seriously aren't expected to know every damn monster; but you will need to know most of the PHB.

-Crissa

Yes but you triple your income when you divide the MM into 3 books.

[Crissa]

[Yes but you triple your income when you divide the MM into 3 books.

Just as long as they have a combined index.

-Crissa

[hogarth]

I wanna go back to when the Monster Manual was bigger than the DMG and PHB combined.

When was this? The 1e AD&D DMG was way thicker than the 1e AD&D Monster Manual.

[Maj]

I found this free software for counting words in pdf files, and I counted the words in my three copies of the PHB and two of the DMGs (my 3.5 DMG pdf is all images, not text).

Player's Handbook 3.0 (no glossary or index)	272,144 words
Player's Handbook 3.5 (includes glossary and index)	328,556 words
Player's Handbook 4E (includes index)	210,420 words
DMG 3.0	255,558 words
DMG 4E	155,120 words

[Username17]

Maj, those numbers appear to be consistently on the large size by several thousand words. Maybe it's picking up page breaks as text somehow? I'm not sure. Although some of it can be made up by counting stuff in the index or table of contents as "words" - it seems a little large even for that.

-Username17

[Orca]

I wanna go back to when the Monster Manual was bigger than the DMG and PHB combined.

When was this? The 1e AD&D DMG was way thicker than the 1e AD&D Monster Manual.

Probably 2nd ed? I remember a Monstrous Compendium which was in ringbinder format so you could add more supplements as they came out.

[Cynic]

So this is a question on how they pay the writers.

Are they using a per word rate? Because that's an exorbitant fee.

[hogarth]

I wanna go back to when the Monster Manual was bigger than the DMG and PHB combined.

When was this? The 1e AD&D DMG was way thicker than the 1e AD&D Monster Manual.

Probably 2nd ed? I remember a Monstrous Compendium which was in ringbinder format so you could add more supplements as they came out.

The first volume was 144 pages, according to this page, and my 2e PHB is 256 pages. So, no.

[Crissa]

It was 2e AD&D.

-Crissa

[Maj]

Maj, those numbers appear to be consistently on the large size by several thousand words. Maybe it's picking up page breaks as text somehow? I'm not sure. Although some of it can be made up by counting stuff in the index or table of contents as "words" - it seems a little large even for that.

-Username17

I linked to the software because I didn't know how it worked. The numbers are literally just raw output.