The Book

krainboltgreene · Post by **krainboltgreene** » Sat Jun 19, 2010 1:49 pm

You've just returned home from the purchase. Your plastic bag protected the book on the trip back. You can't wait to sit down and read each paragraph, get a feel for the mechanics, and finally play!

You pull the book out...

Ok guys, describe to me the perfect RPG book. Softcover or hardcover? A3 8"x11" or something more landscape? Is the book sectioned in any way or is it standard chapters? The borders, artistic or just informational? How much flavor text after each heading? Sidebars?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Jun 19, 2010 1:59 pm

The progression through the latter half of the oughts as for longer and longer RPG books, coupled with more and more actual books. The text explosion reached its nadir in NWoD, for which there are literally over one hundred books at an average length of over one hundred thousand words a piece. The entirety of the New World of Darkness is like three Wheel of Time Series, end to end. That is bullshit. And 4th edition D&D pulled something similar.

Really, I would like an RPG book to get to the fucking point. If you can't tell me about your game mechanics, your world, your examples, and so on in as many words as it takes to tell Moby Dick (187,000 words, if you were wondering), then maybe you shouldn't be telling people about it. Perhaps you should hire a technical writer to get to the instructions.

An ideal RPG book is about 300 pages, trade paperback. About 120,000 words, with a lot of pictures.

-Username17

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Sat Jun 19, 2010 3:43 pm

See, as much as getting the straight mechanics are great, and I'd totally love for them to be spelled out in non-fluff, concise detail somewhere, my biggest problem with roleplaying was understanding the concept of roleplaying.

Not being a gamer beyond marathon games of Don't Wake the Dragon with my siblings, I really didn't even grok the concept of hit point. When I opened up 3E D&D for the first time, I was greeted with a picture of a complicated sheet of paper peppered with numbered explanations of things I didn't have any clue about.

And when you get to each chapter that's supposed to explain things, the chapters start from the perspective of the number: the statistic is named and mathematically defined, but the concept behind that number isn't explained until after all that. It's the chart first, then clarity.

I need a book that uses flavor text to describe the concept of each stat. First. Give me a rough overview... You're pretending to be a person from a fantasy world. You have six main traits - Strength, Dex, Int, etc. Strength is how much you can carry. It's how hard you can hit things in a close-up fight, be it with a sword or a staff. It's also an indicator of your physical skills like swimming and athletics...

Put all that kind of stuff first, in a very efficient chapter, then go for the math and details and crap. Leave out all the BS about world flavor text - it just gets in the way of being creative. Don't call classes (or their equivalent) by defining names like "Knight of Camelot." Call them by the traits that people want their characters to have. "Strong, Nice, Armored Guy." And have different levels of play - how to do low magic (ie: play at only levels 1 - 5) versus high magic (play at levels higher than that).

I prefer hardback books, and lots of pictures is a good thing. Good pictures. With hunky guys that don't look like they're walking muscles.

Keep the wording simple, concise, and get rid of D&Dese. It's an impediment to human communication.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Sat Jun 19, 2010 3:51 pm

I'll go Frank one further - not only should it be a trade paperback around 300 pages with lots of pictures - but those pictures should be arranged in the largely Kirby 6-panel format on most pages, punctuated with the occasional two-page splash illustrations or 12-panel small-picture montages.

Seriously, the comics-panel format is a great way to make detailed instructions accessible and gibes perfectly with the market for RPGs, while also offering new ways to fully integrate world and setting details into mechanical explanations.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Sat Jun 19, 2010 5:31 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:The text explosion reached its nadir in NWoD, for which there are literally over one hundred books at an average length of over one hundred thousand words a piece.

Ten million words in NWoD...

And I still have no motivation to tell even a single story in the setting.

And as for Frank's request to keep it under 200,000 words, you'll have to be pretty spartan with skills and/or magic descriptors.

I'm okay with that though. I think in general chapters devoted to skill descriptions are horrendously over-inflated. I can't think of the last time I seriously referenced a skill section for 99% of skills. I may look up what Occult precisely can give me in WoD, or I might look up some DCs for Lore: Nose-picking Outsiders, but spending time discussing the intricacies of "spot" seems like a waste of time.

I have one requirement. Around a 30 dollar price tag.

If a game costs about 30 bucks, you can pretty much figure a minimum of 3 copies at my gaming table, and eventually, a copy for every player. At 40 dollars, the GM will have a copy of the book, and maybe there will be one copy for the players to share. At 50 or 60 bucks, if we even bother, there's only one book for like 6 people, and someone probably has found a torrent with the PDF for reference.

I understand that there's a small market for RPGs, and that some groups will play fine with one book among 5 or 6 people, but I imagine I can't be the only person who gets hesitant the farther past 30 bucks the book gets. When WoD cost 30 bucks a core book, every one of our gamer group had at least Vampire, Werewolf, and Mage. Sometimes all 3 editions, and that's like 20 people. If the books ran at 50 or 60 (like f*cking Dark Heresy), there might have been 5 copies among our group, and probably only one or two, so you're looking at 300 dollars in sales instead of something sick like 2500 bucks.

And NWoD case in point, 200,000 words to sell you a game system that is essentially setting you up to *require* that you buy 30 dollar hardcover splat books to have any kind of grasp of the setting as a whole (I nerd rage every time I think about that) is f*cking criminal. Let's not even get into the blue book.

Smeelbo · Post by **Smeelbo** » Sat Jun 19, 2010 6:36 pm

Diaspora, a hard sci-fi FATE game, is the ideal RPG book.

250 pages, including index and reference sheets.

It's elegant: basicly FATE boiled down to its essence, with multiple, clean sub-systems, that interact well. It makes a minimal number of campaign assumptions, which are explained clearly, and explicitly distributes story responsibilities across the group.

Besides providing a minimalist, cleaned up implementation of the basic FATE engine, it offers sub-games for star cluster/system generation, character generation (of course), personal combat, social conflicts, space combat, and platoon combat.

It's hard cover, weighs about a pound, and I literally carry it with me everywhere I go.

If I hired Frank to write a game for me, I'd give him Diaspora as a model.

Smeelbo

Lokathor · Post by **Lokathor** » Sat Jun 19, 2010 7:24 pm

New World Of Darkness is the perfect example of what I don't want in an RPG book. Which one? Pick any of them! They're all terribly formatted. Top priority is making a book that your players want to look at.

SR4A is the perfect example of shitty organization in an RPG book, organize your info, that's second from top priority.

The Player's Handbook 3.5 for DnD has, graphically, about what I want out of an RPG book. Black text on almost-white pages, with a boarder and stuff, and tan background instead of white every other line of tables. 300ish pages, and the right page size.

Earthdawn 3e explains the world and the mechanics in a straightforward way, and you learn about the culture and history that you're stepping into.

TheFlatline is right, Price is a huge issue. I do want a hardcover, and I do want minimal color, but I'm actually willing to sacrifice artwork and stuff if it helps to somehow get that price tag down.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Sat Jun 19, 2010 7:54 pm

Okay as much as I would love to see an "Understanding Comics" manual as graphic novel type RPG presentation, lemme think about formats that HAVE worked:

The AD&D model of 3-books as oversized hardbacks model has the advantages of

Offering pages large enough for detailed art
Being sturdy enough to tote around in a backpack with dice, minis, snacks and other random gaming choad
Having material segregated into player and DM books.

This is a relatively good fit for games which are going to be played with a mix of new and experienced players, as the new players only need to be familiar with/purchase a single book. The incremental cost of buying a player's manual can be low enough that people only moderately curious may do so.

The Palladium Softcover model of sturdy sofcover Core book plus endless supplements has the advantages of

Offering pages large enough for detailed art.
Being somewhat cheaper than hardcover options
Allowing the company to crank out books endlessly

As Palladium does things, this is really only a good fit for groups of entirely experienced gamers. It's expected that someone or other will buy the new and relevant books and they'll be passed around the group and shared. Either that or the GM will strictly limit the material allowed in his game (which is what GURPs encourages)

The HERO reFReD model of the single 600 page tome has the advantages of

Being god-damned comprehensive
Stopping black-powder rounds and bayonets

As much as I like the system and the Forefront Champs game, this is just not a viable model for groups with new players nor groups where people have to carry things. Plus the incremental cost of purchasing a rulebook becomes so high that you'll only sell to highly interested gamers - who are just as likely to pirate the material as to buy it.

The Elements of Style model of one small handbook has the advantages of

Being small and light enough to tote around in a pocket
Being fairly cheap per unit

While only a small number of obscure RPGs use this, it's an excellent fit for LARPs or other on-the-go games where portability is key.
The low price point and small book size are unlikely to scare away new players, and people my buy copies on impulse without any prior knowledge or investment in the game.

The 3rd ED D&D model of open-source rules as an online Wiki has the advantages of

Hyperlinked inline indexing. Fuck Gygax's infatuation with "qv", this is the future now I have me a dollar store laser and we can actually use URLs to the relevant section each and every time a rule references another one.
Decoupling portability from wordcount
Low cost of entry for new players

These are huge advantages, and in one way or another this is likely the wave of the future, however I'm going to say a lot about the limitations here. This model is an excellent fit for online games or games played in campus computer clusters or with groups where everyone brings their laptop.

However there are many limitations. Primarily, it requires the game space to have sufficient electrical outlets and internet access - which is less of a barrier than it used to be, but with the number of games that occur in basements, attics, food courts and steam tunnels it's still a frequent issue.

Then it also has several cost disincentives: Firstly, the the author and publisher have the difficulty of selling digital content, and therefore less incentive to create it in our quasi-capitalist economy. Secondly while the game itself has low or no cost of entry to new players, the technology to access that content requires a relatively gigantic expenditure - at the bottom of the low end, you're stilling looking at around $200 for a portable device that can use wi-fi - that's a bigger chunk of change than picking up a couple rulebooks for anything. Furthermore, this equipment cost combines with equipment fragility to mean that stuff is unlikely to be passed around the table unless players are exceedingly trusting of each other. I sure as hell don't let anyone with greasy potato-chip fingers use my new netobook. People are unlikely to pass their EEEE/Aspire/Wind/Kindle/Nook/Iphone around the table so that some newb they may have never met before can read the game rules in the same way they might share a $40 players guide.

And there's yet another downside here - ease of access. The typical e-reader/netbook/smartphone has a smaller screen than large-format RPG books. This means that for anything where "search" cannot be used efficiently (either due to hypercommon terms or due to fragmentary user recollection) is going to take more scrolling and therefore more time than flipping through an book would - in practice this is a detriment to eye contact and live player interactions.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Sat Jun 19, 2010 11:45 pm

Trade paperbacks (also called perfect bind) were the most common of books printed in the late eighties, early nineties. They have problems with being entirely glue based, which eventually fails or the paper does; as well as never lying flat on the table.

Which is why you see companies like Steve Jackson avoiding these printing style - no matter how nice and dense they are - when they can, even though their treasure chest was made of the things.

So high-use books should be bound with a floating cloth binding, like most hardback books are today.

-Crissa

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Sun Jun 20, 2010 6:04 am

If I'm dishing out hardcover prices for my RPG, I want a hardcover book who won't have a broken spine after a week of use.

My first copy of Dark Heresy had a spine problem, and it feels like the book is going to drop out of the f*cking cover at any moment.

Unforgiveable for what they're charging for it.

krainboltgreene · Post by **krainboltgreene** » Sun Jun 20, 2010 7:57 am

Two columns of text (standard) or single column? Or maybe 3?

What about series layout? D&D has the (almost trademarked) Players Book and two GM Books (MM, DMG), while Spirit of the Century has a single book. Dresden Files split it two ways, with one being for setting and the other being for playing.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Jun 20, 2010 8:29 am

OP: http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=49986

Just check out the first couple of pages. There's also some discussion much later on about how to appeal to newbies.

I still hold by my statement of not making the next edition of D&D books having the look of the 3E Tomes. While very cool-looking, especially for a couple of books (like the Miniatures Handbook and Monster Manual II) it wasn't a good idea in the long run because it makes it difficult for browsers to realize that a new book has been released because the books look so much like each other.

If we could get a thing going where the spines stood out more then I would be supportive of it.

Also, I pretty much stole Josh's idea of making RPG books in the future look more like art/comic books. The 3E D&D PHB was for its time brilliant. It hooked me in and immediately got me to playing. I think we can do even better than that, however. I downloaded an issue of that stupid-ass Exalted comic book from DriveThruRPG.com and read it even though the story was dumb. Because it was free and the artwork was pretty.

D&D books in the future, however, need an art director and a technical writer. Otherwise good artwork looks like hot trash and you waste your money. Check the 3.0E Forgotten Realms Player's Guide and compare it to the latter--the 3.5E one looks a lot better. Or look at the Shadowrun 4E rulebook. The artwork in that book is really good, not even counting the color glossies, but there isn't enough of it and they're not placed in the most effective spots. Same thing for a 4E book. Any 4E book. They're not as bad as the above examples since they still have some very effective pictures in it (usually the double-page spreads for the chapter introductions) but take a look at, oh, the power sections. Seriously, those things are fucking ugly. They are just copypasted into the pages at random with no scenario, no build-up, no fucking THOUGHT whatsoever.

So let's talk about prose.

Like Frank said, the word inflation has gotten too big and sometimes people good at writing prose are not good at writing rules. If a hobby as insular as computer programming recognizes the value of technical writers I don't see why RPGs should go without, unless they can't afford it.

Maj was totally right in saying that being hit in the face with math and charts right when you open the book is daunting to new players. The technical writer should be one of the highest-paid people on your staff, because they're one of the most important. Probably even more important than your editor, because people are more forgiving of a few typos than they are of stodgy prose.

Nebuchadnezzar · Post by **Nebuchadnezzar** » Mon Jun 21, 2010 2:00 am

I accept that my opinion on this matter is strictly in the minority, but I don't want any art in a RPG manual. I'd really like to be able to flip through such a book in public without people knowing I'm socially inept, I'd prefer a
lower cost book, the vast majority of fantasy art is hackneyed
at best, and if I truly have an itch to see some half naked chick shoot fire from her ass towards some axebeard dwarfdouche I'll spend 10 seconds online.

Frankly, while interior art may be expected by much of the roleplaying demographic and can be directly correlated to an increase of sales, it still removes what thin veneer of respectability the medium possesses.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Jun 21, 2010 2:34 am

Nebuchadnezzar wrote:it still removes what thin veneer of respectability the medium possesses.

That ship has long since sailed, dude. Both in the fact that 'mainstream' peeps already find nerds perverted and sad and in the fact that there are nerd subfandoms that have already sunk to lower depths. Anime/manga nerds and Western RPG nerds say 'hi'.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Mon Jun 21, 2010 2:44 am

I wish more RPGs tried out the small handbook; some kind of 4"x7" (very roughly), 200 pages, cloth spine (so it stays open) hardcover. Something I could actually put on a bookshelf with other books without having to dedicate a shelf specifically to RPGs because of their inconvenient size; yes, I am a guy that's saying bigger isn't better

Even cooler would be comparatively spartan, black & white, illustrations that take up a whole page and tell a story on their own without being cluttered or gratuitous.

kzt · Post by **kzt** » Mon Jun 21, 2010 2:56 am

virgileso wrote:I wish more RPGs tried out the small handbook; some kind of 4"x7" (very roughly), 200 pages, cloth spine (so it stays open) hardcover. Something I could actually put on a bookshelf with other books without having to dedicate a shelf specifically to RPGs because of their inconvenient size; yes, I am a guy that's saying bigger isn't better

The marketing guy at Chaosium (Eric Rowe iirc) convinced them to try that with Hero Wars. Game stores didn't like that format. It works fine in real book stores, but getting placement in book stores is expensive and painful. And book stores are dying too.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Jun 21, 2010 2:59 am

virgileso wrote: Even cooler would be comparatively spartan, black & white, illustrations that take up a whole page and tell a story on their own without being cluttered or gratuitous.

Sorry, virgileso but as far as D&D (and most major RPGs) are concerned color pictures are the wave of the future. Once the ship of color pictures for most books sailed for 3E and color pictures for all books sailed for 4E there is no way we can turn back. People will be asking from now until the end of time why the 'newer' edition looks shoddier and chintzier than the older ones.

B&W pictures are the sign of the cheapass bottom-tier production. I love Shadowrun, but let's face it, the core books look cheap as hell. Compare Shadowrun (a great system) to d20 modern (which sucks ass) by dint of their art values. To a browser, the winner is no contest.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Mon Jun 21, 2010 3:18 am

Which I completely do not understand. The rulebook for Baron Münchhausen was awesome, and entirely B&W, and I would never begrudge a book that used

or

Sin City does wonderfully with a lack of color

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Mon Jun 21, 2010 3:26 am

Sorceror had a wonderfully small footprint. I love how that book looked and also felt in my hand.

Jilocasin · Post by **Jilocasin** » Mon Jun 21, 2010 4:01 am

Lago is right, you've got to remember that Munchausen is full of the work of friggin' Gustave Dore. What it boils down to is that it takes a higher caliber of artist to create black and white work that is equal in visual impact to the color work of affordable artists. A lot more details can be fudged and forgiven when dealing with color. I honestly find it hard to look through many black and white sourcebooks simply because the drawings just aren't that good. The first impression I get is always that those books are cheaply produced and the team that put them together either doesn't care enough or doesn't know how to develop a quality book. I'm sure it isn't true that they don't care, but that's one of the things that goes through my head. That said, it's certainly possible to do (or get) awesome black and white stuff, although it might require rifling through the etchings of people who have been dead for at least seventy years. I'd hazard that the impression you're going to get from the vast majority of potential customers is that black and white just looks cheaper than color.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Mon Jun 21, 2010 4:15 am

Cynic wrote:Sorceror had a wonderfully small footprint. I love how that book looked and also felt in my hand.

Totally. That was a fairly decent book in both layout and artwork. If it was slightly smaller in dimensions, had half again as many pages, and didn't use that terrible cover art (the only colour piece I might add), then it'd be perfect.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Tue Jun 22, 2010 7:17 pm

Trail of Cthulhu

Hardcover, great production values, and self-contained.

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Wed Jun 23, 2010 2:17 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:
Nebuchadnezzar wrote:it still removes what thin veneer of respectability the medium possesses.
That ship has long since sailed, dude. Both in the fact that 'mainstream' peeps already find nerds perverted and sad and in the fact that there are nerd subfandoms that have already sunk to lower depths. Anime/manga nerds and Western RPG nerds say 'hi'.

And furries! Don't forget those bastards. Also Anons past the age of 18 (thanks Scientology raids!). Genre nerds don't get a lot of love either, but we're kind of with them.

On the book: something light and slick, like a trade paperback. Nice art, everything that's necessary to play the game in a trilogy at most and one book at best. And a comprehensive SRD.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Wed Jun 23, 2010 2:31 am

The main thing I like is for the book to be organized well. Your section divisions need to make sense and be easy to look things up. It's generally minor organizational issues, like 2E divided its spell descriptions not by alphabetical order but by spell level. This made it really annoying when you were say trying to look up a spell like ability, because to look up Wall of Stone or Symbol, you had to remember what level it was. The 3E method of doing it in alphabetical order made so much more sense.

And of course, have a good index. RPG books are meant to be used as a quick reference, and looking things up needs to be quick.

Lastly, you want to build your game so as to not encourage too much page flipping. Inheritance can be a powerful tool, but you don't want to overuse it, especially for the DM. Having spells like polymorph any object which work like polymorph which works like alter self is just something you should pretty much never do. And yes, I realize this is actually a good practice in programming languages, but for making a gamebook, people don't have the look-up speed of a computer. You're actually better off trading off efficiency and conciseness to make your book easy to read. Don't be afraid to reprint certain sections or at least make shorthand reminders. Don't load your rules with a ton of references to other rules. References should be made very sparingly. It's okay to have hard coded rules like status conditions and basic mechanics that are simply referred to by reference, but avoid building off of spells, feats or any other modular ability.

Instead of writing a monstrosity like polymorph you're better of just having the entire full text of the spell all in the spell description, instead of referencing other spells.

And of course, this probably goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway. Durability. This is going to be a book you'll be flipping through often, probably lugging around quite a bit. It's going to take a beating and you don't want to worry about pages cheaply falling out of the book from routine use.

Absentminded_Wizard · Post by **Absentminded_Wizard** » Wed Jun 23, 2010 4:41 am

Maj wrote:Put all that kind of stuff first, in a very efficient chapter, then go for the math and details and crap. Leave out all the BS about world flavor text - it just gets in the way of being creative.

I agree. I've never bought a White Wolf book because I got tired of flipping through the pages trying to find the place where the mechanics start. Give me the setting and atmosphere after we've gotten the basics of the mechanics out of the way.

I like the idea of a concise introductory chapter, but I probably want a little more crunch out of it than you do. Specifiically, I hate the idea of having to flip through multiple chapters of attribute/skill/advantage/disadvantage descriptions and being so overwhelmed with the details that I can't figure out how the system fits together until I try to make a character (or possibly until I've played a game). I'd like to see a nice outline of the whole system and the roles played by the various sub-systems right at the beginning of the book, before we get into the text blocks for all the different things. It would be nice for this chapter to explain the campaign assumptions in general terms as well, without getting into specific details of the default setting (if any).

The Gaming Den

The Book

The Book

Diaspora is the ideal RPG book