Level of Detail of Corebook (v. Supplement)?

[Space Cowboy]

Hey all,

How's it going?  I hope that everything is well with you.

The writing for Wild Sphere is in the final phase.  As a result, an interesting issue has arisen- How much detail to put into the Corebook v. putting the material into a Supplement?

The reason that I ask is because when I was talking over some points with my co-Designer today, he said that the corebook should have a general level of detail, just enough for a GM to take the ideas presented to spin out their own ideas.  Additionally, the feedback as to what people what to know more about will tell us what supplements to work on.

Moreover, I was planning on putting a lot of stuff on the WS website, both to encourage people to visit and to cut down printing costs.

Anyways, I just wanted to know how other people feel about the issue.

Many thanks in advance!

Cheers

[M. J. Young]

Well, I'm probably the last person to answer this question, but I'll give you my answer, the one that was essential in our work on Multiverser.

When the core rules are done, the supplements should be unnecessary. I, at least, am extremely annoyed by necessary supplements--books you really do need to play the game.

I think a supplement should stand on its own, such that people would buy it because it offers something extremely useful for what they want to do with a game, but that it should not contain anything that would be deemed necessary for play.

Examples of good supplements:

[*]The book provides everything you need to create and run your own setting; the supplement provides setting materials which do things you might not have considered on your own, to expand your ideas of how to do things and/or save you prep time. I believe that both Multiverser's world books and Sorcerer's setting books are of this sort.
[*]The book requires all the basic information in an area, such as how to create and define weapons, or spells, or vehicles, or characters, or monsters, such that a referee could design as many of these as he desired within the rules. The supplement does the work, providing finished product which illustrates how to do it more easily and saves time by providing precut examples. I could probably cite a lot of these, but I think that there are a number of GURPS books on this order (I have seen GURPS Rogues, because I know the author), and I think BTRC's Guns, Guns, Guns is in this category (although I've never seen it).
[*]The book gives you everything you need to create your own adventure; the supplement does the adventure prep for you. Modules are typical of this, and there's some of it in the Multiverser world books.
[*]The book contains all the necessary rules, but there are supplements which illustrate and illuminate how they work and what can be done with them. There's a Multiverser Universe Creator's Handbook in the works that falls into this category, providing charts that you could create yourself from the rules, advice that you could discover by trial and error, summaries and restatements of information already in the core rules, and similar aids to make the rather compact section on world creation in the original rules easier to use.[/list:u]
That's my opinion, anyway. If a supplement contains information that is necessary to properly play or run the game, it's a flaw in the core rules.

--M. J. Young

[Roy]

As an RPG consumer, I want everything I need to play in the main core book.  I want examples of how to play, adventure seeds, and details on how to make the game my own.

I normally don't buy supplements, but the few I do buy give me more options and ideas without establishing anything as "official canon".  For a great example of "supplements done right", take a look at the supplements for Sorcerer.

Roy

[Andrew Martin]

I'd like to see the core book as one that all the players get. Then the supplements should be like additional "play sets" that just add more "stuff" to play with; they really are just "supplements". I think the best analogy is something like Lego (TM) playsets, where one can buy a box small or large of Lego bricks, and then expand that with Lego sets for Robin Hood, Star Wars, Pirates and so on. These expansions have on the box cover the intended result, and the contents inside. For example, a Lego model of Luke's landspeeder from Star Wars IV: A New Hope, has a picture of Luke, Obi Wan Kenobi, and the land speeder vehicle on the outside. Inside are the bricks that make up what's pictured on the outside. So we can see what the intended result is and the contents allow us to achieve that. Here's a review so you can see: http://www.adequate.com/lego/reviews/Details/243.html

How does this apply to your RPG and it's supplements? Each book or supplement should be complete in themselves. What's on the outside should be achievable with the contents on the inside, without needing anything else. Other supplements just enhance the experience. M. J. Young points out a lot of good examples in Multiverser. Roy points out Sorcerer and it's supplements. The GURPS range of books is sort of like these, but I feel there's a bit too much splitting up in the range (for example THS needing information in other GURPS books).

I hope that helps!

[Ron Edwards]

Hi SC,

Let's back up here a minute. In many ways, this is a publishing question, not a design question, although they're related (and we'll keep the thread here for now).

Why would I say publishing-first? Because it doesn't matter what people type here in this forum, or what they'd say if you could visit every doorstep in the country and get everyone's opinion. What matters is how you want to publish the game.

Remember all those posts we exchanged a while ago in the Publishing forum? I really tried to nail down just what the physical nature of your game was planned to be, and how you wanted to sell it.

If you're planning on selling it primarily through the stores, then all this talk about what "should" be in a core book is a complete waste of time. The distributors and retailers don't care for one red second what's in your core book; what they care about is that it represents a tidy profit margin, has a pretty cover and some kind of "ooh!" customer grab, and that it will be followed by a string of supplements on a reliable schedule.

And that's all. Publishing in this fashion means that all your other considerations (i.e. what you're polling for in this thread) must at least compromise with the issues in the above paragraph and preferably (as they see it) be completely subordinated to them.

Oh yes, and one more thing, just because my antennae are twitching. If you and your co-author are not 100% clear about who wears the pants, then you're headed for disaster. You might share the pants, by which I mean, alternate wearing them based on which decisions are being made ("I make promo decisions, you make print decisions," etc). But one person's gotta wear'em per issue.

Best,
Ron

[Space Cowboy]

Hey all,

Wow!  First off, thanks heaps to everyone for all your good posts!

Based on some posts, let me apologize for not clarifying that I wanted to know how much detail to put into in the background materials, not the game mechanics.  Regarding the latter, the Wild Sphere corebook has ALL the rules you need to play (including a bunch of optional and alternate rules so each GM/Party can adjust to suit their particular style), plus author’s notes on numerous subjects, specific examples for specific rules, and 2.5 pages of an example of gameplay.  You will not need to buy more than one book to play the game.

What my post was referring to is how much is the right level of detail to put into the background material in the corebook?  For example, Shadowrun has a couple pages about Seattle, which is way less detail than what’s in the Seattle Sourcebook.  The problem that I’m running into that my co-Designer is pointing out is that my tendency is to put in a lot of detail into background materials, which, for reasons of time and printing costs, are probably better left to a supplement or to put on the website for free and I’m trying to find the right balance.  In how much detail should the corebook cover a nation or a planet or an organization?  How creative should I assume the GM is in filling in the blanks?  To what extent should I encourage filling in the blanks?  As counterexamples, in my humble opinion, I would say that First Edition Gamma World’s background materials were probably too thin, whereas I think that Rifts and Vampire do an excellent job of presenting rich, detailed worlds in enough detail for a GM to do a lot with what is given.

Many thanks in advance!

PS- Ron, thanks again for all your advice on my earlier posts in the publishing section!  In terms of the distributors and retailers, hopefully WS will stack up in those categories (my most experienced artist is working on what I think is a really darn cool cover that’s a montage of images that evoke the diverse themes and flexible nature of WS).  When the writing is a bit further along, I'll try to put some feelers out to see what local retailers think.

PSS- Ron, thanks for the delegation of authority warning!  Chris and I don’t really have any issues in that area: he’s focusing on building up his web comic, so as co-Designer, I mainly just consult him for design ideas but I retain the final word and I have done all the writing myself (this also helps prevent internal inconsistencies and to ensure a certain quality of writing).  Also, I am the sole copyright holder, and his ideas are work-for-hire.  Moreover, we've been friends for nearly 20 years and I have a tremendous amount of respect for his work and for him as a person.