Size of Rules & Stuff

[Christoffer Lernö]

I was looking through some old RPGs from when I started playing. I remember these game as good introductions and not too overwhelming.

Checking through them though, they turn out to be maybe something like 40 A4 pages. I remember reading something about Orkworld where Wick said he originally aimed at 104 pages but ended up with a 200+ something eventually.

This gets me thinking. How much does a 40 page game limit me (we're talking about a format which would translate to 40 A4 pages but the actual page-count would be higher)? Even if I double that with a separate book for setting details and maybe magic spells if I have 'em - will I be having to cut of a lot of fat from the text?

You who already PDF:ed your stuff and such, you should know approximately how much you need and for what. Help?

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Heya.

Speaking on the Orkworld thing, you may recall he had a set goal for the game, 104 pp or whatever, but it later balloned up. The reason, if you may recall, is because of a conversation with James Wallis:

Wick said: "Orkworld is going to be 104 pp."

Wallis said: "Why?"

The point John took from this was that the game should be as long as it has to be. Period. So he ditched his page count goal and simply wrote the game. If it had turned out to be 50 pp or 10,000pp. that's as long as it needed to be, so that's how long it would be.

I suppose two things to keep in mind is: Do not leave out anything that's necessary and Leave out anything that is unnecessary.

Imagine, for example, Monopoly if they had left out, for the sake of brevity, the rules for how you acquire the properties. This could lead to confusion since a very necessary part of the game is missing. Whatever the players will need in play, do not forget to write it down. This includes anything that is use-defined. Be sure to state that such areas are to be determined by the individual group and to give guidelines to developing such areas.

By that same token, imagine if Monopoly included all of the myriad of house rules that are floating around out there. They would have to print up a small, possible rather thick booklet, foregoing printing the rules inside the box lid. The disadvantage here is not so much that it's a lot of reading, which is a disadvantage, but it's a lot of unnecessary reading since they are all optional rules most of which they will not use and, I'll bet, several of them are contridictory.

My advice is to forget about your 40 page goal and simply write it. Write it completely but concisely. Then count how many pages you have.

[Christoffer Lernö]

I was thinking more of "rule of thumb" guidelines. I want to know approximately where I'm heading.

Amount of pages for the mechanics for example, can indicate bloated game text, mechanics or both.

Unfortunately I only have in my hands a few simple games and not any of the more bloated examples.

I don't know if 80 for example is "fat and a lot of room for background" or if it's already restrictive.

It would be interesting to know the page-count for published games as well as knowing if that felt constrictive or plenty of room for what felt necessary to have.

Maybe Ron could give his take on Sorcerer for example. I'm thinking mostly of printed games here. Anyone else who'd like to share their stories?

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Amount of pages for the mechanics for example, can indicate bloated game text, mechanics or both.

Hmmm.. for bloated mechanics, that will hash itself out if you playtest. In other words, playtest and playtest as often as you can with as many different people as you can, then afterwards talk with them and take whatever criticism they give to heart, and thus you will cut down on a lot of the rules bloating. You will cut down on even more if you simply pay attention during play to what features of you mechanics are simply not being used or are not being used often. This will cut down on a good deal of the bloat if you simplify or simply remove rarely or never used mechanics.

The other thing that will cut down on bloat is to learn to write conscisely, which is a lot like poetry, saying what you mean with as few words as possible. This'll just take work, I'm afraid.

Maybe Ron could give his take on Sorcerer for example. I'm thinking mostly of printed games here. Anyone else who'd like to share their stories?

Ron'll better answer this question, but I recall from the history section on the Sorcerer site notes that from the original ASCII file to the current hardback, there was a lot of playtesting which help to streamline the rules to remove unnecessary things. Exactly what, I cannot say, but this confirms (and is probably where I got) what I said above.

[Christoffer Lernö]

To be honest I was also thinking of it as a tool for myself personally to nail down the Ygg rules.

My biggest problems in nailing down mechanics is in character creation. I go over it again and again but I don't seem to be able to nail it down. However, I got back to the old (short) RPG books I was referring to and noticed how thin the rules actually where. For example, the heaviest one has a total page of count of maybe 7 A4 pages, and that's including rules for the skill system as well as listing and explaining all skills.

My system on the other hand, if I go with classes, might run a cost of 1 A4 page per class. Considering I already have over 20 classes and that's nowhere complete and that this doesn't include any other stuff like background generation, stats, descriptors and so on, I'm already running far above my limit it would seem.

If I would go with that scheme that is. It's not the only scheme, so these kind of comparisons are actually useful for me as they provide a rule of thumb for how complex the game can be.

I'm very much looking for a simple design and while classes are simple, it isn't simple with 100 pages of class description no matter how simple the mechanics are once you choose.

In this way the page count might be able to provide a very crude but useful rule of thumb of how much I need to cut down. Or so I think.

[M. J. Young]

I think you missed what Jack said.

The game needs to be as long as it takes to include what needs to be included, and not any longer.

Now, I don't know where John Wick got his 104 page count; but I do know that our printer won't do a book with fewer than that number of pages, so we make sure that we're looking at something at least that long before we approve the project. That's a practical consideration; we could solve it alternatively by going through a different printer, but our printer is a critical link in our distribution system, so we're not going to do that.

Multiverser's Referee's Rules are 569 pages. One is blank (backing the title page), thirteen are full-page images, and the rest display text. Several reviewers and many customers have commented that the text is packed with information and explanation, with no fluff and little wasted space. It's possible you won't use it all, but for a game system that attempts to cover everything, all of it is useful. If I tried really hard, I might be able to cull ten pages from the text--but I'm not convinced it would be an improvement, and I could probably as easily find good reasons to make it as much longer, if I were tweaking.

I've got a copy of Pendragon 4th edition here. It's 354 pages, three of them ads in the back. It has more artwork than Multiverser, but probably less white space and better layout. I've read a lot of comments about this game, nearly all of them positive, and none claiming that the rules are too long for the purpose.

The D&D3E PH is 304 pages long; the DMG is 256 more, for a total of 560--hey, that's almost the same length as my game, but they split it into two books. I've only found time to read 65 pages, but as yet have not found anything I would say was unnecessary, however disagreeable I find the new system to my old-codgery adherence to OAD&D rules. A lot of people like this game, and a lot don't, but I haven't heard anyone claim that the rules were bloated with a lot of unnecessary material (except that there have been some complaints about those background images making it difficult to read the text in spots).

A game doesn't have to be long to be good; but it doesn't have to be short to be good, either. It has to be as long as it has to be. If Ygg needs twenty classes to be as good as you want it to be, and each of those classes needs a two-page description, then you need 40 pages just for classes. Let me suggest, however, that if you're going to do that, you should also help players find their way through the morass.

For example, you might put together a set of two-line synopses of all classes, so that players can get the flavor of classes quickly and only have to look at the details on those that particularly interest them.

You might also cross reference similar classes. An OAD&D example might be "If you like the idea of magic user, but aren't certain of the details, take a look at:
Illusionist, for a more focused collection of spells
Wu Jen, for an oriental flavor and elemental bonuses
Wizard of High Sorcery, for an emphasis on the brotherhood of magic, and some interesting shifts in power"
This would make it easier for a player to find what he wants without having to read all of the class pages.

There might even be a way of ordering classes in a kind of flow of emphasis; for example, you could set up a grid on which greater reliance on magic was higher up, greater reliance on combat further left, so that the top right would be someone who used combat and magic intensively, the bottom left someone who used neither particularly well (such as a thief?).

But that's beside the point. The point is this: write the game. Write exactly as much information as you think it needs. Get a complete draft on paper. Then when you've done that, find someone whose opinion you trust (and preferably who has not heard/read every idea you've floated to date) and ask them to read it and comment. Let them tell you whether you've said too much in one place and too little in another, and then work from there. That's really the only thing that works.

--M. J. Young

[Christoffer Lernö]

Are you sure you're getting my point?

The point is that I could, for example, make the game with or without classes. Without classes I'd have to cut some corners and I'm not ensuring that players have consistent characters. On the other hand it has benefits as well.

Before I took the size into account, these weighted about equal.

On the other hand, figuring the size I want to strive for, I came up with some ideas to cut slim things down, most of them not using my standardized classes.

If I would have written it all down I'd probably have ended up with a lot of useless material. As the game is currently, almost everything is in proto-form. I have lists of skills and abilities, but they aren't grouped or evaluated or given descriptions, that's only in my head. Similarly with a lot of the other stuff.

Actually putting those into a playable form will be work, not slimming down. So if I do some extra trimming on my rules now, I might save working on convoluted rules requiring maybe 20 (rather unnecessary) pages.

I also see a correlation between short mechanics and accesibility. "How many pages do you have to read to be able to test the game" is an important factor, at least to me.

[Demonspahn]

Hi Christoffer,

I'm going to drop .02 from my own experience here.  You say that a lot of rules are in your head.  I have found that except in the most extreme circumstances you never know what you need/what you don't need or what works/what doesn't until you actually write down the rules and playtest them out.  

My suggestion then would be to go ahead and write down all of the rules and concepts that are still floating around in your head before you make a decision on which ones to keep.  For some reason I just find it easier to make design choices once I see it all laid out in front of me.   And if this means that you just wrote an extra twenty pages or so of rules that you'll never use, so what?  I don't know anyone that couldn't use writing practice.  Besides, the upshot is that once the ideas are down on paper and you see which ones work, a lot of times you get inspired to add something new and that is never a bad thing.

I would also like to second the notion that the game should be as long as it should be.  Don't skimp or rules and especially don't skimp on setting.  Never limit yourself by page count unless you're writing for someone else's specs.  I think that's the absolute worst thing you can do.  

Also keep in mind what word processor program you are using to write might affect final page count---Dreamwalker was like 400 pages in MS Word without art and the finished book was only 152.  Not saavy enough to know what the A4 delineation is so you might have already taken this into account.

Anyway, the bottom line is write it _all_ down (levels, classes, skills, background, rules, etc.), then pick and choose.

Hope this helps/makes sense and good luck.  

Pete

[Jack Spencer Jr]

My suggestion then would be to go ahead and write down all of the rules and concepts that are still floating around in your head before you make a decision on which ones to keep.  For some reason I just find it easier to make design choices once I see it all laid out in front of me.   And if this means that you just wrote an extra twenty pages or so of rules that you'll never use, so what?  I don't know anyone that couldn't use writing practice.  Besides, the upshot is that once the ideas are down on paper and you see which ones work, a lot of times you get inspired to add something new and that is never a bad thing.

I quoted Pete here because this paragraph bears rereading.

Christopher,

It sounds to me like you're trying to get your game "perfect" before you ever get it down on paper or electronic code, anyway. Well, all I can say is that if you manage that then you're the Greatest RPG Designer the WOrld Has Ever Seen. Games do not spring forth from the designer's forehead fully formed. I wish it were so, and God knows I had labored under this delusion for years. I would spare you that and tell you to simply write your game. It won't be perfect. Such things rarely are, but by not doing so because you want to get it 'right' before you commit pen to paper, you are depriving yourself of a very important step in the design process. Seriously. Listen to what Pete has said. Say you do get it perfect in your head, then you write it. You'll find that, once written, it wasn't as perfect as you had thought.

On another note, you seem to be going back and forth about some features of your game, such as classes. Well, I would say, don't write those just yet. Get the basics of your game down. You can always write the classes chapter later. But get something written down. Then, if you haven't already, start playtesting.

Right now you have ideas. Ideas are cool but they're shifty. You need to nail them down on paper. Once on paper, you need to put them into action to make sure that it isn't simply "good on paper."

Take care

[Christoffer Lernö]

On another note, you seem to be going back and forth about some features of your game, such as classes. Well, I would say, don't write those just yet. Get the basics of your game down. You can always write the classes chapter later. But get something written down. Then, if you haven't already, start playtesting.

Ah! You found the magic words Jack! You're right, I should get down and put together all those pieces I already decided on. The thing that has been stopping me over and over again is that there are parts I haven't been able to nail down. Like character classes (or not).

People has been telling me "write it down, write it down!" but I've felt I've been unable to do it as long as parts of the system is still confusing me totally.

Now, if I ignore the tricky parts and just write down all the stuff I have in my brain "already decided on", well that wouldn't only help me, but I could let you see I'm getting somewhere too (the two part Ygg presentations were a step in this direction, but they lacked any references to mechanics - this was mainly due to concerns of length).

Actually I already started working on it and if I have enough time I'll be able to show something by say the day after tomorrow already.

Once again Jack, thanks for telling me to ignore the undecided parts and write down what I got (maybe you all meant it this way, but in my muddled state of mind I was thinking you meant I should write a completely playable game and not settle for an only partly completed one)

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Once again Jack, thanks for telling me to ignore the undecided parts and write down what I got (maybe you all meant it this way, but in my muddled state of mind I was thinking you meant I should write a completely playable game and not settle for an only partly completed one)

Glad to help. :) Yeah, pretty much anything or any section of the rules that has the word "list" at the end of it can be safely put aside for the time being. You know stuff like "class list" or "creature list" or "skill list." Personally, I find such things tedious to read, so I can imagine it must be murder to write. In any case they are stuff that can be hammered out later since they're case-specific stuff, such as, the Swimming skill won't matter squat in the desert, but will be usefull when suddenly in the ocean again.

So good luck, now. I hope you have fun with it.

[ADGBoss]

I think Jack and Pete have more then adequately talked about the creation process as far as page count so I won't go into that. From a design, ie deskptop publishing layout etc point of view there are a couple things to keep in mind:

How much artowrk is going to be in the manuscript and will any of it be full page?
What size font and WHAT font are you going to use? Size and Type of Font will not make or break your game but if people feel that they have ALOT of words per page AND its redable then they will enjoy the game that much more.
Layout: Are you going to do Setting then Mechanics; Mechanics then Setting, or the two of them interspersed as you go...
Is there going to be any extras? Fiction (yes I know many of you slapped me around about game fiction BUT some people may still want to put it in their games :) ) Adventures? A Model Character sheet or will that be aseparate download? I know thats alot ot ponder when your just trying to get the Mechanics squared away but these extras will add pages.  Now except for Art which has been expressed before as necassary, nothing I mentioned is necassary for a good game.  However, presentation can make the difference between a game someone plays once and one they get alot of use out of iAND use over and over.

AND then you have the Editor.  When whoever EDITS your game, well there very well may be cuts and reisions and additions etc.

Hope this has been helpful

[Mike Holmes]

I'm going to disagree sorta with what Jack has said.

As you write, if you are undecided about something, just throw a mechanic in as you write anyway. Fill the hole in some way. In fact, even if you're sure the mechanic is bad, and doesn't work with the rest of the stuff, throw it in anyway. If you have a choice between two mechanics, either choose the bigger, or include them both. If it makes you feel better about it, put asterisks next to anything you're uncertain about, to indicate that this stuff is completely provisional.

Write everything down that you can think of and have time to add. Make a monster manuscript. Get it up to over 100 pages at the very least if you can. Assuming you want about 40 in the end.

Then -

Then you can continue. Look back at what you have. Repair the parts that don't work right. Trim it down then until it contains what you need.

This is how you make a game. You write down a bunch of junk and then you rewrite again and again until it's right. For example, Ralph completely rewrote Universalis no less than seven times. After the first couple of revisions, we had a game that could be played. And we playtested each version. In the end we had a game that looked very little like the first draft. It was less than half the words that Ralph had originally written, as we took the advice of testers, and trimmed it down to the essentials.

But it worked in the end, and worked like we felt it should. All the speculation in the world about what we could write down wouldn't have made a difference. We needed a living document from which to work.

You have more than enough ideas for a manuscript. And you know what else you're going to find as you write? You're going to get more ideas. The writing process produces them itself. In the end, you too will find that you have far more than you thought. This is the point at which the actual design begins, then, as you fix and cut the rules into shape. Til then all you can do is speculate ad infinium about what "might" make a game that fits your goals.

Mike

[Matt Wilson]

I'll second what Mike said. It happens with everything I write at work. The hard part is getting that first draft done. The rewrite and edits are mostly a breeze compared to laboring over that first draft.

Note that editing, of course, offers its own frustrations.

Another nice thing about throwing down mechanics, as I've found, is it gets you to consider the overall impact when you change a small part. "if I use d6s instead of d20s that means I need to readjust the success levels, and if I readjust the success levels..."

[Mike Holmes]

Another nice thing about throwing down mechanics, as I've found, is it gets you to consider the overall impact when you change a small part. "if I use d6s instead of d20s that means I need to readjust the success levels, and if I readjust the success levels..."

Right. I can't emphasize this enough. If you just have a whole bunch of "maybes" then you can't really consider how each mechanic affects the next. Only by having some decisions made even if only provisionally (noting that they are all subject to change until the game is finished), can you analyze a mechanic in the context of the others. And only thereby can you proceed once you've gotten past the "Idea" phase.

And the only way to remember what your provisional decisions are is to write them down. Anything else, and you get stuck in the, "Hmm did I decide to go with Hit Points of Wound levels?" circle of endless self-questioning.

Mike