The Forge Archives

I purchased Paladin a week or so ago, but finally got down to printing it out and reading it this week. Now, this goes to design specifically.

Write /more/.

Paladin is 26 pages long.

Write /more/

My superhero rpg--Hearts and Souls is near 50 pages, and I've not yet managed to sit down and confer all my notes on the settings, nor rewritten it to improve readability and clarity. But if I don't have at least 100 pages, I'm not selling it. Because, less than that /really isn't enough/ to be asking money for.


This isn't to say the quality of Paladin is lacking. Or many other fine games (Otherkind, Inspectres) but please, if you want to sell to me--and most the gamers I know personally, and those like them. Write /more/.

It doesn't have to be rules, either, but examples, sample settings, full settings.

Cartoon Action Hour was 190ish pages and is going to be more.

Talislanta's rules could probably fit 26 pages. Its nearly 500 pages long.

I downloaded another game--Metalface which can be had for free, its rules take up around the same number of pages as Paladin in entirety but the main rulebook is 92 pages, with a Tech supplement packed with the DL that is another 32.

Write more.

You /can/ do it. I know Mr. Nixon is certianly  capable of it, but to me 26 pages is a /really good start/ not a "ready to sell game".

Now this is my opinion, and I'm sure it will be disputed (Why you don't need that much to have a complete RPG!) well of course not, I could write an RPG on a notecard. But just because I can do a thing, does not mean I should publish it and ask for money for it.

Paladin is, by the way, a really really good /start/ but I'd like to have seen more--maybe a long sample adventure, more example settings. Or heck 100 pages of art. Something to justify the paying of the amount of money I did.

Make me feel like giving you money for your /work/ not just your ideas.

God help me, I can't resist ...

If I understand your rant correctly, you're not concerned that quality is lacking (you've said it isn't), but rather than quantity is?

What precisely is the problem here?

Further, why is it a problem for you to pay a meager $6 for an idea and some-but-not-enough work?

What I'm getting at is this: You've said that you and others you know aren't willing to spend $6 because you want more "examples, sample settings, full settings."

Ask yourself this. Is the lack of page count making you uncomfortable because RPGs just should have 100+ pages because they always have? What rational reason do you have for demanding "more" stuff, whatever it is, in a published product (PDF or print)?

I'm concerned that you're demanding more because that's what "we've always done in this hobby." That's a pretty hollow reason to do it. If the game is complete, if it brings you any level of enjoyment in play, why is it a problem at all that the thing is below 100 pp.?

Paladin is worth $6 bucks at 26 pp. My own Dust Devils is, I believe, worth $6 for the PDF, and worth $10 for the print edition. I've sold it to stores who offer it for $12. I still think that's a fair price.

It's 36 pages long. They're small pages. But, oh, what pages! I really can't see how the book could/should expand to, say, 96. The game's all there. I might be able to at a dozen pages or so of revision and examples, but I don't think it's necessary.

So, in short, I want to know more about why your calling for thicker games, especially when -- by your own acount -- the games are quite satisfactory in what they do offer.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

That's just it, it isn't satisfactory. It's too short, it lacks internal support (that is substantitive support for its primary setting more detailed support  on its premise of light vs dark and corruption.)

It's not that RPG's have to be 100 pages or greater, its that /if they want at least 6 dollars from me/ they should be 100 pages. (Really I'd probably been fine with 80 or so for 6.00 ) but frankly it  comes of has lazy to me.

A good idea is not in an of itself is not something I desire to purchase.

Quote from: LordXBrevity is the soul of wit.

How much do you pay for wit these days?

So, let's see. If a game "should be" 100 pages to earn $6 from you, then you'd be willing to buy a 26 page game for about $1.50. Right? Just trying to get the math straight. Or is the curve not linear? I need the formula so I can ensure that the next game I write is of the proper length for the amount that I charge.

Mike

Is /24 pages/ all the effort your going to put into a game?

Quote from: Sidhain
How much do you pay for wit these days?

On average, whatever the market will bear.  Sometimes more, sometimes less.  It is never free though.  Everything has a cost.

Just my two cents...
I don't want much setting...there are already several different examples.
That's what I'm there for as a GM. Especially for Paladin. (and the Player/group input on things)

I never use pre-made settings, aside from perhaps using the building Stronghold in the old Champions game.

Its almost no money, for an engine that generates temptation.

Inspectres also has no setting etc... its also an engine for creating its style of play.

Clinton has already said he'd like to do an update, which will probably revisit the 'how it plays' areas, smoothing out organization and mechanics....and who knows maybe some of the intriguing spins people have put on it (love that new Peter Paladin/Little Paladin idea)... might cost more when its done too.

Still for the money it can't be beat, hell even my 4 color supers playtest saw the mechanics leading to the future "Doughboy- the Rise of the Dark Loaf".  
Plus, It can set a bad business example to start giving away games that could be sold.

Worth it for me...

Tim,

You know I respect you as a designer and a gamer... but... I gotta completely disagree.

If a game is worth playing, it's worth asking money for. It doesn't matter how long it is. It matters how good it is, and how much work the designer put into it. I know for a fact that Clinton put a ton of work into Paladin. I watched him do it.  

A small page count is not indicative of the quality of the game. It also does not indicate the amount of work that went into that game. Quite the contrary, often a good deal of work goes into finding the most concise, coherent way of presentation. A small page count is a goal to be worked for! I've never understood the idea that the more pages a game is, the more money should be asked for it. I can't understand why the market even allows thick games onto store shelves.

One of the biggest things indie designers do is to try and get away from the idea that word counts are important, that quantity is quality. People typically come here precisely *because* they're sick of pages and pages of unnecessary information that they'll probably never use and will definitely never remember.

Didn't someone have a slogan a while back?

"Help fight global deforestation - play Indie RPGs!"

Pag,

That's just it, show me the effort? All I can do in judging effort is /how much is there/, even quality isn't always the result of effort.


I purchased two games the same day--Paladin and Metalface, yes, purchased. Metalface is available free by the way (I managed to find a faulty link to the game that asked for payment--RPGnow's error)

Now did I mind paying for it? No because its 92 page long rulebook, that comes available with a 32 page Tech Supplement--this person spent /effort/ writing this game, its visible in the game.

Do I think that the Clinton R. Nixon worked less hard at his game than the author of Metalface--no.

But to all appearances it doesn't look like he spent as much time at working that hard.

I can only judge from the finished product after all.

I'm not interested in Indie games because "Indie" is cool.
I'm not interested them because they are brilliant. I'm interested in them because I want good games to play /for the money I spend/.  And there are lots of good games that aren't brilliant, but succeed at what they do, by supporting the GM, by supporting the players with information

It seems to me this could go in Mike imponderables threads

How much is too much/ too little when writing a RPG?

For PDF that I'll be printing out...I vote for less whenever possible.

I also vote for at least one PDF version that sacrifices style for lower ink usage. (The Window RPG printout drove me crazy this way..Black pages look cool on screen, not as $$$ in ink printing out on my paper)

Quote from: SidhainI purchased Paladin a week or so ago, but finally got down to printing it out and reading it this week. Now, this goes to design specifically.

Write /more/.

Paladin is 26 pages long.

Write /more/

Allow me to offer a counter-opinion: Write less.

And hear me out.

If you throw a hundred pages at me, my lifestyle and schedule will not permit me to read it. There's too much material for me to digest and, honestly, as a GM, a very real fear that there will be some crucial bit of material that I will outright miss, and get an "ugly surprise" moment during gameplay.  Give me too much material, and I won't really ever play it.

This is, admittedly, partly an attention span issue, but I have to tell you, when I look at games on the shelves today, if they're thick, I'm more likely to think they're crap than not.

I pine for more things which are nice and compact.  It gets in, gets the idea across, solidly and, through the intensified focus of brevity, vividly.  The more material that's offered, the more constrained I'll feel, and the more lost I'll feel.  It's not a fun place to be, and it is why I don't buy most commercial RPGs these days.

Running across quality, digestible stuff like Paladin is a lightning bolt, it's manna, it's a drink of cool clear water in a dust storm of empty words.  Paladin is what I want to buy, hell, I'll even say it's what I need out of "the industry", and I'm pleased as punches to have had a friend wave it at me.

And on a purely pragmatic standpoint, it's a heck of a lot cheaper to get printed and bound down at the local Kinko's.

Most games out there you can buy have a page count right next to, or near to, the price.  Look at it.  If you have a minimum standard, don't buy it.  You'll be missing out on some great stuff, I'm sure, but you'll probably be happier about it.

Just like I'll be missing out on some stuff... with my maximum standard.

[*]I have not seen Paladin, although I've heard good things about it.
[*]No one would accuse Multiverser of being too short.[/list:u]
With those disclaimers made....

A game needs to be as long as it needs to be.

One of our current projects has as its goal the creation of an RPG whose rules are not longer than those for Monopoly or similar board games--including setting, character generation, and play. The idea is that rules length is one of the obstacles to entry into the hobby. We recognize quite clearly that no one is going to read the Multiverser Referee's Rules unless they already have a desire to play the game. There is thus inherent value in creating a rules system that is short, because people who have no idea as yet what a role playing game is will only discover if they can get involved in it quickly.

I understand that most people get into this hobby because someone they know who plays invites them to a game. That was not my experience. I heard about D&D from non-gaming sources, and tracked down the basic set to start playing. I am not certain whether I would have started playing had it been necessary for me to read the DMG and PH all the way through before starting. That blue book was, I think, under a hundred pages (I can't find my copy at the moment, so I don't know for certain).

There is certainly something to be said for a longer game. Multiverser provides everything you would need to play in one book, and seriously you would never actually need to buy another book. People complain about that. They think we should sell it in several smaller books that would cost more in total but could be acquired in installments. (As an aside, what do people here think about that?)

Obviously, some games are more demanding of the referee and the players than others--or perhaps demanding in different ways. Games like D&D and Multiverser, even with simple core mechanics, have something of a high learning curve: you have to know how to find what you need to know when you need to know it. Other games expect much more from the referee or players in terms of filling in the gaps. It is partly a matter of preference; it is not just a matter of preference.

A game needs to be as long as it needs to be. It does not need to have material that is not necessary; it needs to contain everything that is necessary. This is the essential point. Make it long enough, but not too long.

Tim, I sympathize. I would be surprised to find a "complete role playing game" in a document that was only twenty-six pages long; and if I had to print it myself and it still cost six dollars, I might think it overpriced--might, mind you, because it still will depend on whether it really was a complete game, that is, whether for six dollars I really got everything I really needed, and was happy with that. But the problem doesn't seem to be the length (you admit that games can be so short, I think); it isn't necessarily the price (if it were already printed, you'd probably have to pay so much for it). It's that you, personally, expect a $6 PDF to be longer. Hey, for that money, I think I would expect more pages, if the author didn't have to pay for paper. But that's not really the point, I think.

Perhaps the solution isn't that game writers have to write longer games. Perhaps it's just that those who sell PDF versions of games have to do these things:

[*]Make it clear how many pages the game is, and what it does and does not contain;
[*]Persuade us that it's worth whatever the asking price is at that size.[/list:u]
If you knew before you bought it that Paladin was only twenty-six pages, probably you would not have purchased it, and Clinton would have lost the sale--but then, you wouldn't be here complaining about it either, and he wouldn't have gotten the bad publicity.

--M. J. Young

I agree wholeheartedly with Iago.

But, it occurs to me that Bob is correct. We're talking about a personal standard here. My personal standard honestly can't imagine being upset because a game is too short. I say again, if a game works and is fun to play, it's worth paying money for. This is, in the most literal possible way, my philosophy when buying a game.

The attribute that Tim is complaining about (small page counts) is something that I go out of my way to find. If a game has too many pages, my most likely reaction is "too much crap." Without sorrow, the game goes back on the shelf, or the web site is closed down.

(Professional quality layout and artwork is actually more likely to siphon money out of my wallet. Elfs is a $10 game, but it's sure not a $10 PDF. :)

I don't know how much James plans on asking for The Questing Beast, but will I be upset that he's charging for it because it's only 32 pages? No! My opinion is that TQB is one of the top ten (maybe top five) games out there. It's worth $10 if he asks that. Maybe even $15, or $20, for a printed version. That James has manged to focus that kind of quality into a text that's under 50 pages *increases* the worth in my eyes. It doesn't diminish it!