Purple Prose & Rules-Lite [Silva stay out]

General questions, debates, and rants about RPGs

Moderator: Moderators

Post Reply
User avatar
virgil
King
Posts: 6339
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Purple Prose & Rules-Lite [Silva stay out]

Post by virgil »

*World is over 300 pages. Dungeon World is nearly 400. The designers don't seem to be in a situation where they are paid by the word. What's up with making these games so big for what is unarguably a bare-bones ruleset, if you can even call it a full system? Are they huge for the same reason (whatever they are) that nWoD was getting verbose, or the Fate games like Dresden Files for that matter?

Meanwhile, there are games like Ars Magica & Shadowrun which are 240 to 350 pages. While footprint obviously modifies this, they are not wildly divergent in size. They get away with both giving you a complete game/setting and a robust level of rules to work with, irrespective of their quality.
Last edited by virgil on Wed May 06, 2015 8:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Come see Sprockets & Serials
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
EXPLOSIVE RUNES!
Username17
Serious Badass
Posts: 29894
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Username17 »

Editing isn't finished when there's nothing left to add, but when there's nothing left to take away. When authors become powerful enough to win arguments with their editors, their books become massive, bloated things. When Stephen King got to make a "complete and uncut" version of The Stand, it's more pages than the PHB, DMG, and MM combined. Wheel of Time and Game of Thrones books similarly become more bloated as the series drags on.

When games are made without any real editing oversight at all, they get big and shaggy. It takes real discipline to get page count down, and people working without editors rarely have that discipline.

-Username17
User avatar
Josh_Kablack
King
Posts: 5318
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Location: Online. duh

Post by Josh_Kablack »

I can't speak specifically to the * World games, but there has definitely been a generational trend towards larger and larger game books. What I mean is that Sample Game from 2015 will be longer than Sample Game from 2005, will be longer than Sample Game from 1995. I speculate that is technology's fault, like due to advances in printing and cheaper publication and the shift towards electronic texts and resources.
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
User avatar
Leress
Prince
Posts: 2770
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Leress »

Here is a rules-lite game that is only about 8 pages.

http://www.btrc.net/eabanywhere

I will do review of this one soon.
Koumei wrote:I'm just glad that Jill Stein stayed true to her homeopathic principles by trying to win with .2% of the vote. She just hasn't diluted it enough!
Koumei wrote:I am disappointed in Santorum: he should carry his dead election campaign to term!
Just a heads up... Your post is pregnant... When you miss that many periods it's just a given.
I want him to tongue-punch my box.
]
The divine in me says the divine in you should go fuck itself.
TheFlatline
Prince
Posts: 2606
Joined: Fri Apr 30, 2010 11:43 pm

Post by TheFlatline »

FrankTrollman wrote:Editing isn't finished when there's nothing left to add, but when there's nothing left to take away. When authors become powerful enough to win arguments with their editors, their books become massive, bloated things. When Stephen King got to make a "complete and uncut" version of The Stand, it's more pages than the PHB, DMG, and MM combined. Wheel of Time and Game of Thrones books similarly become more bloated as the series drags on.

When games are made without any real editing oversight at all, they get big and shaggy. It takes real discipline to get page count down, and people working without editors rarely have that discipline.

-Username17
It's hilarious that you mention Stephen King because he points out in On Writing that his best advice he ever got was his first real rejection letter that said "2nd draft = 1st draft - 10% of your word count".
User avatar
Neurosis
Duke
Posts: 1057
Joined: Thu Sep 02, 2010 3:28 pm
Location: Wouldn't you like to know?

Post by Neurosis »

The prose in AssWorld isn't what you would accurately call "purple", but Vince Baker obviously loves to hear himself talk, which is the source of the bloatage.

Stephen King--who I am a big fan of, by the way--is a pretty stellar example of "do as I say, not as I do" when it comes to writing. And On Writing is wisdom I have tried to live by for years.
For a minute, I used to be "a guy" in the TTRPG "industry". Now I'm just a nobody. For the most part, it's a relief.
Trank Frollman wrote:One of the reasons we can say insightful things about stuff is that we don't have to pretend to be nice to people. By embracing active aggression, we eliminate much of the passive aggression that so paralyzes things on other gaming forums.
hogarth wrote:As the good book saith, let he who is without boners cast the first stone.
TiaC wrote:I'm not quite sure why this is an argument. (Except that Kaelik is in it, that's a good reason.)
RelentlessImp
Knight-Baron
Posts: 701
Joined: Tue Mar 09, 2010 11:03 am

Post by RelentlessImp »

Another problem is games like BearWorld wants rules for everything the authors IMAGINE you would want to do rather than making a set of general application rules to guide a large grouping of situations. BearWorld is programmed in If...else, statements, which any programmer will tell you is both sloppy and stupid, while games like D&D are programmed with function calls that call formulae.
Last edited by RelentlessImp on Thu May 07, 2015 2:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
MGuy
Prince
Posts: 4774
Joined: Tue Jul 21, 2009 5:18 am
Location: Indiana

Post by MGuy »

It's also important to note that people love the whole: Make your own rules! Thing both designers and the players eat that shit UP. It provides such an easy defense of their favorite ruleset so when people start telling them it sucks they inevitably come back with the fact that they are doing it wrong. Now people do that for games like DnD too but the less rules there actually are the less there is to say about the rules. More and more of it becomes the GM's responsibility such that any failures obviously a reflection of the GM's poor skills instead of the actual ruleset.
The first rule of Fatclub. Don't Talk about Fatclub..
If you want a game modded right you have to mod it yourself.
User avatar
virgil
King
Posts: 6339
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by virgil »

I don't think the author for *World is necessarily aiming for being inclusive, so much as them giving examples to the point of parody. Frank seems to have the right idea. Like how Ron Edwards can spend entire books' worth of words without saying a damn thing, nothing's stopping them from going on endlessly.
MGuy wrote:It's also important to note that people love the whole: Make your own rules! Thing both designers and the players eat that shit UP.
I have seen DMs become more enamored during times when players starting playing the game wrong; a seeming backlash against player agency. The players I see that advocate heavily for such games tend to be quite pro-DM and ROLEplayers, with an extra dose of contempt toward 'munchkins' and 'rules lawyers'.

Anecdote, I know. But it helps me sleep at night :P

There have certainly been times when I had the urge to try and edit/streamline rules like D&D. Not so far as microlite d20 where rules are changed, but excise extraneous material and trap options (of which there is so much).
Come see Sprockets & Serials
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
EXPLOSIVE RUNES!
User avatar
virgil
King
Posts: 6339
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by virgil »

...
Last edited by virgil on Tue Oct 18, 2016 2:30 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Come see Sprockets & Serials
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
EXPLOSIVE RUNES!
User avatar
Ice9
Duke
Posts: 1568
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Ice9 »

Not all books use their page-count well, but it's certainly possible for a game to be rules-light and still have a huge book without it being a waste. For two reasons:

1) Complexity != Amount of Content. Even a fairly simple system can have large numbers of feats/classes/monsters/whatever. And abundance can be a selling point - Rifts, for example.

2) Setting Info. A lot of rules-light games (most FATE ones, for example) put the system and setting in the same book. And again, lots of setting material can be a selling point.
Post Reply