The game uses a simple system

>The game uses a simple system
>400 pages

Anything less might as well be freeform.

>half of them explain how to roll a dice.

Say what you will about the 40k rpgs, but at least they're simplier than 3.pf and other d20 systems

>40k
>simple

I don't believe you.

Have you ever read the RPG books? It's no masterpiece but still better than Dee en Dee

>the other half is about the difference between die and dice

>they get them mixed up in the rules later.

Gurps is pretty dang massive and it’s only 580 pages

A % based system is far more intuitive than DCs.

Found a rule-wanker.

>Book is split in approximately in half.
>First half is the lore with no mention of rules
>Second half is rules with no mention of lore
>Contents page is stuck between the two.
>Character creation requires flipping between 4 sections.
>The part telling you how many of each type of points you get to spend in character creation (there were three different types)
>The page listing what everything cost in each type of points you could buy it in
>The long list of what every special power did
>The contents page to know where each section was. If you could remember where it was.

This did happen to me. It was only a 200 page rulebook and the rules were simple if you got past character creation.

I don't get how RPG books get to this level of fluff. Like all of my mechanics and rules for my homebrew I made were like 20-25 pages and then the rest of just class shit about what skills they get when and explanation of them.

Mechanics can be simple but rpg systems should be chock full of content.

Because they're designed to be clear, they regularly make mistakes and things aren't clear, but the idea is to spell everything out and make sure someone has the information to read if they need to.
Only War spends like 27 pages explaining elements of the Imperial Guard, chain of command, platoons, squads, the mechanicus.
You can skim or skip if you know it, and if you don't it might be super helpful.
Or page 74, spends all of it explaining characteristics. Goes over what they are in general thematically, explains the mechanics of them, then explains what each one does specifically, then explains how characteristic bonuses work, then spends a while explaining how to generate your characteristics with mechanical and thematic explanations for things, then gives you an example of someone going through this process to make sure you understand.

It's not perfect, but it should be hard to get confused about any of the really important bit like characteristics, while smaller details like does a grenade launcher shoot handgrenades can be a bit more vague.

Content of what? Granted my homebrew is based on an already established world so I don't need this DEEP LORE section, but what else should a system give that is not the GM's responsibility.

Gurps is basically a physics engine in rpg form.

Anything that a GM could use, equipment, spells, locations, examples of play, content creation guides. If I get an RPG system it's to make my job as a GM easier and to give me inspiration.

So is this a player document only or is it meant to allow someone to run a game too?

I guess as it stands a player document. I just don't understand what should be included to help a GM run the game. I'm asking for the sake of knowing I guess more than anything else.

I need to play test it before I start putting in a suggested beastairy because I don't know how well things will scale and such and that would require me to finish the WiP. There isn't equipment due to lore, gotta generate an item list for vendors. But mostly it's just, the GM's responsbility would be character generation for interaction, enemy generation for combat, and their own story they want to take the players down.

>game is a simple system
>has 400 pages of FAQs and corrections
Looking at you 40k 8e

Rifts?

But you just ignore 250 of those pages, and add in 38 new pages from 8 different supplements. It couldn't be more simple.

You're the reason why so many games have no bestiaries, because I fucking love having to stat literally everything myself without even a fucking rough idea of appropriate numbers.

Cunt.

The first three are the system, everything else is content.

I mean technically you don’t have to.

Only ~300 are necessary, and even then.

The supplements have like stats for AK-47s or cats so GM’s don’t have to homebrew them.

Which is why SJG rocks

>10 pages of crunch
>390 pages of fluff
>the fluff is mixed in with the crunch
>there's no index so you either have to memorize where all the rules are at or use sticky notes as bookmarks

The most touted example of this is DungeonWorld.

It's a stupidly simple system that they added a 400 page book onto.

World of Darkness

>tfw my ST was complaining about this last session
I mean, it's much easier to flat out read than say, the D&D rulebook, yeah, but in terms of a gameplay companion that thing is as convenient as cinderblock skis.

> Generally don't like systems that are more than 100 pages rules-heavy.
> 100~ page book
> Nope, I'm good
> - But user, it's rules-lite af!
> Taking a closer look
> 50~ pages are fluff and rules on different races
> 20~ pages are descriptions of different skills that are somewhat obvious
> The rest 30 pages are neatly-organized crunch.
> The abstract of the system I made, skippind all skill descriptions and monster stats, takes about 5 pages.
> My favorite system now.

Sounds like a CGL product.

>15 pages generalist crunch primer
>followed by splat rules for different kinds of settings (high fantasy, low fantasy, steampunk-ish fantasy etc.), about 20 pages per setting
>followed by section with optional rules, with clear indications on which rules to use depending on what type of tone you're trying to set for your campaign
I fucking love toolkit systems. Like, holy shit.

200 of them are gm advice, sample NPCs and setting lore.
370 - chargen options, most of which you don't need to even read because random generation.
So player has to read around 30 pages if he doesn't skip "wut is roleplay" part

>refuses to learn other systems due to being "too hard" to learn
>min maxes and exploits the fuck out of pathfinder

im glad i stopped playing with those guys

>there's no index so you either have to memorize where all the rules are at or use sticky notes as bookmarks
>none of the lists are alphabetized, because it was translated from another language and the translators didn't want to rearrange large sections of the book.
Fucking Anima.

Sample NPCs, plot hooks, stuff that is normally not intended for player use, homerules that can be applied to change the game tone e.t.c.

>Rulebook is 400 pages long
>Rules themselves are 50 at most with large print.
>Everything else is campaigns, modelling advice, scenarios, lore, etc.

You can say the same about 40k, LotR or SoIaF RPGs. But there are tons of stuff important for running the game but irrelevant in original setting source.

System name?

Oh, someone else played Aberrant.

>Legend of Wulin

Yes user, GURPS at 35 pages is "freeform"

It's called GURPS Lite, user, and it's 35 pages long. Contains everything you need to run the game without any issues whatsoever.
And honestly, the only thing that you really need from Basic is the full list of advantages and skills. Which is superflous if you are using a char-gen soft.

Title?

As much as this is not a solution, why not just sitting over the book, collect all the rules together in .doc or .pdf and print it or turn into a cheat-sheet?
That's how I've salvaged The Witcher RPG - I've picked the pocket edition, the main source book, expansions and the articles for it, wrote down all the rules that are otherwise spread in not exactly coherent way and get 43 pages long handbook of pure rules and rullings, collecting all the obscure stuff spread all over the material. Granted, the system itself is pretty well organised, so it was more of simplifying things than excessive hunt for rules, but still.

Name it.

And you better not fucking say it's GURPS

What for you need 400 pages of text? Unless 2/3 of it is devoted to describe setting OR it's some sort of baseline book containing rules for a generic system, there is just no fucking way of covering 400 pages.
Hence your "hurr freeform durrr" is retarded accusation, since most books that hit 400 pages mark are mostly filled with fluff material, not rules.

Not him, but why not? It sounds like GURPS Lite, but for 3e.

D&D's system is simple, though. Since 3rd Edition, it has been:

- You have six ability scores that at character creation, which generally range from 3 to 18 at character creation. They provide a modifier. The modifier is equal to: (Score - 10) ÷ 2, rounded down.
- When making any kind of check, roll a d20 and add relevant modifiers, one of which will always be one of your ability score modifiers as relevant to the check. Higher is always better.

That's it, everything else is just frosting of how specific things interact with the system.

>3e D&D
>Simple
Yes user, having 5+ splatbooks memorised to even run a scenario is sooooo damn simple

You don't need to memorize anything. A single read-through of the Player's Handbook and, if you're a DM, the DMG, should be sufficient.

That doesn't mean that you shouldn't use splats, it's just that you don't need to memorize them. Just having them on-hand as reference is fine.

Also I've been to Barnes & Noble, I've see the WH40K RPG books, they're generally thicker than their D&D book equivalent. You can't fool me.

Genesys?

Nigga what? They're just as bloated and overly complicated as 3.PF, if not moreso.

To this day, I have never played in an RPG that required us to spend TWO SESSIONS making characters before, and I've been in a D&D campaign where we had over 7 people.

Not him, but you've just described 2e.
Not 3e.

Hard mode: play vampire the requiem so you can't read the fucking header fonts either

A core mechanic being simple is not the same as system complexity, you utter mong

>I've see the WH40K RPG books, they're generally thicker than their D&D book equivalent
That's because unlike D&D, the 40k rpg books do not have the npcs, player information and GM information in different books.
In fact, that is something really only D&D does.

Do you think this is because 40k fans are used to dropping larger chunks of money on single products? I feel like D&D splits their books up into PHB, DMG, and MM so they can introduce themselves to new players at a cheaper buy-in because people who are new to D&D might be scared off by having to buy a $50+ book.

>The game's fine if you ignore the rules entirely and only play the free demo.
Oh gurpsfags.

Nope gurps is great in its own right. Gurps lite is also great.

It’s all great

>the fluff is mixed in with the crunch
MOTHERFUCKER

>"I'm a good GM"
>"persuasion is not a skill in my game. Convince me"

>Generalist rules-lite narratavistic simulationist diceless "systems" are so much superior to systems that actually clarify their rules, because I'm a brainlet who can't read over five pages without becoming distracted by literally anything.
Nu/tg/, ladies and gentlemen

Lolwut? It's roll and write down result from the table. Repeat 20 times and you have your character. Maybe make a choice or two along the way but nothing requiring more than 2 hours for 4 people. Or did you start with 15000 exp each and without previously playing the system?

You still have to have one full set per party. If all the rules are in one 60 bucks book or in 3 20 bucks each then it's 60 per party.
Wizards hope that besides that every player will buy a PHB making it 120 bucks per party.

There are a lot of system which are self contained in one book

>I'm forced to roleplay : the post
get fucked shitter

>Ignore the rules entirely
>Demo
Confirmed you never saw Lite in your life.

Like the other user already posted - what's your problem? Roleplaying through conversations is literally the best part of being party's Face. Skipping that based on rolls is just plain retarded, because it cuts out the whole fucking point of playing as Face.

>inb4 but I can't handle roleplaying through it
You don't get to perform in Carnegie Hall without lots of practice either.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Barbarians of Lemuria

>Explain what I want to do, pointing the mutual benefits of the possible agreement in 5 min exposition
>"nah, I don't buy it"
>His best friend literally says "I just tell him what he wants to hear"
>"It works"
Subjective GMs are shit

Also
>Nah, I dont' think that should work because I can't imagine how that can work so I literally killing your class/character from now on by removing the main thing it could do
Fuck subjective GMs

>GURPS lite
>Freeform

Gonna check tomorrow, sounds promising

>>Explain what I want to do, pointing the mutual benefits of the possible agreement in 5 min exposition
>>"nah, I don't buy it"
>>His best friend literally says "I just tell him what he wants to hear"
>>"It works"
I would instantly drop such GM. Not because the friend favourism, but way of resolving the whole situation.

Social skills are nice for stuff you either don't need to roleplay or that would take too much time.

Imagine being this wrong.
It's almost as if your games consisted entirely from combat.

If you want to spend hours doing court gossip be my guest, but i'll pass.

The worst part of dungeon world is the constant redddit shilling for it.

Spot the asshole

>Never played a % system

Different guy: Barb's is the best thing ever made.

I start to think you never in your life played any TTRPG

So go buy advanced hero quest or similar

Because I like having a representation of a characters social skills?

What's BoL's best edition?

THIS. FUCK YOU, GIMME COMIC SANS AND NOT THIS JOHN HANCOCK BULLSHIT.

Yeah, but if you're new to RPGs and you're buying a new game cold, it makes sense from a marketing perspective to sell a $20 book that causes the customer to purchase more books because of the sunk-cost fallacy.

Mythic Edition. Somebody on Veeky Forums has a jpg with some good houserules too.

Most systems can be explained in a few pages if they're not bloated simulationist pieces of shit. Games can be hardcore rules based and explain their rules well. A good system should be general enough to work in many situations, not require the player to learn or look up rules about every fiddly little action or event.

I hate "story telling" games, but any game thats more than 50 or so pages immediately turns me off of it unless those first few pages are just straight hard crunch. I'm not gonna sit here and go through your shit fanfiction setting for 150 pages just to see that you made some half baked copy of savage worlds or whatever.

>Be technical writer
>Open game manual
>mfw

Why are game mechanics split into separate sections.

If the dice mechanic is so simple why do you have it offset in its own fucking chapter.

Why do you need an entire chapter for skills. Just tell them how the skills work in the dice system and have a list at the back of the book.

Why is the book organized so the rules you'll use the least are first and the rules you'll reference most are spread throughout the book in no particular order.

Why are their pictures in the fucking gutter of the page.

Why is the background printed in vellum pattern.

Why aren't all the most important rules condensed into ten pages and the rest of the book is referenced.

Why are the indexes not actually indexes.

Why did I choose this life. This profession.

No, because you talk about situations that never happen nor can happen, and you would know that if you at least once in your life experienced them.
Which brings us back to the subject of you never playing any TTRPG ever

Mythic was an improvement in pretty much every possible department.

Because you totally can't have crunchy game that is 50 pages long. Not at all. You need to bloat and spread them over 4 books, 500 pages each, right?

If it makes you feel any better, I'm a pharmacist and I have pretty much the same list of issues as you, aside regret over picking my job. I fucking love it.

>Why are game mechanics split into separate sections.
Ease of location. Probably also something to do with learning as you read the book.
>If the dice mechanic is so simple why do you have it offset in its own fucking chapter.
Ease of location. Probably also something to do with learning as you read the book.
>Why do you need an entire chapter for skills. Just tell them how the skills work in the dice system and have a list at the back of the book.
Character generation and learning as you read the book.
>Why is the book organized so the rules you'll use the least are first and the rules you'll reference most are spread throughout the book in no particular order.
Either something to do with character generation or learning as you read the book.
>Why aren't all the most important rules condensed into ten pages and the rest of the book is referenced.
Probably something to do with learning as you read the book. Introducing lots of concepts at once means you don't retain the properly, or something.
>Why are the indexes not actually indexes.
Not entirely sure what you mean by this one.

RPG manuals need to be both learn-as-you-go books and reference books. Too much in the learn-as-you-go direction and you end up with BECMI, which is great for learning the game but a pain to reference. Too much in the other direction and you have a great reference companion but not a very good teacher.

Not the original user, but it's sad you are so fucking dense and wrong.
He listed valid concerns and issues, and you instead are trying to pretend they aren't problems in the first place. It's like you never in your life read a technical manual and thus don't have any sort of comparison of what he's talking about. Seriously, it's like you are playing devil's advocate solely for (you)s.

>Why are game mechanics split into separate sections.
Can you elaborate on this point? What is wrong with seperating mechanics at least into new chapters if there is enough material to fill one? Like in my GURPS core rulebooks (which have formatting issues don't get me wrong) stuff like Attributes, Advantages, Disadvantages, and Skills are all separate sections.

I don't understand what's so different about Skills, Attributes, and Advantages that warrants hundreds of new pages.

Attributes represent your basic physical and mental skills. Skills modify Attributes. Here's how they do that. Advantages modify Skills. Here's how they do that. I just don't see how these require entire chapters to explain. I think MongTrav is one of the better examples of a well-organized game book. The explanation of the core mechanic, skills, and character creation take up a handful of pages and then the rest of the book is reference and options. It's far more usable, at least in my estimation, to a new player than a massive WOTC product bogged down with needless fluff.

To the point of "learning as you read," the entire problem with the way many of these books are formatted is that they prevent you from learning as you read.

I just want a bestiary or book of statted up antagonists for every game system
I don't even give a fuck who or what's in there, just give me something to start with you pieces of shit

I'm not him, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but think about it like this.

First, you'd want to talk about the mechanics of the game so that people understand what all these numbers and mechanics mean, so the first section should explain what
>ability scores
>skills
>modifiers
>advantage
is so people have a good idea as far what a 14 in STR means to them once they actually go into character creation.

Then, it should focus on
>race
>class
>alignment
>background
>equipment
>feats
>multi-classing
>spells
so that people understand what their options are as far as character creation is concerned and so they have everything they need right in front of them.

Finally, it should focus on the meat and potatoes of the game
>combat
>roleplay
>exploration
So that players have a decent idea as far as what to expect from the game as a base and how to modify it later on to suit their purpose.