A game manual should never be more than 350 pages.

>>51610764

The 81st page should always be blank except for the phrase "THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK" on it.

>>51610764
No, it shouldn't. 160 pages is a nice enough size.

Ada Lovelace wasn't the first programmer either, but people do love legends.

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>>51610764
no more than 10 pages per chapter

>>51610764
Dunno, I prefer games that can wrap around in about 50 pages or there is a pocket edition of them.

>>51610764
t. casual

>>51610764
>A game manual should never be more than 350 pages.
That's arguable. If the game is specifically meant to be highly technical and complex, 350 pages may be insufficient for it.

>>51610877
If true, that's unfortunate that one team member would take credit for the entire team. That member's gender is irrelevant to the discussion.

That you hate women is your business. Too bad though, they're a lot of fun when you get to know them.

>>51614406
>350 pages may be insufficient for it.

Shrink the font size?

>>51614503
>>51614406
Look up and roll rables tho.

>>51611150
This. Basic rules should be as short as possible and variance should come from the add on sections.

>>51610764
Instead of specifying an exact number I would generalize the statement to "A game manual should not exceed the size average person can read in a day". I think it covers both the 90's stuff of couple hundred pages, more recent systems keeping it under hundred and the increasing inclination to one-page rulesets.

>>51614687

Technically I can read a 600 page novel in less than a day - personally I'd go with "if your core rules need more than 5,000 words you're core system is too complicated"

>>51610764

The Core Game manual should not be more than 200 pages.

The basic core rules should not be more than 10 pages per character (assume race and class).

Lore books should be more than 300 pages.

>>51614039
Flip a coin, if heads nothing, if tails get a 0/1 human token.

>game manual is more than 5 pages
just kill yourself if you write any manual longer

>>51610764
Shouldn't be more than 5 desu.

>>51610764
is it me or does she look a bit like Daniel Radcliffe?

>>51616261

Thank you! I thought it was just me who kept seeing that.

>>51614745
>Checks own game through a word counter
>3300 words
>Still good, and it's almost ready to publish

>>51616261
yeah it's his Earth-11 counterpart

Was this thread made and then a bunch of posts were deleted or did I travel back in time?

>>51617739
This is what happens when you shitpost at 88 mph.

>>51617658
You're gonna publish a pamphlet?

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>Generic ruleset
>Fontsize 10,5 because it's a good compromise between being pleasant to read and size
>150 pages for basic rules, from basics to character creation, to combat
>50 pages beastiary
>25 pages DM chapter
>40 pages items chapter, from armor to vehicles
>Remaining 130 pages optional and situational rules like mass combat, magic and other shit you might want to use as a DM in one campaign or the other

>>51617739
Lost about 80 posts. Kinda interesting, I guess the janitor is doing something about the /pol/ shitposting.

>>51610764
Otherwise it is a weapon, not a core book.

>>51618061
Okay, a goddamn graphic designer here. If a font has a large x height (and most modern fonts do) then font size 9 is absolutely enough. The important part is line height. You want to keep it at 1.6 times the font height (so, 15pt in a normal editor or 1.35 times in word and derivatives).
You think you can set more words with a smaller font? Well, that's where you're wrong, sadly. Each line of text should have between 60 and 90 characters, including spaces. Set your margins accordingly.

>>51618167
At that size and current font, a full line has between 80 and 90 characters and size 10.5.
I haven't settled on font and layout yet and I'm still looking into it, but 9 seems really fucking small according to the testprints. Maybe it's the line height, but most textbooks and rulebooks are extremely shitty reads and it always seemed to me like the fontsize was set way too fucking small.

>>51610764
20 pages should be the max for explaining the core system, including combat and character creation.

After that, feel free to toss in a couple hundred pages of lore, spells, monsters, feats, equipment, etc. Just make sure it's well-organized.

Also, I fucking hate it when you get 2 paragraphs of rules, than 3 pages of GM advice until the next rule is explained. Go ahead and put a 1-page "mission statement" at the start of your book, but then please chill. Finish explaining the rules before you feel the need to defend every decision and lob thinly-veiled insults at "some other popular rpg you might have played". Save it for your "running the game" chapter.

>>51617972
It's in A5, so it's actually the size of a small notebook, basically. Very much pick-up-and-play, but also supporting longer campaigns.

It's not like I'm gonna sell it for 20 bucks or anything, I'm not an idiot.

>>51618167
So where do I go if I want to learn how to properly edit and lay my book out?

Ya'll chucklefucks realize most 350+ page manuals aren't actually 350 pages of rules, right?

Most rulebooks are greatly inflated by flavor text, examples of play, art, settings info, advice, indexes, and those stupid introductions explaining what a role playing game is and what dice are.

>>51617658
I've written dozens of essays longer than that.

>>51618622
>>>/gd/
Or like read a book about graphical design.

>>51618622
school, or a publishing house

>>51610764
Never is a strong word

>>51618678
Is there any actual loss in not explaining what role playing games or dice are?

I can understand laying out the specifics of this particular game, like "This is a game about stone aged anthropomorphic badgers fucking each other in the ass with antique Russian firearms. It's primary audience is children aged 6 to 12." but beyond that if you are picking up something that isn't one of the big names, you probably know what dice are.

>>51618875
Depends on how you're distributing. If you're selling to already experienced players you don't need to bother, but if you're retail it doesn't hurt to include on the off chance that someone picks it up on a whim.

>>51618875
Is there any loss not doing it? Like, is there any bad point to assuming that your book might be someone's first forage into roleplaying? Even if your audience is "experienced roleplayers", somebody completely new will pick it up at some point.

Also, at least I really like to read the "what is a roleplaying game" sections in every book, because it gives me an idea of what the author thinks and wants the game to be. It shows you the mindset of the people that wrote it and what to expect from the book.

>>51610764
That depends on what those pages cover. 350 pages of rules is more than I want out of a game, but if most of those are class/race/whatever specific stuff (including spells), feats/perks/traits, items, etc you could pretty easily trim that down to an easily readable rules section.

If the game rules themselves take more than 100 pages that's probably too much unless this is specifically meant to be a very in-depth, complicated game or it has a shitload of different modular sections you can combine.

I tend toward games with probably no more than about 50 pages of actual (regularly used) rules, which leaves plenty of space for a crunchy game with lots of complexity.

350 pages is too much. More than one book is too much. D&D's 3 book system is just a way of scrounging up more money.

>>51619231
Depends on what content you're getting.

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>>51610764
Depends on what those 350+ pages represent, as >>51619280 mentionned. For example, my own homebrewed system is:
>20 pages for character creation and core rules, everything players need to know to play the game
>5 pages for player synopsis of setting, general information on races and nations
>5 pages of interesting sample characters, think Pathfinder Iconics
>75 pages of setting info for the GM, including important factions, interesting NPCs they can use, possible quest ideas, and more
>150 pages of optional powers and abilities players and monsters can learn, including psionics, naming magic, weaboo sword moves, demonic pacts, and more
>100 pages of monsters, with the rules to make them condensed into a single page
>100 pages of magical items, including optional stuff like their legends, variant versions for low/high magic campaigns, and tables for random magic item quirks and appearances
>50 pages covering two stand-alone adventures, one a horror-themed mystery and the other a swashbuckling sword and sorcery romp
>10 pages for table of contents, glossary, and other necessary sections like "What's a Roleplaying Game?"

Players need about 25-30 pages of the book. The GM gets the other 450+ pages, most of which is cool stuff they can throw in their campaign or ignore completely.

>>51619609
One thing I'd like to see more systems do is actual play examples.

>>51619609
Examples of play as in a narrated section describing a section of an adventure, or part of a fight? Those are fun and useful, and pretty much the only way I learned how to actually play Don't Rest Your Head. The dice mechanic seems confusing but once it 'clicks' it's very simple.

>>51618167
>>51618334

Sweet, this is really useful, thank you! Always wonder how small I can reasonably go.

>>51610764
Depends on the game you ashole. The manual for GURPS is an encyclopedia set. The manual for Monopoly is a half-page leaflet. Both games are equally un/fun.

>>51618622
Sorry for the late reply, I had to sleep, but:
http://practicaltypography.com/

>>51610764
Rules and how to play should be maximally concise. Including classes. THEN after that consideration, indexed and organized content for players to pick out have no limit as long as they are WELL ORGANIZED - being easy to find, easy to assess for use by the ignorant on a list, so players know what it's about before reading the full entry, categorized in those lists, the works. Greater quantities of things only require more and more robust categorization and sorting. They don't break down or anything.

I would even opt for multiple copies of said lists arranged to focus on different aspects. A player looking for what's available for a given concept would like a spell list arranged first by a categorization of effects and second by level. A player trying to pick out a spell to fill for a given level would want it the other way round.