Quickstart snobbery and Rules Lite vs Rule Efficiency

[Nakana]

tldr: This is me rambling about how I'm becoming a curmudgeon. I need people to either snap me out of it or welcome me to the club.

I've noticed an emerging trend in my gaming preference in the last few years and I'm curious if anyone else relates.

I suppose it started with beginner/starter boxes (primarily the D&D and Pathfinder boxes). First of all, I love them. They provide an entry point that is complete, low cost, and rules efficient. They may not include all the bells and whistles of the system, but if they include chargen rules, then effectively they are "all you need to play the game". Going so far as to realize if I buy the box for ~$30ish then why pay $50 for the book? Or in D&D's case $150? (Just using D&D as an example here, I'll never give Wiseguys of The Camorra another dollar)

This morphed into the same attitude for QuickStarts. If the quickstart is free or cheap, and provides a full enough game... isn't that enough? Now, I realize, there are components to a game that are purposefully left out of quickstarts or are drastically condensed/simplified. My attitude about that is:

1. If it wasn't important enough to include in the quickstart for players to preview the "feel" of the game, then it must not be that important.
2. If a component of the game was left out of the quickstart as an incentive to buy the full thing, I quickly lose interest. I would rather a very basic, condensed version of the component.
3. If the rules mechanics can be condensed/simplified for the quickstart, why aren't those just the mechanics to begin with?

This might seem that I prefer "rules lite", but I realized that's not really it. I don't mind rule complexity as long as the mechanic is elegant. I'm looking for efficiency. Why go for the full book with all the nuance, when the quickstart does the same more efficiently?

Admittedly, there is a bit of a "force yourself to do more with less" attitude baked into this approach, but I'm finding that liberating in a lot of ways.

In conclusion my preference has become: I would much rather pay ~$15-20 for a complete 50-60 page game than pay $60+ for a 300 page game.

Is this just me? Thoughts?

 

[Simlasa]

I've always appreciated a well-done quickstart, even for a game I planned to go all-in on like Magic World or Mythras (I'm calling Imperative the quickstart for Mythras).
But I can't think of any game that I've really taken on, played/ran, where I stuck to the quickstart alone.

 

[malc]

I’d go along with that to a degree. From my perspective, the Pathfinder beginner box is a better game than Pathfinder 2e, because it’s much simpler. I wouldn’t want to use most QuickStarts for a full game because they’re usually deliberately broken (for example most don’t include the character generation rules), but I also agree that if the player-facing rules of your game are longer than about 50-60 pages then the game is probably more complex than I prefer. (and I’d prefer them to be shorter than that).

Since I like reading and learning new systems, I’d rather play a new game with easy-to-learn, straightforward rules, rather than a subset of a more complex system though. Apart from other concerns, sooner or later a player will want to play a character they read about that isn’t in the QuickStart, and there you go on the slippery slope…

 

[Nakana]

I’m actually glad I posted this. Already your responses helped me realize something I was missing…

I’ve got years of gaming experience to rely on. Give me the core resolution mechanic, some of the situational modifiers/quirks, the components unique to that system, etc. and I can pretty much take it from there.

Back when I was new to gaming, I needed that 300+ page book. I still think there is much to be said for efficiency, but my growing contempt for tomes has dissipated…. For now…. Lol

Thank you!

 

[Agemegos]

In conclusion my preference has become: I would much rather pay ~$15-20 for a complete 50-60 page game than pay $60+ for a 300 page game.

I’m even worse than you are: I would much rather pay $60+ for a complete 50-60 page game than pay ~$15 for a 300 page game.

Streamlining, efficiency, consistency, and concision are virtues that I’m willing to pay for. And as Pascal observed (“Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.”), it takes effort to achieve brevity, and we ought to reward that.

 

[Nakana]

it takes effort to achieve brevity, and we ought to reward that.

That’s a very good point. I’d pay more for quality over quantity for sure. But I would need a really good description or QuickStart to determine if I want to pay that much for it…. The irony does not escape me.

 

[Agemegos]

That’s a very good point. I’d pay more for quality over quantity for sure.

I’m saying a little bit more than that. Yes, I’d pay more for quality, but I’d also pay more for brevity, or rather concision.

To me, a 300-page RPG is a bad RPG because it is too long, just like a pair of jeans with a 45” in-seam.

Last year I bought the Lyonesse RPG from The Design Mechanism, thinking to get into Mythras. But it was much too long for me, so I gave it away. I don’t doubt that its quality is high, but even though it would have cost me nothing to keep it I did not do so. I know that I’m never going to read, let alone run, any game that big.

 

[Nakana]

A Agemegos

Ah ok, I getcha. I’m the same way. Hence the desire for efficiency. Because of this, I also favor visual aids (charts and diagrams… not endless tables) that express what would be pages of text into visual numbers and relations in a fraction of the page space.

 

[yosemitemike]

For me,a quickstart is a preview of the full game. I get it so that I can get an idea of what this game is and how it plays to that I can decide whether I want to shell out for the actual game or not. If I like the game, I will get the full game and probably never look at the quickstart again except maybe to run the intro scenario in it. That's why I am not big on $30 starter sets for games. If I like the game, I will get the full game and won't use most of the stuff in the starter set. If I don't, I won't use it at all. Either way, it's kind of a waste of money. I tend to either get the full game or just not get it.

 

[3rik]

You could do worse. You could actually pay for a friggin playtest!

 

[Nakana]

3rik lol

You know…. I’ve never really thought about it this way before… but an argument could be made that for any system that has editions, that’s exactly what we all do. Think about it… lol

Edit: but I know what you mean. Actually paying for material that is incomplete, wildly unbalanced, unstable, raw, etc.

 

[TristramEvans]

Anecdotally, I remember when the Dying Earth RPG quickstart came out and was hella popular, but was so complete, no one bothered to buy the actual game and it died a swift death.

Also, I liked many of the WoD quickstarts circa 2nd ed better than the full games

 

[3rik]

3rik lol

You know…. I’ve never really thought about it this way before… but an argument could be made that for any system that has editions, that’s exactly what we all do. Think about it… lol

Edit: but I know what you mean. Actually paying for material that is incomplete, wildly unbalanced, unstable, raw, etc.

I was referring to actually paying for an actual beta version of a game. FFG did it three times in a row with their Star Wars lines! And that was before the starter sets that did not include rules for char gen came out.

 

[gruagach]

Concise writing that delivers a complete game is a huge plus to me. I prefer, for example, FATE Condensed. Even that's a little too long for my tastes.

Black Sword Hack (by Kobayashi) is nearly a master class in delivering a complete game in a concise package.

I wish more games were written to that standard.

And I'm in the camp that will pay more for a full game that's effectively communicated efficiently.

 

[ffilz]

I can see leaving things like character advancement or even character generation out of a quickstart. I think there are other mechanics that are useful in long term play that can be left out of a quickstart. So I think there's room for quickstarts that still make it worth getting the full game, that the quickstart is great for getting an intro to the game, but doesn't have the extra bits to sustain a campaign.

Now one thing that is worth looking at is the RuneQuest Glorantha Starter Box. It has quickstart rules, but it also has a lot of other stuff that is useful without the rules, so I got the box for the stuff, I don't care much about the rules because I still run 1st edition (1978) RQ.

On another point raised here about more concise games. I'm definitely finding myself in that boat. I am really enjoying playing games of the 70s and 80s with their more concise rules.

 

[Sharrow]

It always comes as a surprise to me, when I read games from the 70s and 80s, who compact they are, considering the content many of them contain. It shouldn't, seeing as I first read many of them when they were new, but I suppose I've become used to the modern style of huge games, written in verbose style.

The Traveller Book has 155 pages of rules, tables of contents, etc. Even Aftermath!, which is considered by many to be a hugely complex and heavy game (though I suspect many of those have never actually read the thing), and while it's certainly not rules-light, its page count isn't high by today's standards (226 pages of rules, ToCs, equipment, optional rules, essays on post-apoc settings, playing, and GMing in the core three books). In D&D5 that doesn't get you through 'C' in the spell chapter, let alone through the appendices, of the Player's Handbook (and the PH+DMG come to about 640 pages).

 

[ffilz]

Hmm, Cold Iron which is definitely pretty complex clocks in at:

138 pages magic rules and spell descriptions
11 pages character generation (currently not counting my new Areas of Expertise)
26 pages combat manual and other procedures
2 pages combat reference charts
7 pages equipment list
10 pages of a very rough monster manual

Now if Cold Iron were to be pulled together into a publishable game, I suppose one would have to add some additional descriptive text that would definitely bring it over 200 pages, on the other hand, I'd be very tempted to trim some pages from the magic rules. Note that the magic rules include some duplication as it starts with a section on magic for the non-mage (since Cold Iron magic items are easily purchased and replicate spells), a quick start for mages, and then the full list of spell descriptions. And magic item creation rules are also included.

 

[malc]

I’m even worse than you are: I would much rather pay $60+ for a complete 50-60 page game than pay ~$15 for a 300 page game.

Streamlining, efficiency, consistency, and concision are virtues that I’m willing to pay for. And as Pascal observed (“Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.”), it takes effort to achieve brevity, and we ought to reward that.

It has been said in regard to programming “your program is complete not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away”. I believe that the same applies to RPG rules.

The rule of least surprise is more important though. If you forget a rule at the table, and guess what it should be, you should end up somewhere close to the ”right” answer. One of the reasons why modern D&D iterations are so complex to run is that each class or spell tends to break the rules in a different way. As a result the complexity of the system as a whole can rapidly spiral out of control.

TL;DR: Consistent mechanics can be more important than low word count.

 

[TristramEvans]

MSH is under 60 pages between 2 heavily illustrated booklets with 16 pages giving the complete system & examples (w/o illustrations I'd guess it would be less than half that);
2 pages covering health & sickness, resources (monetary system) and prices for everything from weapons & farm equipment to vehicles and buildings, and popularity;
2 pages covering magic;
3 1/2 pages covering vehicles;
1 page heavy artillery & military equipment;
3 1/2 pages on gadgeteering & alien technology;
3 1/2 pages on karma;
1 page on practice, random encounters, & NPCs (with a list of statted example NPCs);
11/3 page on the legal system and courtrooms,
2/3 page on animal companions (with animal stats),
2 pages on special environments (underwater, space, etc), other dimensions & other races of man;
2 pages on running villains
2 pages of GM (Judge) advice;
and 10 pages on character creation, including power & skill descriptions and a 1 page example

 

[finarvyn]

An awesome thread with some great posts so far. A few semi-random thoughts of my own:

(1) I love quickstart rules sets as well as starter sets, especially if they are well done. I find that most of my game-play happens at lower levels so many of those are pretty complete already. As was mentioned earlier, the Pathfinder Starter box (levels 1-5, I think) is excellent. I also like the 5E Essentials Kit box (levels 1-7 with 5 classes and a nifty little campaign setting) and feel like had my group found it before the Player's Handbook we might have played that alone for a long time.

(2) To springboard off of my Essentials Kit thought, it's hard to take away player options once they have gotten them. My OD&D group in the 70's were fine with the base 3 booklets until we got Greyhawk, and at that point the players all wanted the extra options and didn't want to go backwards. My son's fiance learned 5E D&D a few years ago and I really wish we had slowed things down, but at the onset my son handed off a copy of the Player's Handbook to read over and the fiance immediately wanted to try race/class options which didn't fit my "core four" concept. A newbie who has never really ever played a fighter, magic-user, or cleric now wants to be gnomes and tibaxi characters who are bards and warlocks. My 5E campaigns enforce the old Adventurers League rule of "PH plus one" and my players know they can't cherry-pick rules from five different books but instead have to focus on the basics. If I could buy a 5E Player's Handbook of just levels 1-10 (instead of 1-20) I would do it in a heartbeat, since the number of times I have run characters above level 10 I could count on one hand.

(3) I like short rulebooks. OD&D is a bunch of pamphlet-sized booklets and if printed on regular 8.5"x11" paper would be a lot shorter than most realize. The D&D Rules Cyclopedia compiles the rules from five D&D boxed sets into a single not-so-thick rulebook. Nowadays it seems like "thick is it" rules the RPG universe, with big hardback textbook rulebooks crammed with art and rules and setting and more rules. Everything is codified, which doesn't follow my personal RPG philosophy at all.

(4) I often find that I buy a core rulebook, then all of the supplements I can find, but at the end of the day I prefer to play core-only games. I already mentioned my 5E dilemma, but another classic example for me was 7th Sea. The two core rulebooks have pretty much everything I ever wanted in the game setting, yet I bought nation books which all added in details that I didn't really want to read and add into my campaign. I bought it because it was out there, not because I needed it. Bought the setting books, let them sit on my shelves, eventually sold everything but the two core books.

(5) The Cypher system intrigued me when I saw a couple of sourcebooks on the shelf at my local game store a few months ago, but the core rulebook is very thick. I did some searching online and found a quickstart, so I downloaded that and bought the two cool sourcebooks and now feel no additional urge to buy the full rules. Why is it that a game which advertises itself as being rules light should have such a thick core rulebook?

This all comes full circle back to the question of rules efficiency from the original post. I think that I have always appreciated shorter rules sets, but as I grow older I have less and less interest in reading and learning pages and pages of rules. I love quickstart rules. I love intro boxed sets. I buy a lot of full rulebooks but usually only use a small fraction of the rules as I play lower level games anyway.

 

[Neon]

tldr: This is me rambling about how I'm becoming a curmudgeon. I need people to either snap me out of it or welcome me to the club.

I've noticed an emerging trend in my gaming preference in the last few years and I'm curious if anyone else relates.

I suppose it started with beginner/starter boxes (primarily the D&D and Pathfinder boxes). First of all, I love them. They provide an entry point that is complete, low cost, and rules efficient. They may not include all the bells and whistles of the system, but if they include chargen rules, then effectively they are "all you need to play the game". Going so far as to realize if I buy the box for ~$30ish then why pay $50 for the book? Or in D&D's case $150? (Just using D&D as an example here, I'll never give Wiseguys of The Camorra another dollar)

This morphed into the same attitude for QuickStarts. If the quickstart is free or cheap, and provides a full enough game... isn't that enough? Now, I realize, there are components to a game that are purposefully left out of quickstarts or are drastically condensed/simplified. My attitude about that is:

1. If it wasn't important enough to include in the quickstart for players to preview the "feel" of the game, then it must not be that important.
2. If a component of the game was left out of the quickstart as an incentive to buy the full thing, I quickly lose interest. I would rather a very basic, condensed version of the component.
3. If the rules mechanics can be condensed/simplified for the quickstart, why aren't those just the mechanics to begin with?

This might seem that I prefer "rules lite", but I realized that's not really it. I don't mind rule complexity as long as the mechanic is elegant. I'm looking for efficiency. Why go for the full book with all the nuance, when the quickstart does the same more efficiently?

Admittedly, there is a bit of a "force yourself to do more with less" attitude baked into this approach, but I'm finding that liberating in a lot of ways.

In conclusion my preference has become: I would much rather pay ~$15-20 for a complete 50-60 page game than pay $60+ for a 300 page game.

Is this just me? Thoughts?

When I was a kid and played d&d in the 80s, simulation (relatively speaking) was the desired end goal. This was because the way I was taught rpgs was more of a "game" rather then a story telling medium. I guess we (my group) believed that detailed rules provided some sort of objective reality.

Also, life was also slower and people had less entertainment options, so spending a couple of hours adding plus and minuses was a fun way to pass the time.

Things have obviously changed since then and story telling has taken over "game" (yes, even for so-called traditional non-narrative systems). Accordingly the need for detail or crunch seems like a waste of time because the heros are expected to succeed. SO why bother splitting mechanical hairs where modern gaming provides so many character safety nets? Just get on with it.

People who are still looking for mechanical crunch, solving an efficiency puzzle and consistent rules application are probably the types who would rather play modern heavy euro boardgames. So they call scratch that itch by playing those games

So yeah, I would also prefer a complete 60 page ruleset than a 300 page ruleset. On second thought, 60 pages is a bit slim. I do like some flavor text and practical GM tools in a book (not high concept chapters on world building)

Unfortunately that model doesn't sit well with game publishers who need to keep the lights on year round and pay their employees. They need to follow a model that will keep food in their belly. I don't blame them.

 

[PolarBlues]

I like simple, rules-light games.

There are smarter GMs then me who can internalise masses of rules and can effortlessly multitasks between all the different things that require the GMs attention during play wihout missing a beat. And there are players who are more committed than mine, who will readily buy and study the rules of any game I choose to run.

Me, I get easily flustered and overloaded when I GM. The fewer things I need to keep track of, the smoother the experience for everyone. And one important thing I've learned is that what I need is not the sort of game that I can just about manage to run under ideal conditions. I need games that will keep working in the mud of the trenches, like when I've had a bad at work and ended up with a bit of headache, the room we are playing in is a bit noisy, one of the players is nursing a hangover, the other still hasn't learned the basics after two months of play.

But most of all, I don't enjoy reading roleplaying books. There, I've said it. Cast me out, if you must.

 

[Kobayashi]

Concise writing that delivers a complete game is a huge plus to me. I prefer, for example, FATE Condensed. Even that's a little too long for my tastes.

Black Sword Hack (by Kobayashi) is nearly a master class in delivering a complete game in a concise package.

I wish more games were written to that standard.

Thanks, conciseness was (and still is) a goal when I'm writing a game... (Into the Odd was the main inspiration for that and re-reading Gangbusters really blew my mind on that subject)...


(or BUT for those who can't see the image, sorry I'm still a big stupid kid)

I wouldn't make it the be-all end-all of game writing. Many people find the rules section of the Black Sword Hack a bit terse as it lacks examples (a fair point). Which always reminds me that no matter how much I love concise games nowadays, I can't deny that, as a kid, if you had given me Pathfinder 2e or any 400 hundred pages color book I would have been ecstatic: the joy of litteraly losing yourself in such a big book and the pride of mastering something that (at least to me as a kid) looks challenging.

And it isn't easy to let go of that kid. Most GMs I know are avid readers and yes, I know, game books shouldn't be novels and yaddy-yaddy-yadda... But should they read like VCR manuals? I'm not sure I'd like to have rpg books that read like mere technical manuals. Electric Bastionland was kinda of a wake-up call on that subject (YMMV), it's terseness was almost gimmicky, it was here to fulfill a design goal but, imho, not to be really useful to a GM or players. I didn't like that book, reading it felt like watching a powerpoint presentation.

On the other hand, reading something like Zweihander was really as fun as reading a phone book (again, YMMV), I don't need two paragraphs to know what a skill does. You could trim down that book to a third of its size and loose nothing.

So where does it leaves us? As a game designer, it's tricky, conciseness is a very sharp tool and it's easy to cut too much out of your game. As a reader, as much as I love terseness I also love to be taken for a ride through someone else's imagination. If that setting is strange, new or set in a genre unknown to me, I need something more than a few bullet points to get there. I want the whole trip, not the Trip Advisor summary.

Conciseness for conciseness sake is something I try to avoid now. I'm not really in the "rpg books should read like boardgame rules" crowd now. This race for "efficiency" rubs me the wrong way. I expect a rpg book to inspire me, where does inspiration ends and bloat begins is a fine line and it varies for everyone. I don't expect to please everyone.

Sorry for the flow of consciousness wall of text but it really is an interesting subject and I'll read everyone's answer avidly as it's still a work-in-progress for me.

 

[Necrozius]

Also, I liked many of the WoD quickstarts circa 2nd ed better than the full games

For sure. We've discussed this before (a few years ago) but yeah, Vampire the Masquerade (1e or 2e, can't remember which) had Discipline rules that I vastly preferred to the full game.

I still haven't found a scan of it. Only the quickstarts for later editions.

Edit: this is the only one I can find online, and it's the Revised, sadly. I'm looking for the earlier one: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/55733/Vampire-The-Masquerade-Revised-Quickstart

 

[sharps54]

I do like the slimmer rulebooks of the past and I don’t think there is any need to sacrifice examples to keep the work slim. I also love designer notes and with layered PDFs they don’t even add to the page count. What I can do without is short fiction in my rulebooks.

 

[Sharrow]

It has been said in regard to programming “your program is complete not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away”. I believe that the same applies to RPG rules.

The rule of least surprise is more important though. If you forget a rule at the table, and guess what it should be, you should end up somewhere close to the ”right” answer. One of the reasons why modern D&D iterations are so complex to run is that each class or spell tends to break the rules in a different way. As a result the complexity of the system as a whole can rapidly spiral out of control.

TL;DR: Consistent mechanics can be more important than low word count.

Modern D&D games achieve neither consistency of rules, nor low word count. If their 'exceptions' were more consistent they'd need to spend fewer words explaining all those exceptions.

It's a problem with-exception-based games - the basic rules can be very simple (which is great for letting newbies get into the game quickly), but everything building on them brings exceptions, and they need to be explained, balanced, tested against and with all the other exceptions, and so on (leading to spiralling complexity and ever-increasing demands for system mastery, especially on the GM's part).

Ironically, D&D5, which moved to 'natural language' and supposedly looser rules over D&D4 with its very carefully defined keywords and technical language has a slightly higher page count than D&D3.5, and considerably more than D&D4 (and D&D4 also uses a more open font) - and D&D5 also has fewer powers per character class, fewer feats, etc. (on the other hand, it has lots and lots of spells, all of which need special rules and descriptions).

 

[Sharrow]

Back to the OP's original topic of 'quickstart' rules - I'm okay with trimmed-down free introductory rules as long as they show off the game's core mechanics and any mechanics the game has that it relies on to behave as the authors intended. Light-weight versions that you need to pay for annoy me, unless they are very cheap and intended as the 'core' onto which you add supplements for specific things, but a core like that is probably so bare-bones that on it's own it's next to useless, so it needs to be very cheap or free anyway.

Heavier 'quickstart' rules that are almost the whole game seems pointless to me, because if free they risk cannibalising sales of the full rules unless they're nobbled substantially (and then they're only 'heavy' if they've a lot of stuff that's probably unnecessary for a quickstart in them). It's a fine row to hoe.

 

[Akrasia]

Last year I bought the Lyonesse RPG from The Design Mechanism, thinking to get into Mythras. But it was much too long for me, so I gave it away. I don’t doubt that its quality is high, but even though it would have cost me nothing to keep it I did not do so. I know that I’m never going to read, let alone run, any game that big.

While Mythras is not a "light" system, it should be noted that most of the Lyonesse book is setting information and the like.

 

[Akrasia]

I really like quickstarts but for the most part I don't see them as adequate for long-term play. My appreciation for them is that they enable me to get an overview of the core rules and try them out. One exception (perhaps ironically) is the D&D Essentials set, that really does include everything you need for levels 1-6.

My favourite quickstarts are Mythras Imperative and Against the Darkmaster. I like them because Mythras and VsD are both somewhat "crunchy" systems, but the quickstarts distill the essentials. It's subsequently easy to add onto that core. The core rulebooks for both of those games are rather intimidating. In theory, I guess that both quickstarts could be used to run full campaigns. But in both cases, what's missing are mainly additional options for players (and monsters/foes for GMs). Adding those things doesn't seem to add much to the complexity of the games themselves (and many of those additional elements, e.g., monsters and other challenges, often would have to be invented by the GM otherwise).

 

[TristramEvans]

For sure. We've discussed this before (a few years ago) but yeah, Vampire the Masquerade (1e or 2e, can't remember which) had Discipline rules that I vastly preferred to the full game.

I still haven't found a scan of it. Only the quickstarts for later editions.

Edit: this is the only one I can find online, and it's the Revised, sadly. I'm looking for the earlier one: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/55733/Vampire-The-Masquerade-Revised-Quickstart

i think the only one i still have is the Changeling one. I havent looked online for them in a while

 

[AsenRG]

tldr: This is me rambling about how I'm becoming a curmudgeon. I need people to either snap me out of it or welcome me to the club.

I've noticed an emerging trend in my gaming preference in the last few years and I'm curious if anyone else relates.

I suppose it started with beginner/starter boxes (primarily the D&D and Pathfinder boxes). First of all, I love them. They provide an entry point that is complete, low cost, and rules efficient. They may not include all the bells and whistles of the system, but if they include chargen rules, then effectively they are "all you need to play the game". Going so far as to realize if I buy the box for ~$30ish then why pay $50 for the book? Or in D&D's case $150? (Just using D&D as an example here, I'll never give Wiseguys of The Camorra another dollar)

This morphed into the same attitude for QuickStarts. If the quickstart is free or cheap, and provides a full enough game... isn't that enough? Now, I realize, there are components to a game that are purposefully left out of quickstarts or are drastically condensed/simplified. My attitude about that is:

1. If it wasn't important enough to include in the quickstart for players to preview the "feel" of the game, then it must not be that important.
2. If a component of the game was left out of the quickstart as an incentive to buy the full thing, I quickly lose interest. I would rather a very basic, condensed version of the component.
3. If the rules mechanics can be condensed/simplified for the quickstart, why aren't those just the mechanics to begin with?

This might seem that I prefer "rules lite", but I realized that's not really it. I don't mind rule complexity as long as the mechanic is elegant. I'm looking for efficiency. Why go for the full book with all the nuance, when the quickstart does the same more efficiently?

Admittedly, there is a bit of a "force yourself to do more with less" attitude baked into this approach, but I'm finding that liberating in a lot of ways.

In conclusion my preference has become: I would much rather pay ~$15-20 for a complete 50-60 page game than pay $60+ for a 300 page game.

Is this just me? Thoughts?

I've had periods where I was feeling the same way. In one of those periods I ran a game with StarORE...all 14 pages of it (one of which is the character sheet). I repurposed it for wuxia, though. "The difference between jedi and xia is whether their default swords burn you - without chi powers, that is", as I put it at the time!
A player who didn't know the source quoted this once to me as part of a RL argument...my counter-appeal to authority had the "withering" and "funny" tags!

That campaign lasted over 2,5 years of weekly sessions, back when players didn't seem to tire much by a 6-hour session, so that's about the minimum length there. They actually toppled the Qing dynasty, restored the Ming, but then had to kill the colour purple.

That said, I do prefer Mythras core to Mythras Imperative. So, I guess my answer is a strong "it depends"!

 

[E-Rocker]

My main thought on quick-start rules is that if your quick-start product is more than about 20 pages, it's not a quick-start.

 

[AsenRG]

My main thought on quick-start rules is that if your quick-start product is more than about 20 pages, it's not a quick-start.

I'm known to disagree with that sentiment...

 

[PolarBlues]

My main thought on quick-start rules is that if your quick-start product is more than about 20 pages, it's not a quick-start.

So, more like a leisurely-paced-start?

 

[Agemegos]

While Mythras is not a "light" system, it should be noted that most of the Lyonesse book is setting information and the like.

Indeed. That’s why I could use it to make a point about book length separately from both quality and complexity. I don’t doubt that Lyonesse is of excellent quality, and I think that Mythras is actually less complex than my favourite ForeSight. I just know that I am never going to use, and probably never read, any 510-page RPG. It’s purely an issue of length.

And of course it goes without saying that other people have different needs and wants, and RPG groups with which they can share such a setting bible. I even envy them. Men with longer legs than mine wear longer jeans.

 

[spittingimage]

Heavier 'quickstart' rules that are almost the whole game seems pointless to me, because if free they risk cannibalising sales of the full rules unless they're nobbled substantially (and then they're only 'heavy' if they've a lot of stuff that's probably unnecessary for a quickstart in them). It's a fine row to hoe.

The D&D 5E quickstart is 200 pages long. Does not compute. What's quick about that?

Since no-one's brought it up yet, are we all familiar with Qwixalted? A couple of RPG.net posters expanded the Exalted 2.5 quickstart into a full ruleset for playing the game. To my mind, it does the job better and is much more fun besides.

 

[PolarBlues]

The D&D 5E quickstart is 200 pages long.

And that's just the grappling rules.

 

[rumble]

Noice.

I'm generally in the shorter-is-better camp (that's NOT what she said?). But not for this post.

The shorter the rules, the less time I spend looking up how to adjudicate things. The more time I have to play.
I firmly believe the plethora of rules in many games are there to keep shitheads from arguing with the DM. And they don't work.

Many games have a chargen element that's a separate game from the actual roleplaying game. (*cough* HERO-RIFTS-DND-PF2 *cough*) The less time I spend making a character, the more time I have to actually play that character.
I notice many minimalist games do away with this chargen complexity. A quick couple of random rolls and off you go. You get a sentence or three of backstory, not an effing novella.

The less jargon the better. Why does every game feel like it needs to reframe the GM as the Peenar God or the Dodunkalass?
My players and I have to learn a new language for every single game? Nope. Only if your game is so unusual that it throws out every other trope.

Game fluff--Here's where authors can shine, if their ideas are really unique and resonate with readers. Creativity in the hobby is awesome when it happens, and even some of the homages have their place. I'm a completionist for very few game lines any more, and sadly, I still haven't read all the books I do own. So what was the point of buying them?
I can only hold enough information in my head to manage the current game session. So volumes and volumes of splatbooks are not for me any more. Probably never were, but I was more foolish when I was younger. Or maybe just a different kind of fool.

Holy crap, when did I become a grognard?

 

[AsenRG]

Holy crap, when did I become a grognard?

It snuck up on me as well...

 

[Nakana]

So obviously I’m not the only one. That’s very reassuring.