RPGs Charted by Word Count

[Voros]

A great chart sorting various RPGs by word count showing that some of the OSR complaints about modern rule sets being overwritten are...let's say, selective.

I'm not just posting the chart here so people have to actually read the context and other considerations (PF doesn't include the bestiary for instance).

Some of my favourite games are the ones with the lowest word count here: Moldvay Basic, Beyond the Wall, Into the Odd, Freebooters on the Frontier, Fiasco, et al.

 

[Dumarest]

Eh, word count is a meaningless measurement. The Great Gatsby is something like 60,000 words. War and Peace is close to 600,000 words. It's all in what you are doing with the words you've chosen to use.

 

[Nick J]

I have a ton of respect for any designer/writer that can exercise not only great self-control and excise the cruft from their work, but also possesses the felicity of expression to make what they do put down engaging and vivid. Especially in gaming books, which are vehicles for play and shouldn't be self-indulgent wank-fests for an author to show off how impressed they are with their own vocabulary. Probably one of the reasons why I like Lamentations of the Flame Princess so much and enjoyed reading Beyond the Wall.

 

[Voros]

Eh, word count is a meaningless measurement. The Great Gatsby is something like 60,000 words. War and Peace is close to 600,000 words. It's all in what you are doing with the words you've chosen to use.

Fiction-wise I agree.

Rules writing though in my opinion should be focused on clarity and concision as it is a form of technical writing like journalism.

When it comes to setting and fluff I think a more personal and evocative style is fine. Obviously many of the books here are a mix of rules and setting/fluff but comparing them is still interesting, particularly with the, to me, exaggerated claims regarding the differences between past and present RPG writing.

 

[Edgewise]

Eh, word count is a meaningless measurement.

I don't think it's meaningless, but I don't think it's the last word in how concise the rules are. I would differentiate between words spent on rule mechanics versus rule references. By references I'm referring to things like spell descriptions, bestiary stats, cybernetics options, etc. These portions of the rules don't have to be comprehensively known; it's most enough to know where to find them in the rulebook when you need them. If the text is organized well-enough that you can find the reference when you need it and ignore it when you don't, I wouldn't count it's contribution to word count nearly as heavily as that of the rule mechanics.

Otherwise, I broadly agree that concision is very desirable.

 

[Simlasa]

Concise is nice... but the mere number of words doesn't tell me much.
Also, there's a happy place somewhere between being pure stereo-instruction-manual and dragging on with florid prose. I generally want a bit of atmosphere/romance/mood in there somewhere.

 

[Apocryphal]

Eh, word count is a meaningless measurement. The Great Gatsby is something like 60,000 words. War and Peace is close to 600,000 words. It's all in what you are doing with the words you've chosen to use.

It may not mean much with respect to quality, but it's fairly meaningful when trying to judge how long it'll take to properly consume it.

 

[Necrozius]

Some of the padding comes from random tables and lists of monsters/spells, so I'm cool with some of those large numbers.

 

[Simlasa]

It may not mean much with respect to quality, but it's fairly meaningful when trying to judge how long it'll take to properly consume it.

Even that depends a lot on the quality of the writing. I can zoom through huge Stephen King books because his writing is very clear, not particularly subtle, and his topics/themes are familiar.
Someone like Henry James will slow me down considerably, requiring me to re-read whole pages to get at the gist of what he's hinting at.

 

[Apocryphal]

Even that depends a lot on the quality of the writing. I can zoom through huge Stephen King books because his writing is very clear, not particularly subtle, and his topics/themes are familiar.
Someone like Henry James will slow me down considerably, requiring me to re-read whole pages to get at the gist of what he's hinting at.

Fair enough, though you rarely find that kind of discrepancy among RPGs.

 

[CRKrueger]

Selective...you mean like how AD&D1 is 3 books combined to get the top position, and editions 2,3,4 and 5 aren’t even on the chart?

 

[Voros]

Selective...you mean like how AD&D1 is 3 books combined to get the top position, and editions 2,3,4 and 5 aren’t even on the chart?

Because he doesn't even own them? He had to get borrow Exalted and PF too.

 

[The Butcher]

Selective...you mean like how AD&D1 is 3 books combined to get the top position, and editions 2,3,4 and 5 aren’t even on the chart?

Mild TSR/OSR bias all over the chart. I believe it’s more likely reflective of the author’s proclivities and/or collection than a deliberate dig at any one game or set of games.

In any case, I believe word counts are only half the story. I’d very much like to know the word counts for some of my favorite games — D&D RC, CoC, Rifts, MgT1 — because I feel they pack a mighty punch for their word/page counts. All killer, no filler, as I believe goes the English idiom.

AD&D1 taken as three books might probably be best compared to subsequent editions that followed the PHB-DMG-MM model, and if it’s still too wordy I might contend that Gygax’s florid prose might be at least partly to blame (regardless of its perceived value, or lack thereof). I wonder how OSRIC would rank vs. AD&D1?

 

[Simlasa]

Fair enough, though you rarely find that kind of discrepancy among RPGs.

I dunno... recently I was reading Unisystem's Witchcraft, which I think looks pretty cool, and I thought it was a bit of a chore to discern the rules from the fluff... vs. something like Call of Cthulhu.
The same goes for stuff like WoD games where you keep running into fiction chunks... or something like Tribe 8 (though I love that setting) that buries setting details in narration.
Not that any of those are badly written... just some are a clearer, quicker read than others.

 

[Voros]

Someone posted more word count numbers here.

The numbers for the PHB:

• D&D3.5 (Player's Handbook): 335,041
• D&D4e (Player's Handbook): 202,695
• D&D5e (Player's Handbook): 212,919

Would be nice to get a word count for the 5e DMG but one needs Acrobat Pro and a pdf copy to figure it out.

 

[Shipyard Locked]

Some of the padding comes from random tables and lists of monsters/spells, so I'm cool with some of those large numbers.

That's certainly the case with Vampire 20th. Most of the bulk of that book is the super-powers, bad fiction and a lot of very optional material. This fact really hit me when I was putting together cheat sheets for it.

 

[bryce0lynch]

A great chart sorting various RPGs by word count showing that some of the OSR complaints about modern rule sets being overwritten are...let's say, selective.

B/X for the Win!

 

[3rik]

bad fiction

Yes, don't forget the fiction... Well, at least that stuff can be skipped.

 

[BigJackBrass]

A friend of mine, with tongue only slightly in cheek, rated RPGs by three factors:

• Weight of box.
• Fullness of box.
• How satisfying a fart sound the box made when you put the lid on.

Never mind the quality - feel the width!

 

[Gabriel]

A friend of mine, with tongue only slightly in cheek, rated RPGs by three factors:

• Weight of box.
• Fullness of box.
• How satisfying a fart sound the box made when you put the lid on.

Never mind the quality - feel the width!

I definitely recall the first and second criteria being important to my friends and I when I was younger. If it was a shrinkwrapped box set, we'd pick it up, gauge it's heft, then shake it to see how much it rattled. If it didn't have good weight or we could tell the books had a lot of open air to shift in, we wouldn't buy it.

 

[Dumarest]

Never mind the quality - feel the width!

​

 

[EmperorNorton]

I mean, I don't think its meant to make a real point, but I do think it is a pretty good counter to the idea I've seen floating around that "new games are overwritten compared to old games". Cause if that was the case you would expect newer games to be dominating the top of the charts, but they really don't.

 

[Shipyard Locked]

Yes, don't forget the fiction... Well, at least that stuff can be skipped.

Yes, but if it's a physical book you'll be lugging that extra dead weight to the game venue long after you read it once in bemusement. If it's a PDF, those are slow-loading pages that will impede your rule searches time and time again.

Seriously, if you must include setting fiction, keep it real short and don't use much of it.

 

[zweihander]

Some thoughts:

Size oftentimes has little to do with complexity, particularly if you look at the chart. 'Overwritten' is fine if you are promoting more options in the work, but only if those options adopts a consistent elegance in rules design. But sometimes, shit just needs to get cut. For example:

• It took 5 years to write ZWEIHANDER. At 674 pages, it was 395,351 words.
• It took 2 years to write MAIN GAUCHE. At 365 pages, it was 181,289 words.
• 125 pages of MAIN GAUCHE was originally intended for ZWEIHANDER, but was cut.

We could have sheared at least 1/4 of this with a more aggressive editor. But we didn't, and discovered that we didn't really need to. I have yet to find an overwhelming number of people within the 90k purchasers of ZWEIHANDER who have complained about the size, even through regular polling we do with purchasers.

Smart developers will listen to their audience, because that audience should drive change, not the clamoring of the loudest and smallest segment of users.

We're currently doing a Player's Guide (1/2 the size of the original book), and a Starter Set to satisfy a broader need. I will be curious to see post-purchase whether this is an effective tactic to address complaints about the size of ZWEIHANDER.

 

[Edgewise]

I have yet to find an overwhelming number of people within the 90k purchasers of ZWEIHANDER who have complained about the size, even through regular polling we do with purchasers.

FWIW, people daunted by the size may be less inclined to comment. I have a copy of Zweihander that I haven't made much progress on. I'm not going to criticize much about a game I haven't completed reading, but I certainly would have finished it by now if it was shorter. I'm not complaining per se - just sayin'.

I fully agree, though, that size and complexity are different things. Complexity is hard to measure to the point where it's practically subjective. As I've said before, if a lot of your page count consists of lists of things (spells, monsters, skills, etc.), those shouldn't be counted, at least not as much as pages that describe mechanics.

 

[Bilharzia]

I've always found measuring in Atomic Mass Units to be a far more reliable metric when comparing RPGs.

 

[Séadna]

AD&D is massive. Did people really play it close to as it is RAW or a sort of hybrid with B/X or OD&D?

 

[Dumarest]

AD&D is massive. Did people really play it close to as it is RAW...

No.

Did people really play it as...a sort of hybrid with B/X or OD&D?

Yes.

 

[Stevethulhu]

AD&D is massive. Did people really play it close to as it is RAW or a sort of hybrid with B/X or OD&D?

My three core AD&D 1e books weigh in at around 450 pages. My Star Trek Adventures core is only 150 pages shy of that. Even with Unearthed Arcana, the Survival Guides and so on, AD&D 1e is middle weight by modern standards.

 

[Voros]

My three core AD&D 1e books weigh in at around 450 pages. My Star Trek Adventures core is only 150 pages shy of that. Even with Unearthed Arcana, the Survival Guides and so on, AD&D 1e is middle weight by modern standards.

I would argue that mere pages are not a good comparison as art and layout make a huge difference.

For example, take a look at the great Goodman Games reissue of Isle of Dread and compare the original module to the 5e conversion.

The 5e conversion is far more pages (129 pages compared to the original 30, including maps in both cases) but that’s because they relaid it out with much larger font and more white space to increase its readability and ease of reference at the table.

 

[Stevethulhu]

I would argue that mere pages are not a good comparison as art and layout make a huge difference.

For example, take a look at the great Goodman Games reissue of Isle of Dread and compare the original module to the 5e conversion.

The 5e conversion is far more pages (129 pages compared to the original 30, including maps in both cases) but that’s because they relaid it out with much larger font and more white space to increase its readability and ease of reference at the table.

The art in AD&D 1e is fairly minimal. There's also no borders, no fluff and no sidebars or boxout text. Though there are epic Gygaxian run-on sentences, so there is that...

 

[Séadna]

My three core AD&D 1e books weigh in at around 450 pages. My Star Trek Adventures core is only 150 pages shy of that. Even with Unearthed Arcana, the Survival Guides and so on, AD&D 1e is middle weight by modern standards.

By page count, but by actual text I'd think it's still on the upper end. It's longer than DCC which is big for a modern book I think.

I like this though as the DMG has so much stuff to discover in it.

 

[finarvyn]

I love the graph in the OP's link, and kudos to whoever actually did all of the research for this.

I'm a little confused, however, why they would compare 3 books for AD&D (PH, DMG, MM) to only one "core" book for Pathfinder. Doesn't PF also have a DM book and a couple of Bestiary books? Seems like one should compare a "three core book" for each RPG.

 

[Voros]

The art in AD&D 1e is fairly minimal. There's also no borders, no fluff and no sidebars or boxout text. Though there are epic Gygaxian run-on sentences, so there is that...

What I meant is that a modern game will have more pages even if it has far fewer words due to modern layout (usually far more white space and larger fonts) and way more art.

Another example: Ben Robbins’ Follow is 90 pages but that is almost all due to layout. In the old-school style it would probably be under 20 pages, maybe even 10.

 

[Voros]

I love the graph in the OP's link, and kudos to whoever actually did all of the research for this.

I'm a little confused, however, why they would compare 3 books for AD&D (PH, DMG, MM) to only one "core" book for Pathfinder. Doesn't PF also have a DM book and a couple of Bestiary books? Seems like one should compare a "three core book" for each RPG.

The blogger, Michael Prescott btw, says he had to borrow PF and Exalted from others. So he was just using what he had on hand.

 

[Voros]

By page count, but by actual text I'd think it's still on the upper end. It's longer than DCC which is big for a modern book I think.

I like this though as the DMG has so much stuff to discover in it.

I’m not a fan of the tiny font and cramped margins and ledding throughout the 1e DMG. I know it would be heresy to some but a reissue that addressed the layout issues of the DMG would be cool, something along the lines of the Goodman reissues and robertsconley and company’s relayout of the Wilderlands.

 

[Séadna]

When I get back home on Friday I'll try adding a few more books, maybe even some statistics. Just for fun since it'll be difficult to say a sample is representative.

 

[Stevethulhu]

What I meant is that a modern game will have more pages even if it has far fewer words due to modern layout (usually far more white space and larger fonts) and way more art.

Another example: Ben Robbins’ Follow is 90 pages but that is almost all due to layout. In the old-school style it would probably be under 20 pages, maybe even 10.

I prefer the simpler layouts. They're easier to read, easier to print and much less cluttered.

 

[Edgewise]

Word count is probably a better metric than page count. That's usually pretty easy to get from a digital copy.

 

[Spellslinging Sellsword]

Quick word counts of some PDFs on my computer (using select all and Foxit Reader word count tool):

Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition Basic Rules - 132,354
Pathfinder Bestiary - 198,063
Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition SRD - 249, 807
OSRIC - 323,650

Mythras Imperative - 22,016
RuneQuest 2 Classic Edition - 115,748
OpenQuest 2 Deluxe - 122,491
Mythras Core Rules (3rd Printing) - 233,845

Risus - The Anything RPG - 3,815
HarnMaster 3rd Edition Core Rulebook - 93,305
Pendragon 5.2 Edition Core Rulebook - 182,685
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition Core Rulebook - 185,557
Ars Magic 5th Edition Core Rulebook - 212,118