What was the first "HUGE" RPG rulebook?

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Gringnr

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Big-ass books are a staple of the hobby nowadays. Pathfinder, Zweihänder, Against the Darkmaster, and others have huge, "one and done" rulebooks. What was the first such book? And how big is "HUGE?" Talislanta 4th edition, released in 2001, is 500+ pages. Are there earlier examples?
 
It isn't one book, I consider core D&D with its monster manual, PHB and DMG effectively a huge book. But if we are talking strictly one book, the D&D rules Cyclopedia was the first one I remember that was like 300 pages (and I also recall being impressed it had all the stuff you needed in one book).
 
Oh, yeah, that's gotta be the first (RC, I mean). Right?
 
Champions 4th edition (1989) had to be one of the first 300+ page books.
The Big Blue Book was the first massive RPG game. (And suffered from it as the game intimidated players. Nobody bothered to tell them that the character rules were only 92 pages, the rest was mostly GMing advice and odd rules that most games would not use. ) The game was the butt of many gaming jokes. However, it did usher in the age of "bigger hardback rule books".

Though initially, many larger games opted to have several hardbacks for the rules rather than have a bullet stopper.
 
I don't remember anything bigger that WHFRP before WHFRP. That does mean that examples do not exist of course.
 
I think Warhammer Fantasy 1e is our winner. It predates Champions 4e by a few years.

I think those are the only two over 300 pages from before the 90s. Rules Cyclopedia is 1991 and "only" 304 pages. I had thought it was smaller than that. Rules Cyclopedia clearly wasn't in the same league as WFRPG1e or Champions 4e, and I had thought it was only 2xx pages.

Still, I can't think of any single volume doorstoppers from the 90s. I think Hero 5e was the next one in the early 00s.

Edit: Books that were hardcover and in the 256+ range were considered huge prestige books back then (through the 90s). I remember being super impressed with the Last Unicorn Games Star Trek books because they were hardcover, that magical 250+ page count, and in full color.
 
I don't remember anything bigger that WHFRP before WHFRP. That does mean that examples do not exist of course.
Now I want to read some contemporary reviews to see if people from the before time had the same reaction to WHFRP then that we do to Weird Frontiers now.
 
Not a rulebook itself, Chaosium's 1981 Griffin Mountain supplement for RuneQuest weighed in at 202pp, which at that time was ENORMOUS.

I agree with those who name Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1E as the first bullet-stopper rulebook.
Well, the AD&D DMG at 232 pages and hardcover predates that at 1979.

I assume EPT (1974) was the first > 100 page game book (I have the Different Worlds reprint which clocks at 111 numbered pages). Chivalry & Sorcery (1977) clocks at 128 pages.
 
Wasn't there a Champion/Hero book that start the whole "can stop a bullet" meme, in an era before memes.
 
Guys I think the only way to settle this is for us all to meet up and have a battle royale duel to the death each armed with our favorite big rulebook
 
Wasn't there a Champion/Hero book that start the whole "can stop a bullet" meme, in an era before memes.

HERO System 5th Edition Revised--a misprinted copy of the book was actually tested against some small arms and proved up to stopping black-powder gunshots.

EDIT: Found the video!
 
I don’t think any rulebook should really be over 320 pages. The RC was close to ideal. I’m not saying that because it’s probably the greatest one volume product in RPG history.
 
I like the RC a lot, but I had the advantage of already owning the Basic and Expert BECMI sets when I found it a few years later. I don't think the RC did as good a job of teaching the game as the Basic set, and it seemed like it was intended mainly for people who knew the game already and wanted an all-in-one reference.
 
I don’t think any rulebook should really be over 320 pages. The RC was close to ideal. I’m not saying that because it’s probably the greatest one volume product in RPG history.

I think it is hard to put a strict number, some books need less room, some more, but lately I have been leaning more on the 300 page cap. I say that though having put out 2 books over 400 pages. I think where it gets gray is when a book include adventures and monster manuals. You could have 100 pages of rules, 400 pages of monsters, and it wouldn't feel overly big to me (since only 1/5 of the book is what you absolutely need to read and understand to play, and the rest is basically reference). But if you had 400 pages of rules, 100 pages of monsters, that is different. Lately I've been trying to do around 100 pages, 150 max, for core rules.
 
I think it is hard to put a strict number, some books need less room, some more, but lately I have been leaning more on the 300 page cap. I say that though having put out 2 books over 400 pages. I think where it gets gray is when a book include adventures and monster manuals. You could have 100 pages of rules, 400 pages of monsters, and it wouldn't feel overly big to me (since only 1/5 of the book is what you absolutely need to read and understand to play, and the rest is basically reference). But if you had 400 pages of rules, 100 pages of monsters, that is different. Lately I've been trying to do around 100 pages, 150 max, for core rules.
Hmm, I wonder how many pages Cold Iron would clock in if it was formally published. I have about 135 pages of magic rules and spell descriptions, 21 pages of combat rules, and 11 pages of character generation, no setting, no monsters, no GM advice, surely missing a bunch of stuff necessary to actually run or fully understand the game. Oh, and no description of non-combat skills...
 
Wasn't there a Champion/Hero book that start the whole "can stop a bullet" meme, in an era before memes.
That was the Big Blue Book 4th Edition.

Though 5th edition, which was even larger, is the meme spawn.
 
The Palladium Role-playing Game came out in 83 or so. That's 274 pages?

Thing is, didn't mind the high page count for some of the old rpgs since most, Palladium, Champions, were all in one books and not three book sets.
 
How big is huge? 300 pages doesn't seem all that huge to me.

I remember Talislanta 4th edition (502 pages) getting a lot of attention as exceptionally large.

And then of course there was Ptolus.
 
Paper weight maters. So does cover type and thickness.
Somewhere I have a photo with a ruler and Talislanta 4th edition, Ptolus (3.x edition), World's Largest Dungeon, World's Largest City, HERO 5th Rev. All stacked on each other. Size and page count don't always match up.
 
Paper weight maters. So does cover type and thickness.
Somewhere I have a photo with a ruler and Talislanta 4th edition, Ptolus (3.x edition), World's Largest Dungeon, World's Largest City, HERO 5th Rev. All stacked on each other. Size and page count don't always match up.
Yea, and of course page size, margins, and type size and spacing matter. How many pages would Chivalry & Sorcery 1e be if it wasn't pretty full pages and not that much art with tiny (6 point?) type closely spaced and all? As printed it's 128 pages but that's WAY more information than my Different Worlds EPT reprint at 111 pages, not just a little bit more. It would probably have been 200+ pages at more normal spacing, and maybe even pushing towards 300 pages with modern page layout and art content.
 
How big is huge? 300 pages doesn't seem all that huge to me.

I remember Talislanta 4th edition (502 pages) getting a lot of attention as exceptionally large.

And then of course there was Ptolus.
I think because of boxed sets being so popular in the 80s with their 64, 96 and 128 booklets, a 300 page hardcover could be seen as a bullet stopper.
 
Yea, and of course page size, margins, and type size and spacing matter. How many pages would Chivalry & Sorcery 1e be if it wasn't pretty full pages and not that much art with tiny (6 point?) type closely spaced and all? As printed it's 128 pages but that's WAY more information than my Different Worlds EPT reprint at 111 pages, not just a little bit more. It would probably have been 200+ pages at more normal spacing, and maybe even pushing towards 300 pages with modern page layout and art content.
This is why I'm always skeptical of page count as a raw metric--I remember when TSR increased the PHB from 256 to 320 and the DMG from 192 to 256 just by changing the layout and art.
 
385, according to drivethrurpg. Probably includes covers, but still older and bigger than Rules Cyclopedia.
My 1st edition hard copy is 368 but possible later runs padded it out a little.

Published 1986 if we're working out chronology.

My recollection is GW putting it all in one book was so successful it pretty much killed the game as it was difficult to produce follow on supplements worth buying. Of course they did their darndest with great material like Sold Up The River and the Enemy Within. But it's notable they never realised a monster book and Realms of Sorcery was much later on.
 
Take a double colum text and turn it into single column and then have big margins (because single column on A4 sized paper doesn't read that well)* and suddenly you have a greatly inflated page count.

*I suspect this was probably the reason, rather than a cynical cash grab, why games like Legends of the Ring 1e in the 90s had such big margins.
 
This is why I'm always skeptical of page count as a raw metric--I remember when TSR increased the PHB from 256 to 320 and the DMG from 192 to 256 just by changing the layout and art.

Take a double colum text and turn it into single column and then have big margins (because single column on A4 sized paper doesn't read that well) and suddenly you have a greatly inflated page count.

Some of those older thin books actually have a pretty high word count per page. I use a word count formula to figure out our page count in advance. It doesn't always come out exact though. Tables can throw it off, the number of paragraph returns you use can throw it off.
 
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Some of those older thin books actually have a pretty high word count per page. I use a word count formula to figure out our page count in advance. It doesn't always come out exact though. Tables can throw it off, the number of paragraph returns you use can throw it off.

Conversely I'm a complete sucker for raw page count despite fully understanding the tricks they use. That said I also want rpg books to have a lot of art.
 
I noticed the 3rd edition of Over the Edge has 20 or so more pages than the 2nd edition, despite having around 15,000 fewer words.
 
I am pretty sure 1E Chivalry and Sorcery takes the cake, given the parameters of the question. It is the whole game in one volume, the page count is significant (easily over 100 pages, though I don't recall by how much), but more importantly it was printed in something like 6 point type, so it is functionally equivalent to a 300+ page book in normal type. Published in 1977, which is pretty shocking when you consider it was mostly or entirely created before publication of the 1E AD&D monster manual.
 
I am pretty sure 1E Chivalry and Sorcery takes the cake, given the parameters of the question. It is the whole game in one volume, the page count is significant (easily over 100 pages, though I don't recall by how much), but more importantly it was printed in something like 6 point type, so it is functionally equivalent to a 300+ page book in normal type. Published in 1977, which is pretty shocking when you consider it was mostly or entirely created before publication of the 1E AD&D monster manual.
128 pages as I posted above.
 
I think Warhammer Fantasy 1e is our winner. It predates Champions 4e by a few years.

I think those are the only two over 300 pages from before the 90s. Rules Cyclopedia is 1991 and "only" 304 pages. I had thought it was smaller than that. Rules Cyclopedia clearly wasn't in the same league as WFRPG1e or Champions 4e, and I had thought it was only 2xx pages.

Still, I can't think of any single volume doorstoppers from the 90s. I think Hero 5e was the next one in the early 00s.
It's softcover, so may not count, but Traveller: The New Era was published in 1993 and came in at 384 pages.

Similarly, Rolemaster Standard System's base rulebook was a 352 page softcover. Of course it wasn't complete in that one book - Arms Law and Spell Law were also effectively essential, and they came in at about 120 pages, and 230 pages, respectively.
 
It's softcover, so may not count, but Traveller: The New Era was published in 1993 and came in at 384 pages.

Similarly, Rolemaster Standard System's base rulebook was a 352 page softcover. Of course it wasn't complete in that one book - Arms Law and Spell Law were also effectively essential, and they came in at about 120 pages, and 230 pages, respectively.

I forgot Traveller TNE. I even owned it once upon a time. According to Google, Dark Conspiracy is another one that breaks the 300 page barrier. Dangerous Journeys Mythus and Mythus Magic both also individually break through into that size class. GDW was into doorstopper manufacturing in the early 90s.
 
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