The 200 Page Goal

[phavoc]

I guess my biggest question is - Why?

Two hundred pages to make a core book seems unrealistic to me for a game as complex and customizable as Traveller has been through all it's variations. My latest Shadowrun core rulebook is about 500 pages. The Battletech book runs about the same. T5 is even bigger (let's not go there though).

Even with a 200pg hardback printing the price is going to be in the $50-$60 dollar range. If it's primarily going to be an eBook then page count is more or less irrelevant.

From a consumer point of view I want the most bang for my buck as possible on a per purchase basis. We are already looking at a a minimum of two core books to start (Core and HG), plus at least one other hinted one.

The push for a lower-page count has created a draft that needs more content, not less. Trying to shrink the pages has left us with rules that are missing concepts, too short rules and few examples where there need to be some.

If you need to reduce page count, one place to start is your isometric ship layouts. Something like that could easily be pushed to a free web-only supplement. Then the ship illustrations could be retained and matched up with their individual deck plans.

That's just one idea, I'm sure others can come up with additional ones. I am interested to hear what other potential future purchasers think about this topic.

 

[MongooseMatt]

First up, we are not looking to reduce the book to 200 pages - that was an initial design goal and, as you can see, was a fantasy.

As for our reasons, one of the factors for success of the last core rulebook was that it was only just over 200 pages - this made it less intimidating. Books of 300-odd pages frankly just scare the willies out of people. After all, who wants to learn all those new rules?

Now, some people do, of course That is what supplements are for - they all us to dive into specific areas and expand them out from the core book. However, the core book itself should be welcoming, and the 200 page goal was part of that.

Still, I'll be able to be a bit (a lot?) more brutal when we start looking at the Traveller Starter Box Set later this year...

 

[Takei]

I'm going to have a grognard moment

I look at what The Traveller Book achieved in 160 pages and wonder why we would need more than 200 and still not include ship building rules? How can a book with 40 more pages have less rules content?

I don't envy Mongoose having to juggle the customer extremes

 

[-Daniel-]

I'm going to have a grognard moment

I look at what The Traveller Book achieved in 160 pages and wonder why we would need more than 200 and still not include ship building rules? How can a book with 40 more pages have less rules content?

That is an easy answer. Graphics and Font Sizes. If one looks at the original LBBs you will see there is almost no images and the body of text does not use many "large font" styles or formats.

In LBB#1 there is a graphic showing the idea of range bands. In the skill section they even went smaller in font size than the rest of the body text. Many headers are little more than a few points larger. In other words they were able to make the book very compacted. This book includes many illustrations, tables that use significantly larger fonts, and lots of open space in many sections.

So if I added a quarter page illustration to every third page those little black books would explode page count wise. :mrgreen:

 

[Takei]

That is an easy answer. Graphics and Font Sizes. If one looks at the original LBBs you will see there is almost no images and the body of text does not use many "large font" styles or formats.

In LBB#1 there is a graphic showing the idea of range bands. In the skill section they even went smaller in font size than the rest of the body text. Many headers are little more than a few points larger. In other words they were able to make the book very compacted. This book includes many illustrations, tables that use significantly larger fonts, and lots of open space in many sections.

So if I added a quarter page illustration to every third page those little black books would explode page count wise. :mrgreen:

Yeah, the skill descriptions in the LBBs were pretty horrendously laid out The borders were also noticably smaller.

The Traveller Book on the other hand (the 8.5" by 11.5") is much better. Most page spreads have at least one illustration (admittedly most are about 1/8 of a page) and has a consistent look and feel.

 

[-Daniel-]

The Traveller Book on the other hand (the 8.5" by 11.5") is much better. Most page spreads have at least one illustration (admittedly most are about 1/8 of a page) and has a consistent look and feel.

True, I agree. But in the RPG industry there has been a consistent move from a text heavy format to a graphic heavy format. This shift comes at the cost of page count. One can look at Traveller or many other RPGs to see this shift. The books might look better in some people's point of view, but they do push the size and cost up. To be honest, this was one of the reasons I loved the Mongoose Traveller books so much. They gave modern feeling updates to the rules while using the cleaner text based layouts to give us wonderful and complete books. I understand this shift they are now doing, I will just miss the cleaner and more useful layout of the 1st edition books.

 

[phavoc]

First up, we are not looking to reduce the book to 200 pages - that was an initial design goal and, as you can see, was a fantasy.

As for our reasons, one of the factors for success of the last core rulebook was that it was only just over 200 pages - this made it less intimidating. Books of 300-odd pages frankly just scare the willies out of people. After all, who wants to learn all those new rules?

Now, some people do, of course That is what supplements are for - they all us to dive into specific areas and expand them out from the core book. However, the core book itself should be welcoming, and the 200 page goal was part of that.

Still, I'll be able to be a bit (a lot?) more brutal when we start looking at the Traveller Starter Box Set later this year...

These days it seems like the main rulebooks for game systems ARE pretty beefy, and buyers seem to be ok with that. Of course there's two arguments here - NEW game systems, or version X of an older one. Personally if I'm buying a version X rule book (and I'm going to be paying $50-$60 for that hardback), then I want them to be beefy and worth the money.

D&D split theirs up into basically three core rule books, but each is pretty good sized. I still have the original AD&D books and they were a good value for what I paid for them at the time.

A starter set could be done, though I would suspect you'd have to narrow down some of the character creation rules, and strip out a few more. Not sure where to make the cuts though. But yeah, you may need to be pretty brutal as far as that goes to make whatever goal you set.

But for now I vote for fixing past inconsistencies, filling in past holes and making sure you don't have a lot of wiggly rules that are interpretative (in a bad way). That's why you do a 2nd edition right? To fix the sins of the past. Though Traveller has a spotty record overall in that department. I'm really hoping for the best outa this one.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

You want a starter set for Mongoose Traveller? Buy the Classic Traveller LBBs 1-3. If you want a starter set for today's Traveller. Buy just the Mongoose 2nd edition Traveller core rulebook.