"What's your ideal page count?" Topic

What's an ideal page count for a game, to you? (Assuming a commercial game you paid money for).

Of those pages, how many should be core rules, how many should be additional or optional stuff (special cases, scenarios etc)?

Does it matter to you?

What's an ideal page count for a game, to you?

This depends.

Of those pages, how many should be core rules, how many should be additional or optional stuff (special cases, scenarios etc)?

Core rules? 12 pages or fewer. I'll except up to 20 with copious diagrams. I expect army lists or at least well defined units to make my own armies. Other stuff, scenarios/army lists etc can take up as many pages as is required. No more than 100 pages for me. 50 pages, I suppose is ideal.

Does it matter to you?

Absolutely! I have come full circle. I started with relatively simple to moderate complexity rules went all the way up to Empire and now I am looking out for the perfect simple set…all the time. The game must be very easy to play and move quickly. That usually means few moving parts and small amounts of fiddliness. To this end, I usually design my own these days but still enjoy reading and sometimes playing other authors works.

+1

Long enough but not too long.

Length is about the WORST way to judge rules. Some rules are really long because they include examples and illustrations and diagrams and they are a breeze to play.

Others are very short and might as well be written in Linear B for all the sense they make.

If the game is FUN it can be as long as it likes.

That said, I like examples and detailed examples of play. I like detailed examples that go through an entire procedure or mechanism. I like pictures. I like little summary boxes and I like designer's notes. I like indexes, detailed tables of contents and sensible arrangement.

But then at last count I own more rule books than I like to admit to….

I would say anywhere between 36 and 240 pages, depending on the subject and type of game.

Core rules preferably no longer than 60 pages. And the game should contain more than just the basic tactical rules; at the minimum there should be some basic organisational information/examples, as well as basic guidelines and examples of scenarios.

Other additional material, such as optional rules, campaign rules, special scenarios etc. are welcome (naturally presuming that the core rules are sensible).

In most cases, I take it as a sign of sloppy design if the core rules take up more than 20 pages. (There are exceptions.)

Back in the stone age of computer programming, when memory space was at a premium, it was universally accepted that it was the height of elegance and skill to get the desired result with the fewest possible lines of code. I have carried that paradigm over into my game designs.

The damn thing could be 400 pages if well indexed, cross-referenced, examples, diagrams, logical chapters and backed up with a QRS or summary page to help you play.

I have played a 'larger' rule set that was well done and could be played pretty much from memory and a 'smaller' one that needed constant checking for details.

Sometimes little things like high dice scores always being good, or similar mechanisms throughout can help.

Regards

David F Brown

32 or 64 pages.
About a dozen of actual rules.

Just like the ideal dress; long enough to cover the subject but short enough to retain interest.

Bravo, Green Tiger!

Though I must also say that my personal preference is for the actual rules – as opposed to design philosophy, diagrams, scenarios &c. – to be 12 A4 pages maximum, and preferably less, or I will suspect they are too complex for my taste. At my age (61) life is just too short to be reading and mastering longer rule sets!

I have made rules that fit 1 page of paper. My Viking Slaughterfest Rules are a perfect example of that.

Irrelevant.
It's the content that matters, not the "page count".

The page count does matter: if a simple set of rules has that could fit in a slim booklet has been increased to a large hardback book, one is spending money on unnecessary material, such as eye-candy pictures; on the other hand, if the rules comprise many pages of dense text, that itself may put off novices, youngsters and the old and impatient like me, or indicate that the rules are more complex than those we like to play.
Ideally, of course, rules should be easy to learn, and playable from a short – say two page maximum – QRS, in which case the length of the rulebook is not important.

Actual rules needed to play: 4 pages max.

Examples to illustrate things, photo's, fluff, background, intro about "what is wargaming", etc. all excluded.

When you weed out all the unnecessary stuff, you can probably write Warhammer in less than 8 pages.

The rise of the $50 USD-$60 150-200-page, hard-cover, eye-candy, full-color rules book leaves me a bit baffled. Beautiful, yes, but they have the same problems and rules conundrums of more mortal $25 USD-$30 B/W booklets that leave out much of the flash.

You'd think they would be perfect, but no miniatures rules can ever survive the public intact. Inevitably, gamers find something not covered, or contradictory. That's just the nature of the beast.

Or you think they might hold some magic be-all, end-all system that really does combine playability and realism. Often, nope. Just another Warhammer clone, or DBx clone, or whatever clone with extra chrome, or less chrome, or different chrome.

That said, we tend to like shiny objects, so full-color etc with all the trimmings seems to be the norm. If you are new to a period (or to miniatures), then this has considerable value. If you're a grognard, then you probably have 10x the information on a bookshelf or electronically.

Yet new rules offer hope that the killer system exists and innovation exists -- otherwise, we'd all still be playing Tractics, or Column, Line, Square, or WRG Ancient vol. 1.

When you weed out all the unnecessary stuff, you can probably write Warhammer in less than 8 pages.

Speaking of which, the core rules for the upcoming Warhammer Age of Sigmar (fantasy) game supposedly fit in 4 pages, which may be of interest for some of the people who are fond of more condensed rules.

Then again, they supposedly bear rather limited similarity to the previous WHFB rules.

I'm with Jon Lead Slayer. 1-pagers can be awesome. I just published my own yesterday: link