Quote from: P&P;412232400-page EVERYTHINGbook.

~32 pages of character creation, ~70 pages of spells, ~40 pages of player rules, ~38 pages of GM rules, ~120 pages of monsters and ~50 pages of magic items, plus illustrations, contents, index and appendices (character sheet and combined tables).

Too much for some, and I'm fine with that.

My point exactly, though details differ.

-clash

I don't want...

High cost glossy full color pages.

An over designed, "fuck you printer" character sheet.  At least put a stripped down B&W version online somewhere.

Expensive ($40+) rulebook with multiple, near essential supplements that are similarly priced.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;412150Your sense of aesthetics.  There's a reason books are laid out the way they are.  Designing an A4 sized book that inexplicably has the text laid out like it's a Chinese manuscript or horizontally instead of vertically or whatever isn't appealing and quirky, it's stupid.

The otherwise mostly solid Call of Cthulhu d20 had zig-zag columns because, you know, it's craaaazy. I had preordered the book, and was very displeased to see that nonsense when it came in the mail. Layout needs to be CLEAR, not cool. Make your CONTENT cool. But I guess that's harder than putting a bunch of greyscale HR giger knockoff bullshit under the text rendering it illegible. Someone above said "white or light grey." I'm with you on white pages. Those are nice and readable. Light grey is worse than anything except  DARK grey. Do people wish they had full color, but figure "we're on a budget, let's halfass it?" Is compromising readability considered an acceptable sacrifice in a war against scanning? (If that's the case, losing customers is an acceptable sacrifice too, i guess.)

QuoteYour advertisements.  If you're pitching a game to me, don't tell me that "Cuttlefish will be detailed in SuperSquids Supplement XIV".  If you spent the ink to say that, then say something I can use.  Yeah yeah capitalism, etc. Put ads in the back, not in the text.

One of my least favorite, nasty little memes is "but they need to fuck you over a little to make more money! you can't blame 'em, what are you, a commie?" Not buying shit because it being lousy with ads that reduce its value is capitalism. Buying shit to "take one for the team" for someone else's for-profit company is dumbassed fantasy.

QuoteRules that are mashed up in huge walls of text.  White Wolf, I'm looking at you.  Put the RULES in the RULES.  Don't bury it in 30 pages of self-fellating fanfic, leaving your rulebook bent in a circle all Ouroboros-like, blowing itself at how clever it is.

Putting a little box around RULES to make them jump out is a good thing. Not needing to is even better.

QuoteA little bit of expanding my vocabulary is OK!  D&D taught me some cool words.  However I'm not a philologist and I have no interest in learning the made-up language in your damn game and I mean especially if it refers to things that RPGs already have a word for.

This is also very irritating. But worse yet is when it spills over to the rules too. Burning Wheel and its "Burning a character," "Artha," etc, is what I immediately thought of but the worst offender was probably white wolf in its heyday, a noxious brew of dumb made-up words, uncommon english words 'repurposed' so that they're ruined for other gamers, and ignorantly appropriated non-english words. Were it not for Mage my ears might never have had to endure "arete," pronounced "Ah-reet."

Quote from: P&P;412232*snip*  70 pages of spells, *snip*   50 pages of magic items. *snip*

NOOOOO>>>> (echoing)

I'm fine with a lot of this stuff... I don't care if the book is thick if it's well-organized and the binding is sturdy... I'm not sure I understand the 'irrelevant art' bit, would that be like pictures of Musketeers in a game about space vampires? Images that promote the mood/themes are good for me... they don't need to portray specific items/characters/places.

Too much in-character text does irritate me though... the Tribe 8 books were bad bad bad that way... whole setting books that were almost entirely done that way.

Funny thing about 50 pages of spells, is that you only use about 10 of them at most, ever.

I can't think of the last time I wrote a character that could cast higher than 5th level spells, but ymmv.

Still, almost every 1st level Pathfinder wizard has:

Sleep, Color Spray, Grease, Mage Armor, Expeditious Retreat, and Enlarge

or

Sleep, Minor Image, Alter Self, Charm Person, Protection from Evil, Mage Armor

That's about it. Almost all of the other spells are just window dressing. Who takes Mount? Ventriloquism? Animate Rope? Endure Elements?

Over half the spells for every spell level are things no one would ever pick, and only get used when you want an NPC with an odd spell list.

Ridiculous levels of typos.  If you can't bother to at least run a spell checker, you have no business writing anything.

Bad art.  No art is better than bad art.

Quote from: pspahn;412237I know I'll get gigged for this but I prefer seeing the male pronoun used. He, him, his. I wont pass on a good game because of this of course, but anything else is jarring enough to take me out of the read. It's just what I'm used to after almost forty years of reading.

Pete

I know what you mean. You just know that anything else stands out as a conscious choice of the author - which invariably means they are trying to be all fake-PC.

Quote from: One Horse Town;412264I know what you mean. You just know that anything else stands out as a conscious choice of the author - which invariably means they are trying to be all fake-PC.

(: In the game I have, I used the male pronoun almost the entire time, except i the magic section. If I put it out for sale, I wonder how much that would irritate people.

Quote from: Cranewings;412266(: In the game I have, I used the male pronoun almost the entire time, except i the magic section. If I put it out for sale, I wonder how much that would irritate people.

Well, you'd fail mhensley's typo check, at any rate...

Quote from: Cranewings;412260That's about it. Almost all of the other spells are just window dressing. Who takes Mount? Ventriloquism? Animate Rope? Endure Elements?

Doesn't that depend on the play style of any particular group?
If every session is going to be combat heavy then I can see players loading up on the useful fight spells... but the spell list also allows for a play style where 'Ventriloquism' ends up being a lot more useful than 'Mage Armor'.
In our Earthdawn games the spell that seems to get cast most often has to do with creating food.

Quote from: mhensleyBad art. No art is better than bad art.

Bad art is in the eye of the beholder, I'd take the illustrations from the original D&D books over Larry Elmore's crap every time.

Vehicle rules that won't let me make the vehicles listed in the book.

Text on backgrounds so that it's very hard to read.

Sections of the book that contridict each other.

A rulebook with rules I can come up with myself, and without any real difficulty. "Rules Light", to me, is often just another way of saying "Details Missing".

Quote from: Cranewings;412260That's about it. Almost all of the other spells are just window dressing. Who takes Mount? Ventriloquism? Animate Rope? Endure Elements?

Over half the spells for every spell level are things no one would ever pick, and only get used when you want an NPC with an odd spell list.

Back in my 1e days, I remember the other players in my group and me using pretty much every one of those spells. I especially loved Mount, and later Phantom Steed. I recall finding a use for all of those spells "no one" would ever use, and I know I wasn't the only one. Sure, a low-level caster who goes spelunking might load up on the more "useful" spells, but increased levels and adventuring outside dungeons made stuff like Ventriloquism and Endure Elements pretty useful...for us, at least.

Quote from: ColonelHardisson;412275Ventriloquism.

That's an awesome spell.