Maybe it's just me, but REALLY not a fan.

I went down to the Compleat Strategist the other day thinking of picking up Call of Cthulhu 7th, but then saw it was being sold as a Keeper's book and a seperate Player's book, which looked like 90% fluff... plus the character creation rules.

This seems to be getting more and more common, and is pretty much a dealbreaker for me. I want all my rules in one book. Fuck splats too. I'm cool with seperate adventure or campaign material, but I want to be able to run a game with just a single core book.

Thoughts on the subject?

If the material is totally distinct and the price isn't boosted because it is 2 instead of 1, I don't mind. But all I buy is PDFs. It looks like usually the two-instead-of-one setups are usually twice as much as I'm willing to spend on a game.

Exactly. A cheap way of artificially inflating price.

40 to 60 bucks for a system? Okay. 80 and up for the core rules? Nah.

My own preference is to have a single book as well, but I do like how I've seen some Savage Worlds and Cypher System games handle the Player/GM book split. There's a complete rule book offered that anyone can pick up for the normal price, but often there's a cheaper "Player's Guide" that just holds the basic information like character creation info, equipment, etc. packaged in a separate product so players don't have to drop full price an another fancy game book with redundant information they aren't supposed to be reading anyway.

No. Its usually not a money grab.

I came to really dislike single book RPGs unless the rules were sufficiently light to warrant. Way way way too many times you end up with this unweildy thick tome.

Also separating the books means the players can not as easily just leaf through the monster section and memorize their stats, weaknesses, etc. Or flip to the monster section during an encounter since hey its ALL FUCKING THERE.

And its easier to pass the player book around while at the table and still have the DM part handy.

The other bonus of separating the books is that its less of a barrier to getting players interested. This has been a recurring complaint since at least the 80s. Some players look at all these rules, many of which dont concern the players, and freak out.

Do you count DMG's and PHB's that are bound into one book? Because I'm falling in love with those games.

Savage Worlds, Fantasycraft, Edge of the Empire(and their respective sister-lines) immediately jump out as games that I tend to converse a lot on, without thinking about this point. They're all self-contained enough to run games with. I'd admit Edge might be a bit trickier, because you'd be limited in scope of what it covers, but you can run it for what it is pretty well.


Edit: To Omega's point - other than Savage Worlds, Edge and Fantasycraft are behemoths. So that would definitely be a turn-off for some folks.

My old Call of Cthulhu book is an all in one tome and this is one RPG where you really dont want the players leafing through the DM and monster section. Same for any given Palladium book. Thick tomes.

The majority of the single book type RPGs I've got have separate player and DM halves. But its still one big freaking book and some players get it in their heads that they have to learn all this.

Games with more than one book and/or a player book: OD&D, 1st edition Traveller, Hawkmoon, and 1st Edition Pendragon. Those games had booklets not multiple volumes and the booklets were actually pretty convenient and they came in a box so you could keep them all together on a book shelf. That works just fine for me.

Runequest 1 and 2, Stormbringer 1 and 2, most editions of Call of Cthulhu, WEG Star Wars, and Honor+Intrigue all came in a single volume. If the binding is high class, that works just fine for me. (Technically, my H+I rule book sits on a shelf unused. Instead I use the PDF in the electronic version or the version I printed out and put in a 3-ring notebook.)

Quote from: Omega;919565I came to really dislike single book RPGs unless the rules were sufficiently light to warrant. Way way way too many times you end up with this unweildy thick tome.

I was going to say that if the reason there is more than one book is because the rules are too long to fit in one book without it looking like the OED then the game has too many words and it probably has too many rules too.

I prefer game books that have the complete rules in just one tome. The only game that I find it acceptable to be separated out into more than one Core Rulebook is D&D.

Not a big issue to me, except I don't like lugging too many fat (phat?) tomes around. A lot of DMG stuff I just need a photocopy or proper homemeade DM Screen and I'm good to go. I prefer my PHBs to be lighter, more grab 'n go for quick chargen and then stash away.

Fat (phat?) tomes are not really that useful to me except for at home prep. I'm lazy, yet I think if I could scrub up a quick 30 page chargen + core mechanics reference sheet I would be even happier. It's usually the volume of exception-based widgets (spells, songs, disciplines, features) that scrap that idea.

Also all-in-one books tend to be a pain for storage and display. Usually ends up with the dictionaries and oversized art books. I realy like box sets, too, because they file so nice and tidy like. So I guess I am the ultimate in rpg heresy.

More pages for rules means more rule books, instead of one big brick rule book.

RuneQuest 3 had I forget how many booklets in the box. I'm too lazy to go upstairs and check, but I think it might have been as many as 5 in the deluxe set.

I remember when Call of Cthulhu was at least two, a rues book and 1920's sourcebook in a box.

I don't really mind games that have multiple core books, as long as the game actually *needs* them and is sensibly organized. Blue Planet 2e had a series of books each on a different subject, you didn't need them all.

AD&D 2e had far too many splatbooks of really uneven quality as did White Wolf. When the player who has the splat for his character is at a very significant advantage over the player who doesn't something is wrong with the game.

Quote from: DavetheLost;919677RuneQuest 3 had I forget how many booklets in the box. I'm too lazy to go upstairs and check, but I think it might have been as many as 5 in the deluxe set.

I remember when Call of Cthulhu was at least two, a rues book and 1920's sourcebook in a box.

The RQ3 Avalon Hill version of the booklets had paper covers and were stapled instead of bound. Very flimsy. And, I forgot the booklet version of CoC. I think that was 1st and 2nd edition. There were two. The rules and the sourcebook.

One book, and thin. Done wth piles of rules and reference materials.

I've been thinking about this.

There is a variation on the theme that I find acceptable, even preferable. Mongoose Traveller 1e has a Core Rulebook with everything you need in a not so weighty tome. Mongoose Traveller 1e also has Book 0: An Introduction to Mongoose Traveller, which has most of the rules that a player needs and uses on a regular basis. So I would use the Core Rulebook at the table and most of my players would just use a copy of Book 0.