Size?

[Daddicus]

In another thread, someone mentioned that Marc may need to chop 100 pages off the current 5.09 book text.

As far as I'm concerned, I don't care how big it is. But, for this thread, assume we have to cull stuff.

What can be cut, without damaging the game?

My first thought is to remove the repeated lists of "the ten trades" from each of the 10 skill descriptions for those trades. Instead, put "one of the 10 trades" and then the page number where the full table of trades lives.

The same thing would apply to talents, arts, etc. I don't think we need the actual list inside each skill description, as long as people know where to look.

 

[Daddicus]

There is also quite a bit of repetitive text in the "related skills" section of each skill. However, this isn't as cut-and-dried as the "trades" thing I wrote previously.

 

[David Johansen]

I think most of the Third Imperium material can go. There's not enough there to use it in play and it adds little to the tool box. Good functional examples of the rules would be different but all we've got is a bunch of fluff. The color pages could also be moved to the Third Imperium book.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see the races and ships as fully functional examples in the book but what is in there now really adds nothing.

On the other hand, redoing the entire index probably isn't on Mark's agenda.

 

[Licheking]

Remove all the probability tables, they aren't needed. Most people can work out if they stand a chance of rolling under something with various amounts of d6. Certainly for players all they should be doing is declaring their actions being told to roll a certain amount of dice and then being told if they succeed or not, therefore no need for probability tables.

 

[whulorigan]

Remove all the probability tables, they aren't needed. Most people can work out if they stand a chance of rolling under something with various amounts of d6. Certainly for players all they should be doing is declaring their actions being told to roll a certain amount of dice and then being told if they succeed or not, therefore no need for probability tables.

I would agree. The probability tables are nice, but not absolutely necessary in a Core Rules Book. If you need to cut down the size of the book, that would be the place to start, and it would eliminate a number of pages from the BBB.

It seems that those tables could be put together as a separate PDF on FFE's or Drive-Thru's site, for those who would like to have them handy.

If there ever is a Referee's Handbook similar to the promised Player's Handbook, they could be included in an appendix in it.

 

[David Johansen]

It occurs to me that a smart guy would put the 100 pages he planned to axe at the end of the book.


hmmm...Probablities, Benchmarks, Master Modifiers Tables, System Maps, Crime and Punishment, Ship Recognition Guides including color plates, Index.

Yeah, it looks to me like there's close to a hundred pages at the end that would be pretty easy to drop.

 

[Dagrill]

In another thread, someone mentioned that Marc may need to chop 100 pages off the current 5.09 book text.

As far as I'm concerned, I don't care how big it is. But, for this thread, assume we have to cull stuff.

Hi,

If it's pdf or CD I agree withy you, but I think this is referring to the pages in the printed book.

Regards

David

 

[Scratches]

It occurs to me that a smart guy would put the 100 pages he planned to axe at the end of the book.

hmmm...Probablities, Benchmarks, Master Modifiers Tables, System Maps, Crime and Punishment, Ship Recognition Guides including color plates, Index.

Yeah, it looks to me like there's close to a hundred pages at the end that would be pretty easy to drop.

Please don't drop the index! But I agree, the other items mentioned would be better suited in a compendium.

I like the big book to put on the shelf, but smaller softbound books, like the oft-mentioned Player's Guide, would be very helpful as inexpensive additions for the players to refer to. The MT books were perfect.

For myself, PDFs are the way to go, I run the game on two laptops with custom bookmarks to zoom to where I need to be. One for the core rules, another for supplements or adventure notes. Adds some flavor, it's a sciencey type of game.

 

[Original_Carl]

I'm with Scratches. I run my game from a laptop. I could go for more pages.

 

[Daddicus]

Would it make sense to have some of the "extra" stuff moved to an online-only motif? I'm thinking tables that are duplicated elsewhere, some of the callout boxes, and things like that.

 

[Daddicus]

On page 405, the second paragraph on the left side could be reworded to save space. Change to:

A system to have up to eight stars: a Primary, a Close star, a Near star, and a Far star, (the last 3 in the Inner, Outer, and Remote systems, respectively) plus one companion for each. However, the chance of such a system is extremely low.

 

[KDLadage]

In my humble, personal, easily-disregarded opinion...

The size of the book -- even the physical printing of the behemoth -- is not the issue. This book should be, in my opinion, as long as it needs to be to convey the system and information that needs to be conveyed. Not one page longer. Not one page shorter.

Fluff... in this book, anything that is not the system can be pulled and put into another volume or another medium.

Non-system tables... (e.g., the probabilities tables) can be pulled and put into another volume or another medium; alternatively, that can be an appendix within the book.

Duplicated data... this is an organizational issue. If anything in the book is being copy-pasted whole-sale, this is a good indication that Section A needs to be integrated into, or moved closer to, Section B.

And so on. Do not look at this thing in terms of "Do we need to remove 103 pages?"; instead, look at this as "Are we using each page efficiently and effectively?"

 

[Scratches]

I may be a bit ridiculous on this, but what I'd like is an online "assemble your own rules" ability. I'd like to be able to choose the tables and rules I want to see and package them, it'd be great to run an adventure. Instead of 700+ pages I could trim down to 12 or so for a particular adventure and insert my adventure elements into it so each page is what I need. My Model/1 can handle it!

It's not the same as printing and assembling PDF pages, I'd like control down to the tables.

Like I said, maybe I'm a bit ridiculous, but I'd absolutely subscribe to something like this!