Too much Text in RPGs vs. Not Enough Text

 In 2026 I finally realized that the tabletop RPG market appears to be heavily weighted in two directions: those games of enormous page count, laden with a density of information; and on the other side of this curve is a veritable mountain of tiny, often zine-shaped games filled with what can only be described as a strangely minimalist approach to content. 

I feel like there's probably a line to be drawn from how RPGs used to be, and how for many people the barrier of entry was finding the time and energy to read hundreds of pages of material to get familiar with a game or setting to run it, and today, where you have games like Mork Borg where 90% of the game experience is interpreting the surreal art and parsing out tiny nuggets of rule or setting data. 

The interesting question is maybe not whether minimalist game systems are a response to the older style of dense, text- heavy games, but rather: is the market for more "information lite" game systems and text actually a sign of changing times? Even dense tomes like the newest 5.5 edition of D&D are actually rather information light; these books use less of the page with a bigger font to convey less information per page; just look at the D&D 2014 race write-ups to the 2024 ancestries for a fine example. Or take the 2014 DMG, which is packed with stuff (both to its betterment and its failure) compared to the briefer and lighter 2024 DMG. 

There are plenty of games where word density and system or setting depth is important; just witness Pathfinder 2E for proof this is still a thing. Cyberpunk Red, Shadowrun 6th, Coriolis, Call of cthulhu, Mythras, etc....there are plenty of these sorts of games, the "old guard" if you will out there and in circulation.

But then we have some games where the line is crossed: Shadowdark is what got me thinking about this notion in the first place. I mean, Shadowdark is a minimalist spectacle where you get the Big Fat Rulebook experience with a torrent of supplemental material, but the actual result is a shockingly low word count, a system that appears to be allergic to exposition or setting depth, and a paucity of rules content that borders on a sort of weird art. 

I was going to argue that Old-School Essentials is more of a middle ground here, given it is a precise retelling of the original B/X D&D system, and it really is....but all that demonstrates is that the idea of "rules with lite content in presentation" was also a thing in the early eighties. Indeed, one need only remember the myriad titles of Fantasy Games Unlimited to remember that this is actually a very old concept. So if oneis trying to ascribe the current wave of minimalist RPGs exclusively to short attention spans of modern crowds, I think that is probably not true, because we had plenty of games like this back in the day. What is true now is that the density of informtion in current rulesets is even skimpier and more graphically dependent than the many old FGU games ever were, though.

On the other hand OSE is a great example of how even a famously simple ruleset that has been presented in a somewhat minimalist fashion (B/X D&D editions) later evolves into something much more dense and complex (D&D Rules Cyclopedia). Indeed, for fun just read through the original Basic Set (Otus edition) D&D book, then contrast it with the OSE book (which is probably of the same word count, but manages to organize the information much more efficiently) then contrast the two with the much more elaborate and denser combat rules section of the Rules Cyclopedia. Same game....but just now with more density and more use cases being documented. 

Lately I have been a bit torn about the fact that I definitely fall in to a more old school camp when it comes to how I like my rulesets, dense and thick with too much information, vs. the fact that a game like OSE is so wonderful in its concise get-to-the-point approach of design, and then Shadowdark, which I love because it is designed to reduce complexity that could get in the way of jumping right to the part where you play the game, but perhaps at the expense of making its rules tomes and supplements anything more than utilitarian outlines that feel like a Cliff's Notes edition of D&D. 

This means that....if you are still in a corner of the hobby where part of the experience is reading and figuring out these rulebooks and their systems, then a game like Shadowdark really doesn't offer much to you.

Ah well....I guess while I mull that conundrum over I shall just resume reading the latest batch of Mythras books I just got (a Fioraccita supplement, Mythic Venice, and several third party modules I found on drivethru that I finally took the plunge on). Mythras is unquestionably in the old school camp of "there is no such thing as too much information." 

Or maybe I will read through some of my Mothership books....despite being definitely part of the zine scene where the "rules lite, informtion lite" era of gaming has been flourishing lately, a nontrivial number of Mothership books are actually super information dense (albeit for scenario and setting content), but in a tricky way where it disguises this density through the medium of contemporary short-form module design. 

I guess the one thing I can say for sure is: there's definitely something for almost everyone out there!

The B-List Character Problem (Supergirl Review and Post-Mortem)

 I saw Supergirl last week, a bit late but it was a fun movie. Not a great movie, mind you; I haven't thought much more about it beyond the fact that it was a fun romp and managed to hit a fair number of good storytelling beats while still being a fairly traditional story. The graphic novel it is based off of had more nuance and was less "action-y" than the movie, of course. But overall not bad. Milly Alcock does a good take on Supergirl, Jason Momoa makes a much better Lobo than he did Aquaman, and the smaller scale and feel of the story makes it a fun sort of one-and-done adventure.

But! The film has done poorly at the box office, and it is easy to see why. For one thing, Supergirl has always been a B (maybe even C) tier lister in the DC roster of superheroes. Now sure, James Gunn has managed to take some seriously obscure characters from both DC and Marvel and elevate them, but those are usually characters working in an ensemble cast, or who collectively have a dynamic range going on. In Supergirl we have really only got three key characters (Supergirl, the young girl seeking revenge whose name escapes me, and the criminally under-utilized Lobo) and a villain so generally lame he is worthy of a Marvel casting. 

But that can't be the reason no one showed up to the movie, though. I think the reason is ultimately pretty basic: Supergirl is a B-tier character, one who is better used as a supporting cast for an A-lister like Superman. Her only other claim to fame is some TV show appearances and a 80's movie that is generally only looked upon fondly with very thick rose colored glasses. Her comic is never a hit, and often targeting the younger crowd in a way that only older comic writers and artists can fail to do so ("Hey, Kids," type Buscemi moment type stuff). DC does this a lot, in fact, and juggles between trying to produce hip anime-style feeling comics for the young crowd that generally doesn't read comics, and also pushing out comics for the aging fanbase doing geriatric callbacks to references from obscure fifties and sixties characters that no one but the most diehard obscure fans care about anymore. It's an ongoing DC problem. 

Still, even that can't fully explain the reason no one turned up. I have two more ideas on why this movie had no legs, and one of them is an unpleasant notion but I still think explains it:

First: The movie is dirty, dark and miserably brown and grey. It is a modern film with no vibrant color or life to it, and it feels like a deliberate style choice in the film's cinematography, which is a shame because Superman last year was a very colorful, vibrant and fun movie that felt like a comic book come to life. So people who saw the Supergirl trailer would notice this, and notice that it was advertising a dour, miserable and unhappy storyline in sharp contrast with the ambitiously fun and upbeat Superman film.

Second: Aside from Supergirl being a B-lister and the trailers advertising a darker take on a chaaracter that the comic books often depict as a teenage girl's superhero (just read some recent issues of her recent books), there's Milly Alcock herself. She is a good actress who portrays an angsty, stressed and unhappy character struggling to find her place in the DC universe, and this is conveyed in the advterising for the film. But she is also....and I feel bad even commenting on this....not the prettiest woman. She is hard-edged and has exactly the right face and demeanour for this character I feel, but she is not a "pretty" person by conventional pop culture blockbuster standards. For the generic large crowd of unwashed movie going masses I feel her presence and appearance is a hard sell. This is a shame because she really is good in the role, but when you contrast her with the way Supergirl is normally depicted in the comics, I'd suggest that the hard edge of Milly is not typical of this character's design, and that someone like Samara Weaving or Dakota Fanning would be more "popular" fits. And this sort of sucks, because I like Milly Alcock in the role, but I just don't feel like her style and appearance is something that the superficial masses could manage. And that also rather sucks, because I think it helps explain why a lot of people saw the poster or the trailer and just decided they can wait for streaming on this one.

There is also the fact that this movie is surprisingly violent for a character who in a lot of current comics is clearly marketed at a younger teen girl crowd. If I had a young daughter and took her to this movie I think it would be a serious shock if prior exposure to Supergirl was entirely based on TV and 80's film appearances, or the more juvenile comics currently out there. It's the same problem the Mandalorian and Grogu had, where you have some major carnage happening in a movie that has a happy golucky animatronic puppet as a main character in it.

Okay, rant off! I give Supergirl a solid B+ for the record and now look forward to the Clayface movie.

Odd Rulings That Become Rules (Mythras vs. BRP)

 I was recently weighing Mythras Imperative against Basic Roleplaying (spoiler - BRP wins by a modest margin, but I will convert a lot of Mythras stuff over to BRP) when I noticed this odd rule on skills, regarding situations where the PC can attempt the skill a second time: in essence (to paraphrase) the Mythras rules indicate you can do so at a increased step penalty, because per the writer of the rules (for I disagree that there is any universal agreement on what is stated here), the PC will be too shaken and off balance during the second attempt. They give two examples where this could happen: climbing and picking a lock.

I had to mull this over a bit in my head. Climbing I could imagine a scenario for being more difficult a second time after a first failure; you may be rattled, shaken by a near-fall event or even just fatigued from the first try. But lock picking? It's almost certain that after a first failure you will actually go in to it a second time even more certain of the action because you have already tried and failed a certain approach, which thus narrows your range of options down to more likely vectors of success. Many skills might fall into this category. 

A lot of what is written in Mythras has a semi-unspoken rule of "decide on what makes sense, realistically," and that could hold true here. But the very two examples given are such that I feel the rule could have been written to say, "If common sense says the second try will be harder, then make the difficulty harder. But if trying a second time is informed and improved by the first failure, then don't penalize it." And the two examples given would support such a notion, I feel. 

Anyway, it just struck me as odd.....the certainty of the author in the rule that a second try will always be at penalty due to the character being rattled by the first failure seems inherently contradictory to so many scenarios where that simply is the opposite of reality that I was surprised at the boldness with which the statement was made.

Just a thought! Sometimes maybe a specific notion on how something works may not be the ideal arbiter of a standard rule. This leans slightly into my main pet peeve about Mythras, which is that the specials in combat come as a happenstance after an attack, rather than being a goal of the attack. That, however, is perhaps a gripe for a different post!