Noob Question - Books needed to play

[Steve Plambeck]

Originally Posted by Axly Suregrip

A players guide is very useful in introducing a new player to the game without handing them an intimidatingly large manual (ITL).

It should contain:
- character sheet
- list of combat options
- talents
- spells
- weapons/armor lists
- extra purchase items list

Those things for sure, but also:

- movement
- facing
- engagement
- turn sequence

Which all boils down to a merger of Melee and Wizard, with only the additions of talents and the equipment list. Each of those "MicroGames" was 21 pages, but there was a high percentage of overlap, so the result of the merger would be on the order of 35 pages (in the 4x7 inch booklet format).

Then import just those 3 things needed from ITL, talents, equipment, and a full page character sheet and we're looking at approximately 55 pages total (again if it's in the 4x7 format). Better say 60 pages because of the additional spells in ITL, assuming you wanted to include them. That's roughly only 40 pages in letter size format -- a mere 20 sheets of paper. That's less than 1/4th the size the current ITL book. Every group, or every GM within a group, would of course still need the full ITL book as their reference manual. But imagine how much easier it might be to bring new players into the group if they saw that all the rules they needed to get (and deal with) fit on 20 sheets of letter size paper. Take that D&D! :)

A sidebar here, but my oldest pet peeve with the Metagaming editions was the the weapons table was found in Advanced Melee, but the equipment table was found in ITL -- oh how that used to drive me crazy -- LOL