The "One Book" Principle

     I begin this post with a claim: RPGs are an oral tradition. When you've got a group of total neophytes, you don't want to make them read through your ruleset of choice before the game like homework. You want to get them to the table and rolling dice and having fun as fast and without hassle as possible. Since the game is a conversation, why is the initial experience not structured like one?

     My second postulate, then, is that a book's purpose is to convey the rules in the absence of a teacher. The RPG book exists so that play can be had in a similar manner with a totally different group of people. Again, I think this is a fair claim. It gets dicey in terms of splatbooks full of character abilities, but I'll address those later.

     The third postulate is that RPGs should contain minimum unwanted hassle. Some hassle is wanted. For example, rolling a d20 and adding modifiers is a hassle. Rolling damage on a successful attack is a hassle. Having a list of equipment or spells is a hassle. All of these things are integral components of many games, necessary to make the gameplay engaging. But wherever corners can be cut and not diminish overall fun/desired aesthetic, I argue they should be.

     My fifth postulate, in summation, is thus: A good game system should only need one player at the table to have possessed and read one book and still have a good experience throughout. 5e fails miserably, ICRPG almost passes save character creation, Dungeon World is pretty damn good. When you design your RPG, think about someone trying to verbally walk an RPG neophyte through every process and procedure, including character creation, because that's usually how you'll be doing it.

Stealthposting because these are probably obvious to a lot of people, and not terribly interesting, but I wanted to put it out there so I can reference it later. Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.