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[MaximumZero]

Players can own buildings to store stuff, as well as carts, wagons, and even ships to haul stuff. Also, I ran out of paper, and wanted to keep it on one sheet.

[maxicaxi]

Just make a front and back side 

[MaximumZero]

Not everyone can do 2 sided/duplex printing.

I just wanted it easy to slap in a copier and go. Besides, if anyone has any notes or whatever, the whole back of the sheet is free. ^_^

[Sean Mirrsen]

Meaning the notes section of the main thing can go?

[MaximumZero]

It could, I guess, but some people are freaks about that. I have some players that write all over their sheets and some that keep notebooks. *shrug* Use it or not, it's really personal opinion.

[Yannanth]

.

[Fishbreath]

So to keep a newcomer's interest (again, this is a new topic to get off the other one), a quick-play guide has to be made which may empower one with a reasonable understanding of the game in say, under 10 minutes. Allow up to a maximum of that considering the game would take about 10 more minutes to set up; and that was my proposition -  make games less open-ended to make the easier to play. Although choice of spells could be removed, greater detail could go into balancing them and what-not.

Asking that any RPG be understandable in 10 minutes or less is asking something of an impossibility. I could maybe explain to someone familiar with the genre how to play D&D4e (a fairly simple example) in that much time, but even then that's going to involve a lot of looking up rules as the game moves on. I'd argue that there are a lot of board games, even, that take longer than 10 minutes to explain--Power Grid and Puerto Rico, for instance, are simple concepts but relatively complex implementations.

Simplicity is certainly a good design goal, I'll agree with you there. My first foray into RPG design may be unsalvageable because I equated having lots of numbers which don't change often with simplicity, which is patently false (and something I'm trying to solve with the next revision). The modularity of MaximumZero's system might help out in that regard, but I haven't really read this thread in enough detail to say anything one way or another.

[MaximumZero]

The biggest thing to remember is that not everyone will want to command armies, or run a shop or guild, or build boats, or cast spells, or even fight. One of my favorite campaigns to run was a debt-based plot, where the players all teamed up to eventually overcome a political plot to keep people as wage slaves, and they did so by running a massive trade operation, smuggling contraband goods to foreign powers. This type of game may suit players like Yannath a little more than others.

If you are running a dungeon crawl with experienced players, then you could pick up the game and go in the time it takes to create a character (about 20 minutes.) If you're starting from scratch, it may be in your best interest to explore what type of game the players are expecting, and craft the beginning of the story around that, which will probably take a considerably larger amount of time.

[Psyco Jelly]

I wish I could offer an opinion, but my RPG experience is limited to Call of Cthulhu and Dungeons and Dragons (3.5 and 4th editions). It looks interesting, but until I know how easy it is on the player end I wouldn't want to buy it. I'm fine with there being complex rules, but not if those rules bog down the gameplay by forcing the GM to sort through the rulebook.

[MaximumZero]

@Psyco Jelly (I so wanted to reflexively put an h in your name...)
A) Is there anything in particular you're looking at being too complicated?
B) I plan on marking sections in the book when I print (color coded page edges, like tabs)

[maxicaxi]

Not everyone can do 2 sided/duplex printing.

I just wanted it easy to slap in a copier and go. Besides, if anyone has any notes or whatever, the whole back of the sheet is free. ^_^

you just take the paper and put it into the printer again facing the other way

[MaximumZero]

Not everyone can do 2 sided/duplex printing.

I just wanted it easy to slap in a copier and go. Besides, if anyone has any notes or whatever, the whole back of the sheet is free. ^_^

you just take the paper and put it into the printer again facing the other way

I know, I'm a sales rep for HP. Some people don't like to do that, though. Mostly because they don't have instant dry ink and they want it NOW, and then it screws up the first side of their page. That's neither here nor there, though.

The goal with the one sided char sheet was to be able to take the book up to the library or Walgreen's or slap it in your home copier, run off 10 or so, and be ready to go. I remember having to make 40 copies to play D&Dv3 once (I used to run with a large group of nerds), because they didn't have a condensed charsheet at the time, and I didn't have a printer.

[Fishbreath]

Real men roll their own character sheets on graph paper.

Well, I do, anyway. It's rare that I and game designers have the same idea about what should be front and center on the sheet.

[MaximumZero]

I do that a lot, too. Have you taken a look at my character sheets? I posted them not too long ago. If so, what do you think?

[Fishbreath]

I do that a lot, too. Have you taken a look at my character sheets? I posted them not too long ago. If so, what do you think?

Certainly much cleaner than the ones I come up with, almost to the point of looking like there's not enough there. If that's all you need to play, then I congratulate you on coming up with a simpler system than I seem to be able to.

One of the things the people I've had playtest for me have universally liked was that the second page of my character sheet was a cheat sheet for the blanks on the first page, with cross-references to the pages on which concepts were initially described. It's the sort of innovation I think should be encouraged, especially for people who are unfamiliar with a system--it really cuts down on the time spent shuffling back and forth trying to find a particular rule.