I like the 2d6 games more and more. I am finding the huge, full-sized, shelf library games to be heavy, unwieldy, space-wasting, and not worth my time. They are easily damaged by water leaks and other disasters, and are expensive to maintain and store.
None of my "big game" books were damaged in the last leak, but I ask myself the same question after every disaster. Why do I hold onto huge libraries of books that I will never read and don't need? Would I be happier with smaller, more focused, easier-to-manage, and lighter-weight games? I am not talking rules-light, but compact, expressive, and full-featured without a few thousand pages and a hundred pounds of bloat?
I am happier with smaller games.
They hold a sort of magic for me, where every word, chart, and rule was carefully weighed before it was put into the game. There is a cost to writing a page of rules in a small game, and we are just getting the best of the best in many of these designs. In contrast, I have games that needlessly run for pages for a single subclass. I can just see the writer being "paid by the word," and my eyes roll at the fat, terrible, boated, and heavy design with a few core concepts spread over pages of fluff text and art.
It is not worth keeping them around. The bigger they are, the worse the game becomes. I get the feeling the new Traveller, with shelf after shelf of books, is less playable than a small, digest-sized, 2d6 game like the original version was decades ago. Even a rules-light game like Cypher is huge, with a simple core concept, yet the books are far larger than they need to be. I can't find a 5E implementation (outside of Shadowdark) that is compact, and most of 5E feels like a lost cause.
I don't get that much enjoyment from them.
The bigger they are, the worse it gets.
A small-book game is like holding magic in my hands. They did so much with so little. There is nothing wasting my time and taking up space. The rest is up to me.
