Why Do Core Rulebooks for d20 RPG ALWAYS Take More Time and Effort Than You Expect (Patreon)

I generally try not to make too many absolute statements, preferring overall to drop one or more weasel words into any declaration that might otherwise come off as being presented as a hard, immutable truth (or, at bare minimum, insert some kind of parenthetical noting that the assertion in question is based on my personal experience which I find to often be closer to accurate).

I also try to be at least a little self-aware.

But I did recently make the statement that creating a new d20 game core rulebook will always take more time and effort than you expect. I doubled down and said it'll take more time and effort than you think even if you KNOW it always takes more time and effort than you plan for. And no, I can't say that this is truly a universal law, but it does apply to all six d20 rpg core rulebooks I've been on the team creating over the past 25 years. (Eight, if you count quick-plays and starter sets... which honestly I should.)

And, entirely fairly, a creative who is also a project manager asked me (paraphrased) "WHY does it take longer even though you know what to expect from prior projects? What unexpected pitfalls have you run into?"

I believe the WHY is driven by four distinct but related reasons.

The first is that when you are making a core rulebook from scratch, you don't know exactly what you are doing. The rules themselves aren't set yet. If you make a book of monsters, you generally know what core rules define monsters, and have made some monsters already, so you know how long, on average, it takes to write a monster. Same with adventures, setting books, and so on. But with a core rulebook, you are creating brand new foundational systems. Your first idea for how to create that foundation may not work, or it may work at first, but not after you build half of the additional systems that tie into it. Or it may work fine, but near the very end you realize there is a MUCH better way to do it, and if you don't make the change, people are going to scream you didn't playtest your game because there's an obvious better way to do that system.

This, especially, also applies to development and editing. A good ttRPG editor knows the rules of the game they are editing for. If they find an incorrect rules application they can fix it, or take it to the writer/developer and ask if this apparent mis-application is a special exception and, if so, why. When the rules aren't set yet, that's impossible. And since something in Chapter Ten might end up necessitating a change in Chapter One, ideally edting wouldn't START until all writing was done. Much more often, editing begins when the book is at most half-written (regardless of what the schedule says is SUPPOSED to happen), and editors may never get a chance to look at the book as a finished whole before it's sent off to print.

But all of these issues impact more than writing, and even more than editing. If you want the art to reflect the fictional reality of the game, ideally you wouldn't order art until the game was finished. But no one has time for that, and anyway at some point editing and layout have to fit the words with the art on a page, so it all tends to happen at once, especially towards the end of the schedule. If it turns out a monster on the cover has the wrong number of limbs... oh well. Maybe you change the monster description. (Better hope there are no game rules presented that reference number of limbs.)

The second is that a d20-system core rulebook is sufficiently complex and interconnected that any change you make to how the system works from previous systems (and if you aren't making a change, it's not really a new core rulebook) is going to have unforeseen rippling consequences. Different consequences, in different places, than when you have done such a rulebook before.

And it's going to happen more than once.

(Yeah. A lot of late nights looking like this.)

Because those consequences are unforeseen, they will hit at unexpected times. And each time they do, you'll TRY to only eat up the minimum amount of cushion time built into the schedule. But without knowing how many more unexpected changes you are going to hit, you don't know how much cushion time you can spare. Because you can ALWAYS spend more time looking at ways to fix the issue.

The third is that you definitely want to playtest your game, and there is no way to know how much time going through playtest feedback NEEDS in any given section. If your first, second, and third playtest go fine, your LAST playtest might reveal a problem so huge that the playtesters tell you "This game made me feel dumb, and if this was my first interaction with it, I'd refuse to ever pick it up or try to play it again." That's not hyperbole. That's feedback we got on the last playtest for one of those 6 books, days before it had to go to print. One designer had to scramble to fix that problem, and then I had to scramble to make sure that correction was properly represented everywhere it was mentioned in a multi-hundred page book.

The last reason is that generally the book HAS to hit its deadline to go to print. Yes, you'll have an official deadline, and the real deadline, but it HAS to hit that real deadline. Budgets are built on it. The fate of the company may ride on it. Convention appearances and ad buys and follow-up products schedules all depend on it. And since you;ve been paying people to make this bigger-than-normal product, you haven't made income on their efforts for a longer than normal.

If you miss that real to-print deadline, the company may fold, the division might be shut down, or layoffs might hit. So, the designers, editors, and layout artists DO whatever has to be done to make sure that's not the case. On more than one of those core books I pulled all-nighters, making sure that a section was done/revised/incorporated by a given day because four other sections were dependent on it, and that meant other writers couldn't start until I was finished and several of them had to switch to other sections right after they were done with their next pieces and some other work was dependent on THOSE being done on time which meant a MASSIVE delay if that deadline was missed by even one-day. Editors took sections home over the weekend. The entire department was pulled in for a pancake Saturday work day.

This means the books took more time and effort than expected, but rather than be pushed back, the extra time and effort was taken directly out of the lives of its designers, editors, and layout staff. That means the schedule "worked," even though it caused real-life harm. The consequences of that are less visible, and that means the lessons learned aren't as hard-felt and likely to impact scheduling the next time a core rulebook is scheduled.

ALL of this applies specifically to d20 systems, and to multi-hundred page core rulebooks. Even a ttRPG book of the same SIZE that isn't a core book doesn't have the pitfalls of a big, interconnected, firm-math-driven core rulebook. Obviously, games with fewer interconnected rules, or those that come in under 64 pages are going to have fewer cascading effects, and may not experience everything I'm listing here.

I bet they still take longer than expected, though. :p