Bullet POINT
Something I have strong feelings about is ideas. Mainly about how they are both cheap and do not exist until I can poke it with a stick. As an easily accessible publisher you would not believe how many times people have literally come in off the street and said "I have an idea for a game, how can we work together". And I mean idea. Full stop. Think of a building. A cathedral made of lapis lazuli carved with herds of tigers. Ok now I've done the hard part, you put in the rooms and build it and stuff.
It works backwards as well. A game book should be good "value" to a reader. DEFINE VALUE! Ok. Value, for a game book, is how much material you can spin out of it, as a GM or a player. I do not give two fuuuuucks about the length of the book, the amount of art, or even the presentation. UNLESS they waste my time. Look, bigger is not better, shorter is not better, concise isn't good, verbose isn't good, good is good shall be the whole of the law. Over and under writing can be a smoke screen for a lack of skill, almost equally. It used to be more so that the big flabby writing tended to be the worst, but the relatively recent preponderance for minimalism has shown that boring is boring. More than a few people have offered me opinions about book lengths and cash value, and they are always wrong. From a pure capitalism POV and also and ART one. Even a £20 12 page zine is more "valuable" than most other things you can get for £20. And that's an expensive zine. They're usually made by hobbyists who pay loads to make it, and then you can get at least an evening of entertainment for you and 5 buddies out of it. For £20.
I'm loosing the thread already. Remember I don't believe in ideas unless they are real. Make a book that is good and I will believe anything you say without reservation. I don't think my words matter either, when they're here and abstract. This blog, this internet, is a dumping ground for ideas, to see this kind of theory as anything other than a finger pointing to the moon is, in my opinion, both dumb and stupid. We're all moon people.
Art! Opinions on art in TTRPGs comes and goes and please see above for my feelings on that (opinions, I mean). Modern D&D art is not valuable, it is reinforcing things already in the reader, or else it's just gilding. No one is looking at these pieces and expanding their imagination's vocabulary, or feeling like if I could only turn a little bit to the side I would see a whole landscape open up. Gimme a picture that gives me ideas or feelings or vibes or something. There's a reason why AI can poop out that style so easily.
If I had to give a formula it would be something like the spiel I give when talking to people about Fungi of the Far Realms: The "value" of that book is that it is a bloody minded expenditure of effort that no GM would or should ever do. And with terse, bullet point-ey mega-things like Carcosa or Tegal Manor, it's the same. They are vast, and the feel of the place hides behind the bullet points (so to speak, they're too cool for actual bullet points). But the goodness is built from a huge network of these individually cheap ideas building together. The unreasonable vastness is the thing. In a small space that won't work unless you're William Carlos Williams. "Small" is anything I can read in one sitting. How fast do I read? Not telling.
My point is, as always, I know nothing and the only authority is Play and Book. Also this post is Ram's fault, whom I agree with I think.
And remember: blogs are fingers! And you should read Michael Cisco.