My RPGs are small and simple, with The Nullam Project coming in at 16 pages and Reanimated at 20. The upcoming Quest Nexus is sitting at 368, but that is still running on my writing style of extreme efficiency and only has that page count because it covers rules for absolutely everything.
This style of writing happens because of my own fatigue at trying to learn massive RPGs like Shadowrun, Pathfinder and Anima. It’s not that I can’t read and lean them, but I find that they have an unnecessary amount of padding, largely because many writers being paid by the word, which incentivizes them to write much more then is needed.

At a recent convention I had a customer claim that they only played very crunchy games. When I mentioned Quest Nexus, he said that the page count was not high enough. This caught me off guard, as the vast majority of my customers seem to prefer small and rules light, but it does make me think about where we came from and where we are going.

If you stop and take a close look at the TTRPG industry it becomes clear that as the years go on, games and the people playing them are leaning more into narrative focused games, as opposed to the old hack and slash style.
The old style still has it’s place, as evident by the popularity of the OSR movement, which has tried to capture the feeling of the early RPGs, but outside of that we seem to playing much looser with our systems. To quote Captain Barbosa “They are more like guidelines then actual rules”.

So, why are some players still intent on crunchy tomes so big that they would break your toes if you happened to drop them? I have a few theories.

Nostalgia! This is the obvious one. Many people remember having fun back in the 70s and 80s and they miss that style of game, or rather they miss the culture of dark basements and a less publicly accepted hobby, when being a nerd more isolating. I’ll be honest, there are days when I miss being the outcast, as weird as that sounds, but I also remember trying to read the old AD&D books, with their horrendous formatting, and I think people are romanticizing the former rather than the latter.

It could also be that these people are just not that interested in the story, instead preferring and old fashioned dungeon crawl that didn’t need an epic narrative tying it together. Even though we do have some modern dungeon crawls, many of the writers feel the need to have a story and some players just don’t want that. I suspect that all these players want to do is go into a dungeon, kill some orcs and get some treasure, without much of a reason beyond being adventurers.

Tactical combat could be another reason. Dudes on a map is a distinct style that many people greatly enjoy, and while it does tend to greatly bog down the game, a lot of people prefer it over actual role playing.
I have a theory that what these people want is not in fact an RPG, it is actually a tabletop wargame where they control a single, highly customizable unit with a tiny sprinkling of story to tie everything together.
With many smaller games leaning into zone based combat or theater of the mind, the players who like minis may feel like their style of play is being pushed out of the hobby.

I am going to continue making games the way I always have, because my way is viable for the way my business runs. Big books are just harder to sell, due to the cost and intimidation factor for new players.
Big and crunchy does still make me wonder if there is a big enough market for an indie to make a giant book full of complex rules without going bankrupt.