And I agree with you about the sourcebook bloat — our group switched to Pathfinder for that very reason, because it (for the moment, at least) reduced the number of books necessary for play to one. Of course, immediately everyone needed the bestiary… the cycle continues.

In the long run, I think churning out everything they have ultimately hurts the game… in about 18 months: five monster books, two PHBs, five Power books, two *treasure* books, plus new races and monsters in two new settings. They number of races and classes available have more than doubled, especially if you count all the magazine articles. And the classes and powers that come later are, of course, better than the earlier books. Heck, they packaged new powers in the *miniature* sets that knock the socks off of the earlier powers of the same level. It makes the game about discovering the new nifty *rule thing* they’ve created, instead of about playing out your character’s story. The stuff in the books becomes the defining thing about your character.

I’m frustrated by it, because it doesn’t really support the style of play I want…. but I can find enough players for it that I turn people away. Getting people to play Fudge was a struggle.

I’m actually at the stage that I’m about ready to start writing my own game again. I’m finally getting a good idea of where I want to be in the spectrum of detailed and rigid rules to no-rules free-form, and I want to see if I can write a game that addresses that specific space… and isn’t fully “traditional” but isn’t all dirty-hippy “story game” either. There isn’t a game that falls into the range I’m wanting that also has an open license.

In a lot of ways, I want to write a game that does today what Fudge did fifteen years ago (but hasn’t done in a very long time).

Those tokens do look very cool, though.