History Main / PamphletShelf

* After the 1.3 update, ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'' players can write their own, mostly due to the limited space per page and the 50 page total limit.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Marathon}}'', you get to kick back at computer terminals dotted around the eponymous colony ship and read all sorts of snippets from Martian history to philosophical articles to classified ads to chunks of hexadecimal garbage. The compactness and relevance of most terminal texts is implied to be from malignant cyborgs and sentient (not to mention [[AIIsACrapshoot completely bonkers]]) computers battling each other.

*** One notable example is ''The Lusty Argonian Maid'', written by the CampGay (though technically bisexual) Crassius Curio. It centers around a character named [[HerCodeNameWasMarySue Crantus Colto]] and his...interest...in his, well, [[LizardFolk Argonian]] maid. A quest in ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind Morrowind]]'' has you attempting to find actors willing to be in it. (''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'' adds a sequel, as well as a GenderFlipped version for the ladies, ''The Sultry Argonian Bard''.)

* ''VideoGame/EarthBound'' plays with this when you find a magazine containing a [[http://earthboundcentral.com/2009/03/debunking-the-demon-baby/ funny short story]] in a bonus area.

** The sequel has the PlayerCharacter perusing his/her own books at home, with comments regarding those which are gifts or recommendations from friends ("101 Uses for a Phallic Tuber? Thanks, [[AnythingThatMoves Isabela]], that's one hundred too many.")

* Averted in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2'', where the extras section has a book, mentioned in the game as being an account of the events of the first game. It is an actual book at 300-some pages.

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* In ''VideoGame/{{OFF}}'', each shelf of real library books has only two pages of text (sometimes barely legible), unless one of them has been torn off and misplaced. Many shelves are fake and have nothing to read.

* Lampshaded several times in ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}''. One of the books in the library ends with the author's remark about only needing to write a minimum number of pages. Another character's house contains a {{diary}} which talks about buying a new book to record each entry.

** Averted throughout the series in which every book shown can be read, though they do cheat a bit in some cases by padding the shelves with multiple copies of the same book. These [[FictionalDocument documents]] range from full blown [[InGameNovel In-Game Novels]] like the ''2920: The Last Year of the First Era'' series, ''The Real Barenziah'', ''King Edward'', ''A Dance in the Fire'', and ''The Wolf Queen'' to religious texts such as ''For My Gods and Emperor'' and ''36 Lessons of Vivec'', to numerous historical works which help fill in the thousands of years of backstory, to simple notes handwritten by the world's inhabitants to make the world feel more alive (you can literally find the grocery lists of [=NPCs=]). Many of the histories presented within the game [[UnreliableCanon are contradictory and at odds with each other]], leaving it up to the reader to piece together the history of Tamriel for him/herself. For tropes relating to these works, see ''Literature/TheElderScrollsInUniverseBooks'' page.

** Tutorials sometimes take the form of in-game books. While some get relatively long, they never get anything near the contents of an actual book.

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%%* ''VideoGame/HarvestMoon''

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* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyII'' has one in the GreatBigLibraryOfEverything in Mysidia. A particularly understandable example, considering it's a [[UsefulNotes/NintendoEntertainmentSystem NES]] game.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'' has a few of these, most notably at the library in the Land of Summoned Monsters.

* Subverted by ''VideoGame/ArcanumOfSteamworksAndMagickObscura''; while there are quite a few short books in the game used to move the story along or used in a sidequest, there are also entire libraries of books that have no connection to the plot and merely exist to create a feeling of depth. Some of them are quite long, at least by in-game RPG standards.

* ''VideoGame/AidynChronicles'' does this with any books you find. There are a few libraries in the game, all of which only have a few books you can read, and almost all the books contain only the briefest of snippets that don't even fill the page.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Ys}} I'', the Books of Ys are {{MacGuffin}}s with not much actual text in them.

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* ''VideoGame/HarvestMoon''

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* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyII'' has one in the GreatBigLibraryOfEverything in Mysidia.

!!Non-video game examples: