New member seeking feedback

[sean2099]

I submitted a new rpg for Rob Lang to take a look back. I was wondering if I could get more feedback here. Here is the blog

[Rob Lang]

[misterecho]

Hi sean, Welcome to 1km1kt!

Firstly I would like to say I'm a huge fan of lifepath generators, so Chargen gets a big thumbs up from me!

I think the layout could be improved a little. There is no columns so it's quite difficult to read on screen in my opinion. I think the tables could have been formatted a little neater, again making them easier to read.

Overall i loved the setting, Quirky and original. Your personality shines through.

[sean2099]

To be honest, I wasn't sure about 6" by 9" for layout. I'll probably go back to 8.5" by 11", two column, vanilla layout. It won't win but it's functionable. In addition, people won't get lost and it will keep the cost factor down for people who aren't trained in the finer aspects of book design.

I'll also throw my additional ideas out there when I start full force on this again.

[Rob Lang]

When relaying the game out, don't be annoyed if the page count plummets. This has happened to me recently with Icar. I have reduced the font size and adjusted the column widths and now it's a good 50 pages shorter than it was. I've had to convince myself that this is a good thing. It means there is less to print, a smaller (cheaper) POD book and the reader has to read less to get the same ideas across.

Some free RPGs suffer from what I am tentatively calling "Honeycombing" - the book can be huge with what appears to be a large amount of text but once you've read it, you feel unsatisfied because you were expecting more from a PDF that was hundreds of pages long. Although the structure of the game looks strong, the font size, margins, text leading and graphics all lead to there not being very much text at all. Like honeycomb, there appears to be a lot of strong structure but it's actually filled with air.

May I recommend you do a mini update of Cursed Life - release small and release often. This is to keep the project fresh for you and reduce the size of mountain you have to climb. I do the same thing with Icar - I release graphics and rules ideas when I have them, rather than waiting for everything to be finished and released with a big "Ta Daa!".