Feedback please - Rob Lang's free guide to organising your RPG

[Rob Lang]

Hi chaps,
I don't link all of my blog entries but I thought this one might be of interest to you budding designers.



How might I improve this? Any comments or ideas?

[Dyson Logos]

If you don't have art in a book (which is the case with many free RPGs), sidebars and tables help break up the text to make it more readable. Thus you have to be careful about how you place these elements also in order to enhance the text flow and not impede it.

That said, it becomes important to include these items in the main body of the text for exactly that reason, so relegating all the lists and tables to the appendices will not be an improvement. I believe in copying the important tables & lists in the appendices, but not putting them there exclusively.

[Rob Lang]

If the list is more than a page, I think it does go in the appendix.

When creating a character, you end up flipping back and forth anyway. You flip back and forth for feats. Then spells. You're always flipping back and forth. You might as well have them in the Appendix. Then someone can at least read the book through without having to skip.

[Dyson Logos]

See, I don't have feats and spells. I feel a well-organized game shouldn't require flipping back and forth through the book to make a character. Having just made characters for 30 different RPGs for my blog, I *really* get annoyed at the games that have key character creation material not in the chargen chapter.

[Rob Lang]

LOL! You're definitely stress testing games in a sense that is outside of normal use. Do you not find yourself flipping between pages of large skill lists or spells and such?

[Dyson Logos]

The games I enjoy don't go overboard with such things. But even the ones that do, I find it even more annoying when they aren't anywhere near the chargen section. Putting them exclusively in an appendix at the back of the book is going to be doubly frustrating, since the descriptive text for the skills or feats or whatever will be in it's own chapter most likely. So I'll be flipping from Chargen to Appendix to Description and back again.

I firmly believe that lists and tables should be presented twice. Once where they are used, and once again in an appendix.

[Dyson Logos]

And regarding Stress-Testing, yeah, Chargen is my favourite part of a lot of RPGs, and one that is worth testing in any game, even if you don't plan on playing it. Thus the chargen rules HAVE to work well, be intuitive, well documented, and not intimidating. And they should definitely not force you to run back and forth in the book to use them.

I'm up to 24 characters in the blog now, and have six more in my publishing queue, so that's 30 so far. And a few of them really annoyed me - like Bushido where it required a roll on a table that appears deep inside the GM section; or Spiritual Warfare where I was flipping to one appendix after another during creation and then flipping back to the main chargen rules, then to a chapter explaining each section, etc.

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

Given that free RPGs are really about the setting - perhaps that should come first in the organization. It can be disheartening to be thrown into a long list of terms and mechanics when you're not too sure what is to be done with them. How am I supposed to know what kind of character to play, when I don't know about the world?

Take layout to be an integral part of the game design process, rather than something you do once everything is done. For example, I try to avoid exception based gaming - features like feats which give every -one/thing its own splash of special rules. This in turn cuts down a lot of the need to look up and flip through the book.

Present information in manageable blocks. Use sub headings and breaks to focus on one element at a time.

Consider whether the game is for screen or print reading. Generally, I focus on the latter, since I can zoom the screen.

I've mentioned font lay-outs quite a bit. Use good contrast for headers, chapter titles, and chart labels. Avoid widowed space, text in all capitals, and centering/underline/bold really don't help as much with emphasis as you might think.

Try to keep bits together - I prefer a little extra blank space at the bottom of one column than having two lines and then the rest of the paragraph somewhere else. Similarly, start chapters on a new page.

Usability testing will never really hurt your game. (Ego maybe, but not the game). Give it to some strangers, let them read it.try to make a character, and see if they can understand it, or if their final product meets what you expected.

[Rob Lang]

@Dyson. You make your point very well. What I'll do is a test run of Icar in both formats, give it to some players and see what they think.

@CA
I am glad you think setting is important. Please join in . I might update the blog entry to suggest that setting/mechanics can be switched around as I am slowly coming round to your way of thinking. The introduction should be enough to allow character generation but setting might just be more important.

Style points are all good. When I do a revision, I'll pop those in. I'll add it to the post I'm still compiling on what to do .

As for usability testing, that sounds like a superb post on its own. For the budding designer wanting to plough in, I think that's more something to do after. I will

[Majyc]