Branduil said:
So, what were your problems with the 3.x layouts, and how would you improve them?
Monster Manual: Tweak the layout so that monsters generally lay on a single page or sheet, with the stat block (and nothing else) taking up the first column. Go back to the font size used in the MM (which fit 80 lines to the page) instead of the larger font used in more recent products (which only fits 55 lines to the page). (The new stat block actually takes up almost exactly the same number of lines as the old stat block, but a lot of people don't realize that because of the increase in font size.)
Player's Handbook: Couple of changes here.
(1) I would reorganize the sequencing of the book so that it's primarily designed to facilitate reference during play. The current core rulebook is laid out in a way which introduces a new player to the game and walks them through the steps of character creation, but this is not a particularly useful organization when it comes to doing anything except learning the game.
I don't think the current core rulebooks are a good way to introduce new players to the game, and I would have a different set of products -- reminiscent of the 1983 Basic Set -- to accomplish that.
(2) I would tweak the layout so that it's easier to use and reference. Breaking sections of information across columns and across pages makes it more difficult to quickly reference that information. Look at how professional textbooks do it. (This is something I learned early in my
freelance career when I was working at Dream Pod 9.)
For example, look at pg. 8-10 of the PHB: Notice that the section for each ability score is roughly half a column in length. How easy would it be to arrange that information so that there are two ability scores described in each column, with no information being split up across pages. Instead, four of the six ability scores are broken across columns and two of them are broken across pages.
Similarly, look at the races: Almost every race takes about 3 columns to describe. But, again, the information is just broken up all over the place. Imagine if, instead, each race got a 2 page spread. (The exceptions are half-elves and half-orcs, which each take about 2 columns. But they're right next to each other, so you could a single page spread for each of them and end up just fine.)
And it's like this through the entire book. The combat chapter is a complete disaster, and generally makes the rules more difficult to understand and reference than they need to be.
Dungeon Master's Guide: Outside of the magic items, there's very little material in the current DMG that I actually need when running the game (XP charts, treasure charts, and that sort of thing). But that material is scattered all over the book and frequently mired in the middle of vast swaths of advice-oriented text.
It's not that I don't think the DMG should have that advice in it. But I do think the information I need to reference shouldn't be lost in the middle of it and difficult to find.
Justin Alexander
http://www.thealexandrian.net
