COMMENTS NEEDED on a setting: Spirits of Rock and Sky

[reason]

I'm rescuing an old and evolving systemless science fiction setting of mine, slowly but surely. The most advanced part of it -- Spirits of Rock and Stone -- consists of 300+ pages of well-formatted but truly terrible text sitting around. So along comes d20 and the OGL, which would seem to be as good an opportunity as any to provoke me into releasing at least this setting.

I tidied up some of the terrible text; Chapter 1 of 12 and a short introductory scenario. They're online as alpha release PDFs:

http://www.twilightminds.com/
http://www.twilightminds.com/sorasfull.html

There's a couple of images there too, but nothing flashy. Feel free to hit me with comments and suggestions of all varieties.

Some semi-specific questions:

1) How bad is the text, really? I've been looking at it too long to tell. Trust me when I say that the original was *bad.* I need some outside opinions before I invest time in the other 250 pages. The game fiction in chapter 1 is probably still bad

2) What sort of things are useful to GMs and players in non-crunchy books that describe worlds? Many, many scenario hooks? More NPCs? More history and legend? Lists of unanswered questions? Or what?

3) Most of the chapters of Spirits of Rock and Sky follow the age-honored format of: a) travelogue game fiction, b) some general information, b) tribe/religion profile, c) a community summary. Does this work? What else needs to be added? What makes it into a useful book for GMs?

4) If I'm going to do this properly, I need an artist to help out with at least a couple of pieces; pictures are worth a thousand words. Where does one dig up game artists these days? What sort of ratio of art/text is good in an online publication?

5) Any and all comments on how to improve the intro scenario will be appreciated. Since I think it needs it. You're all welcome to steal the plot and use it on your players

Reason
http://www.exratio.com/

 

[kengar]

Well, I'll be honest. I didn't read through all your material, but I did look through the first pdf a bit. I'm at work now, but will try and read in more depth later.

I think your overall writing is good. The text is fine but if you're going to go for publication, have an editor go through to tighten it up a bit. It seems heavier on flavor and tone than one rules, but that's okay if that's your intention.

Non-crunchies to include would be potential plot-hooks, adventure locations ("dungeons"), ways to work the characters into the setting and so on. GM's are going to want *some* stuff defined for use in a campaign; item specs, etc.

For artwork, check out the message board here at ENWorld in the non-RPG specific section: Art & Mini Gallery. A lot of professionals -and gifted amateurs- post there. I'm sure some of them would love to illustrate your pages.

Hope this helps!

 

[reason]

For artwork, check out the message board here at ENWorld in the non-RPG specific section: Art & Mini Gallery. A lot of professionals -and gifted amateurs- post there. I'm sure some of them would love to illustrate your pages.

Thanks for the pointer. I'll scurry over and post something up there now.

Come on the rest of you guys, give me some comments here

Reason
http://www.exratio.com