Large Print Rulebooks!

[Wicht]

My last eye appointment made it clear I need reading glasses in addition to my contacts and the optometrist was pretty clear that everyone eventually does, just some of us faster than others.

But I notice with the release of the new smaller essentials line a lot of people clamoring for smaller rulebooks.

To which I say, "NO!"

Think ahead peoples! When you're eyes start going you're going to want bigger print. Not smaller. Someone has to think of the needs of our gaming community as we start to grey.

 

[Aeolius]

Hopefully technology will come to the rescue with ePub documents where the reader can adjust fonts, font sizes, and the like.

 

[jaerdaph]

My last eye appointment made it clear I need reading glasses in addition to my contacts and the optometrist was pretty clear that everyone eventually does, just some of us faster than others.

I'm in the same boat recently myself.

Yes, the hobby is getting more and more gray...

 

[vagabundo]

My eye sight is pretty bad, but I've found the essentials line pretty readable. Nice clean layout and decent size font.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

My last eye appointment made it clear I need reading glasses in addition to my contacts and the optometrist was pretty clear that everyone eventually does, just some of us faster than others.

But I notice with the release of the new smaller essentials line a lot of people clamoring for smaller rulebooks.

To which I say, "NO!"

Think ahead peoples! When you're eyes start going you're going to want bigger print. Not smaller. Someone has to think of the needs of our gaming community as we start to grey.

Start to grey? Three more years and I will be snow capped!

My myopia on the other hand is actually getting better, though I do wear bifocals.

The Auld Grump, who had to spend time comforting his girlfriend when she found her first grey hairs. (And didn't tell her that they weren't her first - she has these cute little curls right behind her ears. I think that they're adorable.)

 

[Gilladian]

My uncorrected vision puts me WAAAAY over into the legally blind camp. And now that I'm "no longer youthful", I also wear reading glasses over my contacts.

I would DEARLY love to have Paizo's adventure paths in large print. Yes, I have the PDFs. In fact, for Kingmaker, I have all my books piled up, 5 of them unopened in the shipping sleeves. The print is just too tiny to read. I ONLY read the PDFs.

Publishers should at least CONSIDER sticking with 14 pt font if they can't bear to use true large print fonts (16-18 pt). E-readers are a good alternative, but we all know who won't put their stuff out in ebook format...

 

[Diamond Cross]

Yeah. With my eyes I have a real problem reading small print anymore. It just blurs.

Another thing I have a hard time with is print on weird colors.

So yes, I would like to have larger and darker print.

But that ain't gonna happen. Because the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one.

To which I say screw that!

 

[The Shaman]

Yeah, I'm reaching the point where my arms aren't long enough to read comfortably anymore.

 

[gamerprinter]

Which makes me wonder about Kaidan, since I will be doing the final page layout. As a graphic designer, I almost always stick to 10 to 12 point fonts, though realistically to get more content into less pages, 10 point is the way to go.

While I love the ideas in Trailblazer for example, I am pretty sure its got 8 point fonts in it - OMG, I can't read that. I OCR'd the PDF and printed it on my laser at 12 point so I could read the damn thing. I've got great vision normally, and don't wear glasses. However, I do wear reading glasses now, as I can't read a phone book anymore.

While I also love the 'production values' of WotC and Paizo books, I've got to say all that page background art behind the text in their pages makes it near impossible to read. I am sure if I were 20 again, I could read them and appreciate them more - but with the grays streaming through my hair these days, I don't appreciate graphics behind the text. And as a graphic designer, I avoid doing that for my clients work. Or make the background art really subdued and near transparent to not take away from the textual content.

Still, I know there's a balance act between textual content, artistic production values and number of total pages in a publication - I want Kaidan to be easily read, but I don't want to lose page count to accomodate the appropriate sized font.

I look forward to see what kind of layout problems I will encounter, however.

GP

 

[SiderisAnon]

I have problems reading the gaming books too. In fact, I keep a flat magnifying sheet I bought at a book store inside the front cover of the core book for my current game so that I can see when I look up materials. I also bring a bar magnifier because it's better for some kinds of print.

Right now, I am sitting at home working on tomorrows game and I have to use a PDF copy of the game book in order to be able to do the amount of reading my current work requires. I have a perfectly good hardback next to me, but it's just too hard to read much of the time. I bought a player's guide too, and one of my players keeps it because I simply cannot read the tiny print. (I ordered online and didn't realize how small the text was.)

I don't know what I am going to do if we switch to 4th Edition D&D for the next game. Honestly, as quickly as my eyes are declining, I may soon only be able to run games that come in an electronic format so that I can actually read the text. (And that provide a copy without froo-froo art behind the text that can't be hidden in the PDF, which makes it impossible to read even on the screen.) I cannot run some of my older games anymore either because the text or layout is just to hard to read in certain older gaming books.