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General Tabletop Discussion
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RPG Evolution: Why Paper Beats Pixels
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<blockquote data-quote="Tigris" data-source="post: 9872682" data-attributes="member: 7043270"><p>I think the problem is just that material is still mostly written for books, and not for digital consumption, so in order to get better digital products we should finally kill books.</p><p></p><p>PDFs could do SOOO much more than books, but no they are just books (with book layout not one optimized for PDFs...) and sometimes some links added... Here just a list of things PDFs could do: [MEDIA=reddit]RPGdesign/comments/1f5x4fs[/MEDIA]</p><p></p><p></p><p>Also I think GOOD wikis, are soo much better for handling information (looking things up) etc. than books, its so much easier to find information in a good wiki like: <a href="https://www.13thagesrd.com/" target="_blank">13th Age SRD</a> however, I feel that some publishers started to make their wikis worse because they fear that people will buy the books less.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Like for Pathfinder 2 the official wiki is awful: <a href="https://2e.aonprd.com/" target="_blank">Home - Archives of Nethys: Pathfinder 2nd Edition Database</a> the unofficial, which is no longer up to date, is so much easier to use: <a href="https://pf2.d20pfsrd.com/" target="_blank">PF2 SRD</a> but again, people sell books (and sometimes pdfs) and not wikis, so they dont want the paid product to be worse.... </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I also think many things of what you state is just because we are just still used, by our oldschool education, to work with books, and people are more efficient with what they are used to.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Still things like "oh I know this table is back in the book", is something you literally can also know in a PDF. "Oh I know its somewhere 2/3th page scrolled". You can remark this kind of behaviour especially in awfully made pdfs (like the recent gloomhaven draft...) where this is the only way to go around, because useful linking is missing...</p><p></p><p></p><p>Also what in the end does help A LOT more than "physicallity" to learn rules is having well formatted and layouted and visualized rules. For me the 2 extremes are Beacon and Draw Steel.</p><p></p><p>Beacon uses colours and boxes etc (like boardgame manuals) to make it so much easier to process information. In addition it actively uses colours and images to make pages and parts of the book/pdf look different which triggers the "memory" you mentioned above and helps finding things more easily. Here just look at the example pages from Beacon: <a href="https://pirategonzalezgames.itch.io/beacon-ttrpg" target="_blank">BEACON TTRPG by Pirate Gonzalez Games</a></p><p></p><p></p><p>On the other side Draw Steel is awfull. It uses no colours, basic layout, and even mixes rules and character creation... Really really awfully inefficient to learn these rules with that pdf and I dont think the book would make a big difference. </p><p></p><p></p><p>I recently tried learning RPG rules from a book (2nd edition 13th age) for the first time, and I just prefer digital version in the end. Control F alone is such a huge help. But also having links to jump to from the index is just faster than having to search a page manually.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Tigris, post: 9872682, member: 7043270"] I think the problem is just that material is still mostly written for books, and not for digital consumption, so in order to get better digital products we should finally kill books. PDFs could do SOOO much more than books, but no they are just books (with book layout not one optimized for PDFs...) and sometimes some links added... Here just a list of things PDFs could do: [MEDIA=reddit]RPGdesign/comments/1f5x4fs[/MEDIA] Also I think GOOD wikis, are soo much better for handling information (looking things up) etc. than books, its so much easier to find information in a good wiki like: [URL="https://www.13thagesrd.com/"]13th Age SRD[/URL] however, I feel that some publishers started to make their wikis worse because they fear that people will buy the books less. Like for Pathfinder 2 the official wiki is awful: [URL="https://2e.aonprd.com/"]Home - Archives of Nethys: Pathfinder 2nd Edition Database[/URL] the unofficial, which is no longer up to date, is so much easier to use: [URL="https://pf2.d20pfsrd.com/"]PF2 SRD[/URL] but again, people sell books (and sometimes pdfs) and not wikis, so they dont want the paid product to be worse.... I also think many things of what you state is just because we are just still used, by our oldschool education, to work with books, and people are more efficient with what they are used to. Still things like "oh I know this table is back in the book", is something you literally can also know in a PDF. "Oh I know its somewhere 2/3th page scrolled". You can remark this kind of behaviour especially in awfully made pdfs (like the recent gloomhaven draft...) where this is the only way to go around, because useful linking is missing... Also what in the end does help A LOT more than "physicallity" to learn rules is having well formatted and layouted and visualized rules. For me the 2 extremes are Beacon and Draw Steel. Beacon uses colours and boxes etc (like boardgame manuals) to make it so much easier to process information. In addition it actively uses colours and images to make pages and parts of the book/pdf look different which triggers the "memory" you mentioned above and helps finding things more easily. Here just look at the example pages from Beacon: [URL="https://pirategonzalezgames.itch.io/beacon-ttrpg"]BEACON TTRPG by Pirate Gonzalez Games[/URL] On the other side Draw Steel is awfull. It uses no colours, basic layout, and even mixes rules and character creation... Really really awfully inefficient to learn these rules with that pdf and I dont think the book would make a big difference. I recently tried learning RPG rules from a book (2nd edition 13th age) for the first time, and I just prefer digital version in the end. Control F alone is such a huge help. But also having links to jump to from the index is just faster than having to search a page manually. [/QUOTE]
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