RPG Writing and Design Needs a Paradigm Shift

[kenada]

there's enough color to get as much out of the 'look and feel' as either of the other two games.

The use of color is my biggest issue. It doesn’t do enough to separate the elements, so I find visually parsing the power block a bit unpleasant. It’s not as bad as things that use tons of whitespace, which can almost be suffocating, but it could be better. I would drop the alternating colors for other affordances (and a bit of padding) and deëmphasize the flavor text. If I did keep the color, I’d use it more deliberately. 4e is just using it to distinguish different rows in the power block, so (for example) an Effect can sometimes be within a row with color and sometimes without. I’d want to use color to help the reader visually navigate to what they need.

HoML doesn't actually have Magic Missile, per se, but here's a version of a fairly familiar sort of feat

I like how you have your flavor text at the bottom, though I find the orange a bit much.

I almost posted fireball, but it wouldn’t have been a good example of PF2’s verbosity. However, it would have let me post Explosion, the best magic, from Konosuba TRPG. (SL is skill level. In Konosuba TRPG, abilities are called skills. You can increase up to three when you gain a level.)

The block is reminiscent of the 4e one, though it has hardly any affordances at all. While the book is single column, abilities are presented in this card format multiple to a page in a grid. (Konosuba TRPG is also one of the influences on my homebrew system in that it inspired what became skills, specialities, and proficiencies.)

 

[kenada]

And speaking of affordances, I really like the design language that Paizo adopted towards the end of PF1. It made nice use of visual affordances and color to organize information. It wasn’t used for spells or feats, but it could have been extended to that. Instead, PF2 seems to have regressed back to a more 3e-style block. Here’s an example of an item from Ultimate Equipment. You can compare it to an item from PF1 and PF2.

(Note: The boxes in the early PF1 image are hyperlinks. They’re not present in the printed version.)

Pathfinder 1e (late lifecycle)​

Pathfinder 1e (early lifecycle)​

Pathfinder 2e​

Here is an item from 4e. Next to the early PF1, one can see how 4e evolved out of the 3e-style stat block. The biggest improvement is the greater standardization and the generally better rules language. The late-PF1 affordances with 4e’s structure would be .

4e​

 

[Kannik]

One thing I've noticed over the past decade or so is what I consider poor organization of the rules within rule books. When I'm about to run or play in a new game, I like to make system cheat sheets. It's been often where, while going through the book sequentially to add it to the cheat sheet, I'll have to backtrack to add something to a section of the sheet I thought was already complete because this related thing is in a completely different part of the book (with nothing in the book noting the link between these sections). Which makes me glad I'm making these sheets, as I wonder if we would have missed or misunderstood some part of the rules since they weren't well laid out or well connected.

(As an aside, I tend to make these sheets with as much graphic design/layout and themeing as I can to match the game, and that certainly also teaches a lot about finding that balance between the art of evocativeness and the art of clarity!)

 

[Laurefindel]

And speaking of affordances, I really like the design language that Paizo adopted towards the end of PF1. It made nice use of visual affordances and color to organize information. It wasn’t used for spells or feats, but it could have been extended to that. Instead, PF2 seems to have regressed back to a more 3e-style block. Here’s an example of an item from Ultimate Equipment. You can compare it to an item from PF1 and PF2.

(Note: The boxes in the early PF1 image are hyperlinks. They’re not present in the printed version.)

Pathfinder 1e (late lifecycle)​

View attachment 348047

Pathfinder 1e (early lifecycle)​

View attachment 348044

Pathfinder 2e​

View attachment 348045

Here is an item from 4e. Next to the early PF1, one can see how 4e evolved out of the 3e-style stat block. The biggest improvement is the greater standardization and the generally better rules language. The late-PF1 affordances with 4e’s structure would be .

4e​

View attachment 348046

To my own taste, Late Pathfinder (1E) is much better than PF2 or 4e. A page full of 4e blocks like that gives me headaches. Looking back, I can say that my gripe with 4e was one of presentation, not content.

 

[R_J_K75]

One thing I've noticed over the past decade or so is what I consider poor organization of the rules within rule books.

This is one of biggest things that aggravates me too. I can't understand why there isn't some way to cross reference, for instance, two or three rules that all effect an action but are in different places of the book. Obviously, this would need to be carefully considered so it doesn't become a mess of its own right with a bunch of references after every other paragraph.

 

[mamba]

I can't understand why there isn't some way to cross reference, for instance, two or three rules that all effect an action but are in different places of the book

I am not sure why they are in different places to begin with. If something is relevant in two cases, mention it in both. I don’t want a reference (granted, it is better than nothing), I want a full description in one place.

If that adds 5 pages to your book, so be it.

 

[Reynard]

I am not sure why they are in different places to begin with. If something is relevant in two cases, mention it in both. I don’t want a reference (granted, it is better than nothing), I want a full description in one place.

If that adds 5 pages to your book, so be it.

And if you are being appropriately concise, it shouldn't be onerous to explain it twice.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I know this is happening in small corners of the indie scene, and some more well known games are starting to adopt alternate ways of presenting information, but mainstream publishers still seem buried in the past when it comes to TTRPG presentation.

Giant books full of walls of text with important information buried in questionable prose is no longer an acceptable way to present a game to an audience. The industry needs a paradigm shift in design -- both system, and visual. They need to stop paying by the word and start paying by the hour. they need to stop treating games like books and treat them like manuals. They need to leverage technology and techniques from other industries and make accessibility a primary goal in production.

I know I have ranted about this before and will likely do so again, so my apologies for evangelizing in this way.

Just one point. Paying by the word isn't what causes this. Writers and designers don't add words to get more money. When you are hired to freelance you are given a word count range, and you are expected to stay within it because the rest of the project is based on that page count estimate. And they will happily edit you down if you are using excess words that don't need to be there. I don't hire writers anymore, but when I did, the word count was just a way for me to plan page count.

That said, some projects paying by the word may be suboptimal. If you are saying you want something like a three page manual, where the designer is largely being paid for the effort of design rather than a word count, I think that makes sense. Saying to a writer, what we value is content and we will pay you well for 10 pages of well thought out, well written, and cleverly designed material, certainly would lead to something different than telling a writer to write a 100,000 word rule system. Realistically though, most game companies can probably only afford so much for designers and writers, unless they are in house on a salary. A book that is smaller is also likely to have a lower cover price and make less revenue.

 

[Reynard]

Just one point. Paying by the word isn't what causes this. Writers and designers don't add words to get more money. When you are hired to freelance you are given a word count range, and you are expected to stay within it because the rest of the project is based on that page count estimate. And they will happily edit you down if you are using excess words that don't need to be there. I don't hire writers anymore, but when I did, the word count was just a way for me to plan page count.

That said, some projects paying by the word may be suboptimal. If you are saying you want something like a three page manual, where the designer is largely being paid for the effort of design rather than a word count, I think that makes sense. Saying to a writer, what we value is content and we will pay you well for 10 pages of well thought out, well written, and cleverly designed material, certainly would lead to something different than telling a writer to write a 100,000 word rule system. Realistically though, most game companies can probably only afford so much for designers and writers, unless they are in house on a salary. A book that is smaller is also likely to have a lower cover price and make less revenue.

I have been freelancing in the industry for a couple decades so I understand what you are saying. My point about not paying by the word was more related to changing the whole notion of what an RPG book is, what it looks like, how it works and,most importantly, how it explains itself to the user.

 

[R_J_K75]

I am not sure why they are in different places to begin with. If something is relevant in two cases, mention it in both. I don’t want a reference (granted, it is better than nothing), I want a full description in one place.

If that adds 5 pages to your book, so be it.

I think you can put a group of rules in one place or in multiple places in some instances, but it may not make sense to do so in some cases; or make for a lot of redundancy. Though I suppose it depends on the RPG system and genre.