Mage Blade: a hand from the grave?

[Lance D. Allen]

Not precisely a hand from the grave. It's never been dead, just.. sleeping. comatose, perhaps.

Regardless of it's previous status, Mage Blade is once again my primary game design project. I've got some new ideas, and there are going to be some fairly sizable changes both to setting and system.

But for the moment, that's not why I'm here. As part of my returning focus, I've started thinking about what I want the project to look like. While I could do what many do, and hire the services of someone experienced and professional (Like Matt Snyder of Chimera Creative) I've always liked fiddling with images and esthetics, so I'm taking a hands-on approach.

What I've got so far is this: Mage Blade

And I'd like your opinions, professional or otherwise.

Some notes:

~Don't worry about actually reading the body text, unless you feel utterly compelled. The text is a mishmash of extremely out of date stuff, the majority of which will not survive into the next incarnation of Mage Blade. It's there mostly to fill the space.

~From my previous presentation of a .pdf for critique, I know that plain-face fonts are considered better for body-text readability. However, having originally filled it with such, it felt drab, so I went with Papyrus for the body-text as well. If you think it's a bad idea, feel free to let me know, but be aware that it's an aspect of the look that I'm flexible on.

~Notice all that white space (.5" all around) around the edges? I've learned, at least a little. ::grins wryly::

Thanks in advance for any commentary.

[Jack Aidley]

These are my un-professional opinions:

1. I don't really like the font used for the Body Text; it's not awful but it's not the most readable of fonts - in particular, I don't like the overdone Capitals: they're alright when starting a section, but they look awful when they appear mid-paragraph.

2. Don't ever underline anything, ever - no, not even then.

3. I'm not a big fan of centered things. I'd increase the size of your header blocks to full page width so they align on the left and right, and change to a differentiated left/right page layout with the chapter titles and page numbers appearing on the outside edge.

4. Use bold or italic, or a different font or something to make subsection titles stand out, they just blend in to the main text at the moment which would make scanning for a rule difficult.

5. It could do with some images or something to help break it up a bit, it's all a bit monolithic at the moment.

Having said all that, broadly speaking it looks decent enough to me, I've paid for commercial roleplaying games with layout no better than that. If you've not read them I heartily recommend Robin William's Non-Designer's series of books to you.

[Selene Tan]

I think that your list items should have proper bullets and use hanging indents. Sometimes it's hard to tell when one list item ends and the next begins. (e.g. the Combat Round Sequence list) The hyphens and tildes help some, but I find that they don't make enough of an impression for easy scanning.

I second the suggestion of distinguishing the subsection titles using bold or italics. It would also be nice if definitions had the word in bold or something, to make it easier to find. (e.g. in the Spheres and Attributes section, bold the name of the sphere/attribute at the beginning of the paragraph that describes it.) Hanging indents might be nice too, although that may take up too much of your column space.

If you look around, you can probably find a font that still gives an "old" feel but is more readable than Papyrus. (You can check out Timeless Beauties, one section of a font site I have bookmarked. The designer pages have fonts too, but they're a bit harder to browse.)

[TonyLB]

Looks like quite a serviceable document, certainly much better than any of my early drafts.  But the whole "monolithic" thing Jack said is dead-on accurate.  It is a monolith.  That makes it unreadable.  The font doesn't help, but I'm not a font guy.  I'm a page-layout/design sorta guy.

[*]White-space, white-space, white-space.  See on page 8, where you start "Skills" (a whole new, and important, section) at the bottom of the right column?  Don't do that.  Just go to the next page, give it a nice little header, and go from there.  That puts the material people will want to reference on one page, rather than two.  They'll thank you for it, possibly by buying more copies of your game.  Further discussion of white-space below, in "format".
[*]Distinguish blocks of text.  Visible variety gives the eye landmarks to navigate the page.  If something is a side point (i.e. they could read it, but they don't need to read it in any particular order) pull it out into a shaded text box divorced from the flow of the rest of the text.  That will make your main text easier to read (because you'll be able to write it more snappily) and your side points easier to digest (because they won't be mired in unneeded context).
[*]Titles:  Did I mention visible variety?  Use a different font, and maybe some simple dedicated art, to structure the pages in a way that's readable.  Combine that with white-space (to put the things that go together on the page together) and you increase readability tenfold.
[*]Borders:  Not a big thing, but you have to get the chapter title ("Introduction", "Character Creation") up physically into the border, rather than hanging out below it, looking like the mutant love-child of the border and the main text.  Check out Ron Edwards's Sorceror book for a layout that absolutely does this right.
[*]Similarly, I like the notion of embedding the page number in some art, but it's not visible.  Put it on the outside corner of the page (right for odd numbered pages, left for even) and make it larger, with higher contrast.[/list:u]Now, on to Format.  If you're putting the work in to make this pretty on the page, you need to ask yourself what format(s) you're targetting.  I could very well be wrong (as I've never tried hard to print a letter-sized book) but I think your current page size is not going to make you the most happy of campers if you go looking around for a small-run press to run off a hundred copies for you.  And redesigning the whole thing for 6x9 (or whatever paper format you eventually go to) is a huge hassle.  A little forethought saves a lot of trouble.

Along those lines, also, remember that in a physical book people will be seeing two pages at once.  Page 1 will stand on its own, but pages 2 and 3 are facing each other, and you can't read one without seeing the other... unless you crack the spine and mangle the book, but we need not cater to such bibliophobic barbarians.  Even in PDF format, there are prominent options to show facing pages together.  It's just a neat design feature of the medium, and everyone ought to take advantage.

Now format influences (a little) the question of white-space.  If you're doing PDF then you should be using white-space like there's no tomorrow.  It costs you nothing.  It's not like you're actually paying for the non-existent paper that things aren't printed on.

Even if you're going to paper, though... use white space.  It's easier on the eyes.  Yeah, if the page count swells from 40 pages to 60 it'll cut into your overhead by a few cents.  But readability is a big deal.  It's the first thing people notice when they open the book to decide whether to buy.  The money will be well spent.

Good luck!  Keep on revising!  That's the way to end up with a finished product.

[Lance D. Allen]

Thanks for the comments guys. I wanted to wait a while, see if I garnered anymore before responding.

To address a few things you all touched on:

The lack of art will be remedied. The spacing, section headers, capitalization, etc. of the text will also be remedied. As I said, the text is all just filler stuff, C&P'd directly in, just to have something there.

That said, I don't intend to ignore your specific advice in this area. When it comes time to put the serious stuff on the page, I'll be searching out this thread and making sure I do it right.

Font: A'right, I knew this wasn't gonna fly. S'why I had a disclaimer. But I could hope.. I mean, it's not difficult to read for me, and I've printed out multi-page documents in papyrus. But since I'm not designing purely for myself, I'll take your words to heart, and find something simpler. And thanks for the link Selene, I'll definitely check it out.

Jack: I do like centered things. It feels neater to me than having things sprawled across the page.  Looks like this'll just be a difference of opinion.

Along those lines, also, remember that in a physical book people will be seeing two pages at once. Page 1 will stand on its own, but pages 2 and 3 are facing each other, and you can't read one without seeing the other... unless you crack the spine and mangle the book, but we need not cater to such bibliophobic barbarians. Even in PDF format, there are prominent options to show facing pages together. It's just a neat design feature of the medium, and everyone ought to take advantage.

Not sure what you're getting at here, Tony. I am aware of this, and I use the two-page option both in the design phase, and in every .pdf I ever view, whether I created it or not.

Anyhow, once again.. thanks for the comments, and I'd appreciate any other layout advice you all might have.