The Skein - my venture into Indie Game Design begins

[Vaxalon]

Okay, so now I've been inspired, and I'm writing my own game.  The Skein is starting to shape up nicely, but I'm coming across a minor stylistic dilemma, and I'm wondering what advice you experts might have.

The Skein, like many of our endeavors, is exploring new ways of handling things around the table.  At the same time, it can still be played in a rather "traditional" manner.  In the game text, I'm debating how strident to be about the differences.

1> "Traditionally, it's done THAT way, but The Skein does it THIS way."

2> "Traditionally, it's done THAT way, and The Skein can handle THAT way, but it's intended to be played THIS way."

3> "Traditionally, it's done THAT way, and The Skein can handle THAT way, but The Skein recommends trying out THIS new way."

[SrGrvsaLot]

My advice would be to leave the sentence out entirely. It sounds a little pretentious. If you want to support alternate ways of playing, just make a sidebar or apendix or something. People will figure it out.

[Jack Aidley]

I say stick to your guns, and unlike the last poster I think the sentence does help.

I'd say in general:

1. Roleplayers don't read texts properly; they skim instead. Pointing out that this is done differently in Skein is worth mentioning.
2. Roleplayers are smart, and have no qualms about 'moding' games. If they want to play it their way they will whether you endorse it or not.

Design the game the way you want it, and encourage others to play it that way.

[Valamir]

Interestingly I agree with both of you.

I agree with Jack that most gamers don't actually read game rules but skim them for things that are obviously different and assume the rest is the same...which means they tend to miss the subtle.  So I definitely recommend drawing attention to such things.

But I also agree that I'd avoid that particular turn of phrase.


Instead I'd recommend finding away that will draw the readers attention to the different bits without making direct comparisons to "tradition".

Burning Wheel uses little imp icons with different expressions to say "Hey Pay attention to this part".  Savage Worlds does the same thing with "Smilin' Jack".

A text box with a particularly different border / shade / or color might also do the trick.  

Other alternatives include highlighting the text right in the paragraph, using a different font, using hanging indents, or other such formats.