Alternate (web-based) Presentations of Game Texts

[Jasper]

I was just musing about alternate ways to present a game text.  I'm working towards POD with my own project, Graal, so I've been thinking about book size and that sort of thing.  But I also have a game that I distribute under a Creative Commons license on my website, Symmoira.  The format I use now is pretty traditional when you get down to it: major headers with sub-headers and sub-sub-headers, with a paragraph or two of text in each.  I've recently been thinking about how the human mind doesn't really think of things linearly, and game rules are decidedly not linear either.

Frex, when writing Graal, all the major mechanics tie into one another fairly closely, so I've had to think a lot about how to order their presentation.  

[*]One route is to start with the simpler rules and build up, not mentioning other rules until you fully describe them (forward referencing is bad).  Most games seem to do it this way.
[*]Another route would be to explain the core of the game's mechanic, with a fair bit of hand-waving.  Then fill in the details.  This is sort of what I've done with Symmoira, and I've seen it done with a lot of smaller, indie titles recently.
[*]A third method would be to summarise everything very quickly, naming all the major rules up front, and then filling in how they all work.[/list:u]

With Graal I've kind of gone in between the first and third methods, with a very thin summary at the top, and then slow introduction of ideas, starting with characters, proceeding to resolution, and then elaborations on that.

But all of these methods are compromises: when I think about Graal's rules, I don't think about them as a linear chain but as a circle or a web (and in fact I provide a flow-chart of their interactions in the ruleset).  So this basic text format doesn't really fit.  But with an alternate medium, perhaps something more natural can be achieved.

At the most basic level, I'm thinking a web-based presentaiton of rules with heavy hyper-linking.  Instead of choosing an order for your reader to look at the rules, allow them to take them in (most) any order they want: each rule references every other rule it interacts with, and links to it.  You would, of course, have to carefully write each rule to assume no knowledge from your reader, and to very strictly reference anything needed.  You would still have to decide exactly where to start the reader: a summary, character concept, etc.  But it would still be a big change.

More exotic variations of this are also possible.  If you've ever used the Visual Dictionary online, think of that: a dynamically created 3D space relating each rule.  One rule floats in the center of a little display.  The text for it appears in a main reading window below that.  You could still have hyper-links within that text, but the user would also be able to see related rules hovering nearby the name of whatever rule they were currently reading -- and by clicking on those nearby rules, they would be taken there to read more.

The advantages to this approach, if you could pull it off, are a little up in the air, but I think it could be very useful.  

[*]Has anyone ever seen anything like this done, either for an RPG or some other traditionally linear document?
[*]What are some of the problems associated with doing it, for the designer of the interface and the writer of the text?
[*]What are the benefits to the user/reader?  Would it be worth doing?[/list:u]

I want to get some good discussion going on this, because I'm contemplating converting Symmoira into some format like this.  I've got a whole mess of pennies here, so help me get rid of 'em.

[jerry]

At the most basic level, I'm thinking a web-based presentaiton of rules with heavy hyper-linking.

Sounds like a great idea; the only thing I'll say is that you need to be double-dedicated to update multiple versions of the same rules. Whenever I try to keep two or more separate versions updated, instead of derive each version from a "central" version, I find that one version gets updated regularly, one version gets updated almost never, and if there are any others they never get updated.

So, I try to make sure when I'm creating the "central" version that it will translate well into whatever formats I want to release it in (usually, print/pdf and web). Word helps me here by making sure that when I save to HTML, all of the styles I created are still styles with the same names in the HTML (of course, I have to strip all of Word's hard-coded style info). But, I'm not trying to capture a commercial market that probably expects more of each version.

XML and style sheets hold the promise of being able to take the same central version and present it in multiple, radically different ways. But I've yet to see a really good (and easy to use) editor that would let me work that way.

Jerry

[Jasper]

Good point, Jerry.  Updating across multiple platforms is always a chore.  With Symmoira, I'm only distributing via html, html, and html.  Makes it simple.

XML...I can't really see much benefit to it.  It's not like you have a huge amount of data points to manipulate.  I think XHTML with good semantic markup* and standards-compliant style sheets would do everything.  Unless I forgot to upload it, I have a print-ready version of Symmoira up already, and the user doesn't even have to do anything: just click print, and the format changes to B&W in a single wide column.

Of course, there are distinct limits to what CSS will allow (e.g. multi-column displays) but when CSS 3 hits the ground, a lot more options will open up.  Most of these won't be fully usable for some years, when the browsers catch up (if they ever do), but it might still be worth it for a designer's own purposes.  Frex, I could make a pdf version of Symmoira by printing to a file from my browser.  So long as the designer himself has an up-to-date browser with good CSS support, he can use all the latest jazz.

* Symantic mark-up is basically just using HTML tags the way they were meant to be used, e.g. <h1> for headers and nothing else, and in general not confusing content and organization for display or vice-versa.

Was there enough jargon in this post?

[Keith Senkowski]

Hey,

I need more jargon....

Have you considered using Wiki?  That might fit the bill for your building up from a base of rules.  

I'm going to be publishing the revision of my game under Creative Commons so I'm also trying to figure out the best way to distribute it.  I'm thinking a stripped down artless PDF with bookmarking up the wazzooo.  It may take some more work than using PHP with MYSQL (my original idea) but it will probably be easier for folks to handle...

Keith

[Jasper]

Hi Keith,

You know it completely slipped my mind that pdf allows for hyper-linking.  That would also work in place of HTML.  I think the only down side would be that there's still an underlying linear document, so many readers will still tend to read it that way and not take advantage of the linking, and the designer still has to conceive of the game in linear terms (which for me is difficult; maybe it comes more naturally to others).

Wiki wouldn't really do much for me in this case, though I do like it a lot.  Wiki is great if you want something other people can easily edit and contribute to (which might happen to also be a goal, but isn't one of mine right now).  I can code the html just as easily by hand, so there's no gain there -- and I imagine other people could just use a WYSIWYG editor.

The idea of user-modification does raise another idea for me though.  What if you used a system of inter-linked rules like I described above (either html or the more sophisticated 3D display).  When the site first goes online, offer up lots of "related rules" links all over the place, in addition to in-line links.  Then track when users click these links.  In theory, you would get a good picture of when a reader found they needed to reference something else.  This could help you re-arrange the content in  a more logical order for your readers; you could even emphasize those links that get used a lot by making them larger say.  Has something like this ever been done?  

This suggests yet another topic to me, but I'll start another thread to discuss it -- though keeping in mind Ron's recent warning to slow down on discussion speed, these things may come to overlap again, so I think they'd best be discussed in parallel.

[Walt Freitag]

At the most basic level, I'm thinking a web-based presentaiton of rules with heavy hyper-linking. Instead of choosing an order for your reader to look at the rules, allow them to take them in (most) any order they want: each rule references every other rule it interacts with, and links to it. You would, of course, have to carefully write each rule to assume no knowledge from your reader, and to very strictly reference anything needed. You would still have to decide exactly where to start the reader: a summary, character concept, etc. But it would still be a big change.

It sounds like you're suggesting an "all-hyperlinked" approach here -- that is, instead of taking a linear text and adding hyperlinks for cross-referencing and other tools (e.g. glossary, extra examples, and alternate indexes such as character-sheet-as-index), you're considering having a network of hyperlinked pages with no default sequence built in.

I'm doubting that that's a good idea. The problems are:

The supposed benefit is "allowing [the reader] to take [the rules] in any order they want" -- but since the readers don't know the rules, how would they know what would be a good order? Why would they have any strong preference for what order to take them in? I can see some users preferring to jump right to char gen, others to combat resolution or setting background, but can't a linked-up table of contents satisfy them, without blowing the whole book into fragments?

"You would, of course, have to carefully write each rule to assume no knowledge [of other rules] from your reader..." I submit that this is impossible. The attempt to do it, though, is likely to make each section harder to read than it would be in a conventional linear presentation.

The all-hyperlinked presentation can also make it difficult for users to know when they've covered all the relevant material. Anxiety over "did I miss an important link somewhere?" can make studying a hypertext take longer, with more repetition, than an equivalent linear text.

The all-hyperlinked approach works best when the goal is to satisfy idle curiosity about the subject matter -- such as for a CD-ROM coffee table book about volcanoes, or perhaps for a promotional overview that presents the highlights of your game. For content that the reader wishes to master, it's an iffier proposition. The author is the expert, and should figure out how best to present the material. There's a fine line between wanting to be responsive to individiual users' preferences, and abdicating all responsibility to present (that is to say, teach) the subject matter in a clear understandable way.

I say this, not because I'm opposed to innovative interactive approaches, but because I'm a big fan of them and believe they have lots of potential. But I've often been disapponted, both as a developer and an end-user, in the actual usability of hypermedia. Hyperlinks are great for building tools to supplement a linear text (such as I listed above, alternative indices and glossaries and the like). But links are "dumb." They don't really interact with the user. They're not state-sensitive, so they cannot change their action based on a user's past history or expressed preferences. They cannot take over, from the author, the core task of presenting the needed concepts in a convenient understandable sequence.

You've described three possible methods for presenting one rules set:

*   One route is to start with the simpler rules and build up, not mentioning other rules until you fully describe them (forward referencing is bad). Most games seem to do it this way.
*   Another route would be to explain the core of the game's mechanic, with a fair bit of hand-waving. Then fill in the details. This is sort of what I've done with Symmoira, and I've seen it done with a lot of smaller, indie titles recently.
*   A third method would be to summarise everything very quickly, naming all the major rules up front, and then filling in how they all work.

These are all ways of "guiding" the learner through the network of interrelated rules. But just presenting the network itself, as you're proposing to do, takes away all the guidance. What you need is the network, plus a guiding layer that provides a choice of routes. To function, the guiding layer has to be state-sensitive, taking into account which route has been selected and/or the path taken thus far. That's a tall order, which is why it's rarely been done with nonfiction subject matter, but in my opinion that's what's needed to make the all-hyperlinked presentation at least as useful as a linear presentation with hyperlink indexing tools (the conventional approach).

There are also other ways to use the interactivity possible on the Web to advantage. For instance, I see many places in many role playing systems where interactive examples would be useful. For instance, consider a typical example of rules for interpreting a dice roll. A fixed example might be:

You roll 2, 2, 4, 6
Opponent rolls 1, 3, 5, 5
Your highest die (6) beats your opponent's highest die (5), giving you success. But your next highest die (4) doesn't beat your opponent's next highest die (5), so you get only a single success.

A dynamic version might present the explanation in short steps, highlighting the relevant die image at each step. More important, it would let the user click a button and generate another random roll, with another explanation of the interpretation. Perhaps with the additional option of entering specific numbers by hand, in order to pose "what if" questions. As a bonus, writing the program to generate the examples would reveal if there were any "what if" cases that the rules didn't cover clearly.

Another possibility is a dynamic interactive character sheet as a central overview of the rules. In addition to each entry on the character sheet being a link to the relevant rules, you could add additional roll-over or pull-down behaviors that, for certain types of system, would centralize a lot more system information in a convenient way. Roll over an attribute, and all skill slots related to that attribute highlight. Roll over a blank line where a power would be written in, and a menu list of the possible powers pops up; roll over an item on that list for a description of that power. And so forth.

- Walt

[Tav_Behemoth]

You know it completely slipped my mind that pdf allows for hyper-linking.  That would also work in place of HTML.  

The pdf's of Masters and Minions are extensively hyperlinked; green links point to other references within the document, blue links point to rules definitions in the System Reference Document. (See the minotaur demo for an example).

The problem with this approach is that it's highly labor intensive; creating hyperlinks with InDesign (which we used to create the PDF) is enough of a pain that we're thinking about switching to HTML instead of PDF for our electronic release.

[Jasper]

Hi,

I thought I responded to this a while ago, but I guess I never hit the "send" button.

Walt, you raise a lot of excellent points and problems.

The all-hyperlinked presentation can also make it difficult for users to know when they've covered all the relevant material.

Well, in theory HTML provides minimally for this, with visited v. unvisited links.  Of course this is inadequate, but perhaps it could be built upon.  I've seen sites that use java, for instance, to place a kind of checkbox next to each item in an index of material.  These checkboxes could have more than just two states and could be under direct user control. For instance, you might have "unread, perused, read, fully understood" states, that a user could cycle through.  Next to hyperlinks, an icon (or words) could appear, notifying the user as to the state of whatever material they would be visiting, e.g.

"And you can read more about dragons in Beasts (you have not yet visited this material), and Fantastic Tasks in Resolution (you have perused this material)."

Would this go substantially towards solving the problem?

What you need is the network, plus a guiding layer that provides a choice of routes.

This could, I think, be done with either of the latter two methods I described, i.e. core mechanic + everything else attached to that, or thin outline with detail attached along the way.


Tav,

Good to know.  What has the response to the hyperlinked file been? Do your readers say they make use of the links?

I'm a big fan of HTML (well, XHTML + CSS).  The major disadvantages are the limits to layout imposed and cross-platform viewability, thoug most RPG people seem to be reasonably tech-savvy and are maybe up-to-date in their browser usage.  Another advantage goes back to what Walt was talking about: along with hyperlinking, you can also add java applets very easily, to do things like sample resolution rolls.  Ben Lehman programmed a very nice combat simulator for The Riddle of Steel; if that were done in java instead, it could be sunk right into the rules.

[ivan23]

I've seen sites that use java, for instance, to place a kind of checkbox next to each item in an index of material.  These checkboxes could have more than just two states and could be under direct user control.

For the record, CSS enables this pretty easily. The main reason I bring that up is that it also addresses the issue of "print v. web" formats - you can create two external stylesheets, one for Web and one for Print, which display or suppress various images and layouts ... I've used this to good effect at work.

[jerry]

For the record, CSS enables this pretty easily. The main reason I bring that up is that it also addresses the issue of "print v. web" formats - you can create two external stylesheets, one for Web and one for Print, which display or suppress various images and layouts ... I've used this to good effect at work.

I agree; one thing I'd like to see is a really good, easy to use, word processor that uses HTML and CSS. Most, if not all, of what I do in Gods & Monsters could be done with HTML/CSS; obviously, things like the index would have to be handled by the word processor. But being able to quickly switch out to a different style sheet for print, web, and on-line PDF in an easy-to-use word processor designed for large documents, would be very cool.

Jerry

[Jasper]

Actually, Jerry, now that you mention indices: that might actually be a good use for XML.  I haven't done anything like that myself, but that should do the trick.