How best to display equipment and stuff?

[brainwipe]

Sorry if this is in the wrong place, it seems to fit best here...

Most Sci Fi games have a lot of stuff. Cars, bikes, guns, spaceships, more guns, armour and so on. There seems to be lots of different ways of listing all this stuff. If it's a hotel room, you might just want a price and a short description. For a car, you'll want a picture and some game mechanics information. I think I've got that nailed.

However, there are loads of things that could be listed in a tabular or list form or as a contact sheet (see below). What do you prefer? You you vehemently dislike either?

NB: There will be a big compilation table included that will have everything in for quick reference.

Contact Sheet:


Tabular:


You can see these in situe in the Icar Equipment Index.

[casquilho]

I do not mind stat lists for most equipment. But I think pictures and contact sheet style layouts for some equipment goes a long way to add to the imagination and flavor of a game. Pictures are important for any equipment that is not "known" in my opinion as well.

A list like:

Light Handgun 2d
Heavy Handgun 3d
Carbine 3d etc is fine

But I dislike

Rondal 4.5 Auto 2d
Cerbish 450 3d
Waltner 2020 3d

To me, once you raise the stakes with specifics, then pictures are needed.

Lastly, any equipment or tech that is unique to your game should be pictured. If your game includes a new race that makes bio-tech for example, then some of their unique items need to be pictured.

Just my .02

Daniel

[Lance D. Allen]

First, it's a general rule not to display pictures within your posts here on the Forge. It's preferred to link to your images. Ron Edwards may be along to help you fix that soon. If not, you may want to ask him to help.

Next to answer your question, I tend to like the methods used by some of the Shadowrun equipment supplements, which have images either inset or sidebarred, but with the description and game information of the item in the main text, usually with a table summarizing various information (like price, effectiveness(damage/armor value, etc), weight et al) for quick "shopping" reference.

Basically, kind of a cross between your two examples. Also, as a rule, I don't think pictures of ammunition is all that important, though I suppose if I knew more about your game, I'd be better able to make an assessment.

[brainwipe]

Daniel, thanks for your comments. I do try and picture everything because Icar has a lot of technology that depends on itself. As it's mostly created in 3D, I need to know how big the ammunition is so that I can make the guns around it. Then keeping everything in scale, I can work out exactly how many magazines someone can feasibly carry and so on. This gives me a better idea when working out game balance.

Wolfen, sorry about the pics. Faux pas! If I could edit my post, I would.

The pictures of the ammunition aren't really that important, not for a lot of it. However, see my comment above. That explains where I'm coming from.

Thanks for your comments, guys, it's nice to know I'm not too far off track. At the moment, I am looking at doing both. Much like you'd have a index reference at the back of a rule book.