Organization & Layout

[greyorm]

This is a pretty general topic, and so is my question, but I am asking about it in relation to the design of Orx here. This was the same question I mentioned planing to ask in the thread on alternating choices in stat usage, but once I'd started thinking about it and working on it, some items changed and the original reason I'd asked the question became moot.

The question now is: how much more difficult is it for you to understand a game when game terms or actions are utilized before their explanations in the text? (owing to interrelative definitions of subjects)

How much more likely are you to shelve such a game? And how would you prefer to see it handled if such could not be avoided? (owing to interrelative definitions of subjects)

For example, currently, the explanation of damage to dice requires talking about how the dice heal back up after a Scene has finished, but I have not yet explained to the reader what a Scene is.

I could put the explanation of Scenes prior to that of discussing dice, but then the organization begins to look very cluttered, and we jump from discussing playing the game to elements of the game and back again (a situation I find equally unpalatable). Not to mention the explanation of Scenes requires an understanding of the dice mechanics, since Scenes are now measured by the gamemaster's dice.

Now, I have solved a number of these with rewrites of the text, splitting the sections into their appropriate parts, but there are one or two which have thus far defied my ability to seperate well; it is these not easily seperated items which lead to my query.

Has anyone else run into a similar sticky problem in writing their game, and what did you do about it when you realized you could not simply split the text?

[Valamir]

This was a huge deal in Universalis actually.  In the end I settled for organizing the chapters and the content within the chapters in the order in which I would introduce concepts when teaching the game.  So the game rules became sort of script (albiet an embellished and more detailed one) of my own demo patter.

When demoing a game I find you frequently refer to things that if you brought them up right then would just confuse everything.  I got in the habit of saying "keep in mind you can do X, but I'll hold off explaining exactly what that means until later" type of things...so in the rules there are references to such things with a "(see chapter X)"  or "(as described in the section on y)" type parentheticals.

I have had 1 guy comment negatively on the use of terms before they were properly introduced, but in the main most people who've commented on the rules structure to date have found it pretty straight forward.

[Lance D. Allen]

Not an answer to your question Raven, but an addition to it; What about the use of fiction to introduce certain game terms? Is this a good method? For example, introducing the terms Coil, ReCoil, Naughtwraith, Oblivion, etc. in a story in the beginning of the book, rather than simply defining them in the game text. I've seen it done, and it seems to work well enough, but it might simply be me. I always read the fiction first, but I know some people don't.

[hix]

Specifically to the example you posted, the word 'Scene' wouldn't have thrown me because it's not that jargony. Unlike the word 'jargony'.

However, sidebars or maybe hyper-text in an online document are always an option.

In general though, I'm fine with words being presented before definitions as long as there's a good index, glossary and clearly written examples of play (for dummies) to tie the whole thing together.

Steve.

[M. J. Young]

What worked for us was to have an early section in which we presented the major terms that were going to appear frequently in many contexts and interact with each other, in essence say very basically what each was about, and promise that they would be more fully described later. Sometimes if a term needed more understanding in a specific connection to make sense of it, we would include a bit of fleshing out at that point, and again reference the later sections. Thus we were able to provide the very detailed information about several of our most important terms rather late in the book, because the scanty information we presented early was sufficient to carry the reader through those parts.

--M. J. Young

[Jonathan Walton]

In Nobilis, the Example of Play comes before any of the game mechanics are explained.  Rebecca prefaces it by saying:

[quote="R. Sean Borgtrom]Following the example of play requires relatively little knowledge of the Nobilis setting and rules.  A few bits of background information follow [included below] Later chapters should explain anything that remains unclear.[/quote]

Consistant with her take, I think most readers can understand any amount of jargon as long as they can see it in context.  That is, if they don't know how Whoswhatzit works in your game, but if you at least explain that Whoswhatzit is a measure of how much Blatherskite the character can do (and you've already explained Blatherskite), they can deal with that limited explanation for a long time before requiring more.  Details are not important if the overall conceptual structure is sound.[/quote]

[Jack Spencer Jr]

The question now is: how much more difficult is it for you to understand a game when game terms or actions are utilized before their explanations in the text? (owing to interrelative definitions of subjects)

This is the big, big question when writing a game. How to organize the game rules in a manner that it is easy to understand and what to do with gaming terms where the definition of one is dependant on the definition of another. There are lots helpful tools.

A complete glossary in the back so when the read hits an unfamiliar term they can flip to the glossary to look it up. This is most useful for terms that they *should have* learned in previous chapters, but for some reason didn't and they wonder "what did that mean again?" Flipping to the glossary instead of the through the entire book would be helpful.

Having a chapter glossary for the terms introduced in each chapter can help them to learn these terms in their chapter.

When you need to mention a term *before* you formally introduce the reader to it, a page reference (see p. 36) for where it is introduced will help.

When organizing the rules, start with likely actions or events and work your way towards special cases in order of likeliness. If it were Chess, for example, place the rules for castling after you had described the movement for all of the pieces. You might mention it in the rules for moving the Rook and King, but reference where you actually describe these rules. (see p. 19)

These are hardly set in stone, of course, but they may prove useful to conveying your game from the page into the mind of the players with a minimum of confusion.

[Matt Wilson]

As the hypothetical buyer of your game, I'd be content with something like "scenes are explained on page XX."

I think the glossary idea would be useful, especially if it were a very general explanation with a reference to where I could read the full description.

[Fallen_Icarus]

Hello,

You're probably never going to find the perfect layout for a game since every thinks in different ways, but all the above ideas could be used to make things easier.  Personally, I always go right to character creation and the character sheet when I scan rpgs books as these seem to give a good overall feel for the game.  While I wouldn't exactly point to TROS for layout inspiration, one thing I liked about it was that it got right into the guts of the game without a lot of preface.  But thats just me.

EVH

[greyorm]

Thanks for the input, everyone, this gives me a much better idea of how to structure the book to deal with the problem I'd asked about.

One of my desires with the design is to get folks right into making characters and playing without a lot of effort on anyone's part. To that effect, given the suggestions made here, I've started a basic index, was waffling on inclusion of a glossary but plan to have one now, and the layout follows (I hope) the same structure in which someone would actually learn the game when playing it (like Ralph, I find this is the best way to present rules).

For the record, there won't be any game fiction in the book, since I'm not introducing any Setting terms (only mechanical ones), and I just don't like the idea of game fiction. However, I will be including examples of play, which, for all intents and purposes could easily be considered game fiction.

In specific resolution to the problem, I'm planning on either working them with quick definitions right into the text (with pointers to later sections), or as sidebars of a sort containing the same quick definitions.

Thanks again, all!

[Lance D. Allen]

A note on what I consider game fiction, and why I *do* like it...

Game fiction is, to me, an extension of examples of play. It's basically an example of play with the out-of-character notes and conversation removed, and written in such a way as to incorporate the "feel" that the author wants to communicate to the players for the game. Good, useful game fiction is always about the same sort of things the players will be doing. Game fiction for Shadowrun shouldn't revolve around a wage-slave being mugged on the way home, unless it were Shadowrunners doing the mugging, and that's the sort of thing the author wants to suggest to player characters.

An exception to this rule is of course scenario background, which gives information, usually only available out-of-character, to the players, as well as setting the tone of that particular scenario. These are not included in my above definition, as I'm referring mostly to game fiction found within the main book.