Towards a hypothetical 2nd (3rd?) Edition....

[Lance D. Allen]

Jake would probably roll in his grave about the sword background comment, but he's not dead.

He's heard that comment from my early posts on to this day. He's definitely aware of it.

[Jake Norwood]

Actually, it's going to put me in my grave. At that time printing quality at our budget was extremely unpredictable (those of you that can, compare the first to the second printings...the second cost me about 1/3rd as much per book!). The swords were meant to be barely visible in both versions...oh well.

Jake

[Bill Cook]

Apologies.

[Thanaeon]

Here's something I did to reduce page-flipping:

I took Post-it stickers, cut them into small pieces, and flipped through the book, searching for important pages. Whenever I found one, I took one piece, wrote what was on the page ("Earning SA's", "Skills", "Maneuvers" etc.) and attached it to the top of the page so that it sticks about a centimeter (0,4 inches) off the top of the page - enough to be easily readable, but not enough to mar the appearance of the book that much.

I'm not sure if you were familiar with this idea, but it helped me.

[Ingenious]

It appears that Mr. Cook has annoyed the TROS Gods.

Anyways, Thanaeon provides a useful suggestion to those that wish to use that method. I on the other-hand..have seen many many RPG books done like this(my seneschal's copy for example)..but to put a tab on each section of the book as it is now.. would result in alot of tabs...too many in fact. This is due to the fact that not all of the information about a particular subject is grouped together into one nice little spot to reduce page flipping AND to reduce the number of tabs needed.

To start off with, right after explaining what the hell an RPG is, and into book 2.. contain everything about SA's there.. because this is afterall the biggest facet of the game and also the driving force behind each and every character. It *belongs* in that section. However, I do like how book 3(training) flows into book 4(combat)...which flows into 5(nature) and into 6(magic). Magic would naturally be based off of nature, so there is logic in that set-up.. and to put training before combat also.
Just tweak it.. so us lazy people can sit back and have a reduced work-load whenever a problem rises. I don't necessarily like having to thumb through the book everytime spell is casted, or I pull a tricky move, etc.. especially during a novice GM's trial running of TROS and so forth.. so I can see everyone's frustrations with having to consult the book frequently. It is like being stuck in bumper to bumper traffic, having all of the players AND the GM looking through the book for a particular rule on something or another.
edit: When I talk of SA's in book 2 I also want to see the rules for character progression in the back of book 3 put right behind the SA's. Also, in book two.. possibly lump a compressed version of all of the nations and so forth into it. explaining the bonuses, what the religions of those countries are, inhabitants, etc. So put the national stuff in there so that when reading the character progression part.. a person making a character can get a basic feel for roleplaying suggestions in terms of nationality and such. Also have a link from that paraphrasing into book 7 where they are fully discussed.(though this all might be over-kill and more pages and ink and time and money than it might be worth to do)

This, and other complaints about TFOB, impatience, etc etc. I'm sure this is a common phenomena as well, due to the many people who have been waiting to run mass combat, sieges and the like. It might also add to the number of potential customers, as many of us have seen through some seriously stuuuupid reviews of the game(by people that know little to nothing about it) that one of the biggest downfalls of TROS is a lack of a strong mass combat system.

Though I'm sure Jake and Brian hear enough about that from me. Might even be more annoying than Mr Cook's comments on the swords..

-Ingenious
(sorry for the rambling)

[Thanaeon]

Personally, I have 12 such tabs in my copy of the book. (I've yet to add sorcery tabs - that should be 2 or 3 more.) I don't think this is too much, since the tabs are pretty small. And to me, it does beat having to search for the sections.

[Ingenious]

Bah, point conceded..

[kenjib]

I kind of like the quickstart skill system better than the one in the main book - Broad, well-rounded archetype oriented skills that you can interpret openly and creatively during play.  It's like Lejendary Adventures, which has a great rules-light skill system.  I would make them just slightly more granular than they are in quickstart though.  Of course, I'm probably the only one who would like this, and I think it would be too radical of a change for the game anyway...

[Ingenious]

Actually I have had some problems with combining skill packets in order to make certain archtypes... and I'd like to see everyone's suggestions for certain types of characters in terms of skills and so forth....in another post.

-Ingenious

[Thanaeon]

I kind of like the quickstart skill system better than the one in the main book - Broad, well-rounded archetype oriented skills that you can interpret openly and creatively during play.  It's like Lejendary Adventures, which has a great rules-light skill system.  I would make them just slightly more granular than they are in quickstart though.  Of course, I'm probably the only one who would like this, and I think it would be too radical of a change for the game anyway...

House ruling this should be the very essence of simplicity. Simply, instead of skill packages, choose professions, and perhaps add a third according to the MA attribute.

[kenjib]

I kind of like the quickstart skill system better than the one in the main book - Broad, well-rounded archetype oriented skills that you can interpret openly and creatively during play.  It's like Lejendary Adventures, which has a great rules-light skill system.  I would make them just slightly more granular than they are in quickstart though.  Of course, I'm probably the only one who would like this, and I think it would be too radical of a change for the game anyway...

House ruling this should be the very essence of simplicity. Simply, instead of skill packages, choose professions, and perhaps add a third according to the MA attribute.

Yeah, I agree that would work very well.  I would kind of like slightly more granularity in the skills though.  It's just a fine tuning issue though and probably not worth the trouble of doing any more than you suggest.

[Deacon Blues]

Unbreak the hand of the poor sword-wielding barbarian on the cover.