I'm putting this in Publishing, because I think it has a lot of general application, even though it originated in an Adept Press thread.

Earlier today, Ron, writing about his target audience for Sorcerer, made a distinction between "gamers" as a subculture, and people who role-play. His point was that, WRT Sorcerer, "gamers" don't get it, and it's pointless to rewrite Sorcerer to try and cause them to get it, because, by and large, they aren't interested in getting it.

As a teacher, I agree with this basic sentiment - you can't cause interest in a naturally indifferent subject. Interest comes first, then the work gets done (or actual play happens).

To carry the teaching analogy a bit further, a lot of people will say "no, it's the teacher's job to make the students be interested." And this is just not true. There's a subtle distinction: A teacher's job is to *engage* the interest of the students. In other words, the interest is already there. The techer picks up on it, finds ways to amplify and direct it based on the needs of each individual student.

To put it differently, a prime goal in teaching is to present the material in such a way that the students are not bored by a subject that they would otherwise have been interested in. Natural interest + bad teaching = indifferent students. Natural interest + good teaching = enthusiastic students.

I suggest that this process is pretty close to writing RPG materials - *especially* materials that outline procedures (i.e., core rulebooks).

In a nutshell: Yeah, some people don't get it. They don't want to get it. They never will get it. Writing your material to try and engage these people is a waste of time.

On the other hand, I assert that it's lazy and pointless writing practice to limit your audience to people who *already* get it. You can put your neato-keen dice mechanic on an index card and pass it out. Voila, Narrativism! (Or whatever.)

There are other people (I believe a lot of other people) don't get it, but are open to getting it, given good presentation of material. These people are the equivalent of students with natural interest, open minds; people who are willing to try new stuff with the expectation that they will enjoy it. There are a lot of these guys over on the RPG.NET threads who encountered TROS but didn't get it. TROS is the poster child for good games with bad presentation. It's the 1:1 equivalent of "bad teaching" in my analogy.

Writing is a medium of communication. Any time you set out to communicate something through writing, there is one basic assumption you must make about your target audience. You must assume that they are receptive - that they are reading with the intent of internalizing the message that you are offering. (Not necessarily to *agree* with what you're saying - but to, essentiall, "get it.")

Our goals as writers - especial as writers of procedural material - is to make that internalization process as quick, clean, simple, and easy as possible. Period. If you're not doing that, then I, personally, do not have respect for your work. I might admire the design structures that you've built as a game design technician. I like TROS a lot as a game engine. But as a production, it's amaturish, and it suffers for it. In fact, it's frequently dissed for it.

This is one reason d20 D&D sells so well. It looks good, is well written, and is easy to learn.

Don't get me wrong... this is not something that is easy to do. It requires advanced knowledge of writen communication. It's like being a journalist (or better yet, a technical writer). But it's also something that is really important. There's a widespread perception in the indie-underground, especially in the context of cheap/free electronically distributed home-brews that presentation is unimportant; all that matters is the content.

This post is a battle-cry against that attitude. If your presentation is not good, your ideas are worth squat.

This is why I'm not enthusiastic about the dominating indie "one guy, one product" trend (or even the "few guys on a product," which gave us TROS). One guy may know how to construct a fun game. But telling others how to duplicate his method is something else again.

This is the exact reverse from the situation in the electronoic gaming industry, where every company that writes a game knows more than the next about how to make the game pretty, how to milk the most polygons out of your processor (etc.) but where there are like 3 guys in the entire industry who actually understand what makes a game *fun.*

While I don't agree with your second-to-last paragraph, the rest of this post is so perfect that I don't want to argue it.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

yrs--
--Ben

edit: someday I will learn to count.

Like Ben, I agree with every point you make (though I don't own TROS and can't speak for it), but disagree with one of your main conclusions:

Paganini wrote: This is why I'm not enthusiastic about the dominating indie "one guy, one product" trend (or even the "few guys on a product," which gave us TROS). One guy may know how to construct a fun game. But telling others how to duplicate his method is something else again.

This is why I'm not enthusiastic about the dominating indie "one guy, one product" trend (or even the "few guys on a product," which gave us TROS). One guy may know how to construct a fun game. But telling others how to duplicate his method is something else again.

Ralph & all,

My (apparently) controversial sleeper paragraph was really just a side point. Basicall, all I was suggesting is that if you're just one guy, odds are that you are not omni-skilled. Just because you can design a good mechanic doesn't mean you can explain it to other people well in writing (and vice versa, of course).

I don't disagree with Jonathan at all. If you need help, get it. But if your product sucks because you can't write, spiffy design structure won't save it, even if you've come up with the best gaming innovation in the decade.

The prevailing indie trend seems to be to pooh-pooh the necessity of good presentation. As long as your work contains good ideas, it doesn't matter how those ideas are presented.

I oppose this. Good design and good presentation are equally important to the quality of a product. When I say "presentation" I'm not just talking about layout and artwork and stuff. More importantly, I'm talking about your actual ability to produce text that clearly and simply explains the procedures in your game, along with the sequential organization of material.

Ralph, as far as solutions, Jonathan nailed it in his post. You get peer editing, proofreading, you actively work on your own writing abilities.

In the indie scene, being a game designer is the same thing as being a game-book producer. You can't just rely on your ability to scheme up new ways to play. You have to be able to communicate those ideas well in writing.

Thanks for clarifying

The prevailing indie trend seems to be to pooh-pooh the necessity of good presentation. As long as your work contains good ideas, it doesn't matter how those ideas are presented.

Ralph,

I'm not sure that this is something I can support with direct evidence. You characterize it as an impression, and that's what it is. I can't really argue it with specific evidence, like Forge thread links, and stuff.

However, I look at a lot of games that people are paying money for that would never have made it out the door if a professional editor was responsible for approving them.

There's a general substance over style vibe that I've gotten for years when looking at indie products and talking to indie developers. Sure there are some exceptions. But in general, the level of work does not approach professionalism, and no one is out there saying "hey! we need to do this better!" I've even encountered the idea that your presentation doesn't really matter that much, because if your readers aren't willing to put some effort into understanding what you have to say, then they aren't worth writing for.

Here at the Forge there's a constant escalating demand for better mechanics, deeper understanding of actual play events, and so on. But there's no equivalent demand for production excellence. No one is out there trying to publically figure out the best way to explain a mechanic or organize a game book. Threads in indie-design about the best way of communicating game text are few and far between. Corresponding discussions about communicating *during play* are a top priority. I perceive this as an imbalance.

People who post to indie-design are expecting comments about how their game will work during actual play. They tend to get them. People who contact me privately for comments on their drafts are usually really surprised when I start talking about avoiding passive voice, organzing the information presented, and so on. They're expecting me to tell them the nuances of probability with their dice mechanics, and how this or that rule will affect social dynamics, and what they get is me telling them that their ideas need to be expressed more clearly.

Paganini, you've said some very good things. I like your approach. I've often done much the same thing myself, but never in that structured way, just in my head.

Paganini wrote:
However, I look at a lot of games that people are paying money for that would never have made it out the door if a professional editor was responsible for approving them.

There's a general substance over style vibe that I've gotten for years when looking at indie products and talking to indie developers. Sure there are some exceptions.

I've even encountered the idea that your presentation doesn't really matter that much, because if your readers aren't willing to put some effort into understanding what you have to say, then they aren't worth writing for.

But there's no equivalent demand for production excellence.

They're expecting me to tell them the nuances of probability with their dice mechanics, and how this or that rule will affect social dynamics, and what they get is me telling them that their ideas need to be expressed more clearly.

ChefKyle wrote: You're quite right, Paganini, it's something that more publishers need to bear in mind. But I think the essence of it, is that most indie publishers are writers. They're not artists or editors.

These are good points all. As one of the perpetrators of poor writing, I will be taking these points to heart whene working on the Full Edition of With Great Power...

In the meanwhile, some aspects of acheiving clarity in writing have been addressed in Shooting the Sacred Cow. Near the bottom of the first page, Chris Lerich explains how to use an outline to trim the fat and tighten the meat of writing project.

LordSmerf wrote: Perhaps it would be profitable to start a thread over in Game Design regarding important considerations when writing a game text. Things like Order, Tone, Indexing, pagination, etc.

Tim, you are corrrect. I intend to do exactly that when this thread winds down, assuming someone else doesn't beat me to it. :)

I have in mind to talk about overall organization of a game presentation (i.e., the order in which concepts and procedures are presented) in one thread, and save actual writing technique for a later thread.

Michael S. Miller wrote: In the meanwhile, some aspects of acheiving clarity in writing have been addressed in Shooting the Sacred Cow. Near the bottom of the first page, Chris Lerich explains how to use an outline to trim the fat and tighten the meat of writing project.

Another suggestion that I use myself, when writing speeches (I agree with Chris that speaking texts aloud can help solve a great many writing problems), is to break down the lines and parse the document as free verse poetry, complete with pauses where they should be and key words falling at the beginning or ends of lines.

So, looking at the paragraph I just wrote, I might rewrite it something like this:

When I write speeches,
I often break down the sentences,
turning the document into free verse poetry,
complete with pauses
and key words at the beginning
or ends of lines.

When you do this, you don't get impossibly long sentences or phrases, which are difficult for people to read. Also, when you read the text aloud, it flows more naturally because you have plenty of places to breathe and have a rhythm built in.

Just a suggestion from the creative writing and performance side of things.

I think most consumers of indie games have already chosen to select context over form, since no indie game I've ever seen has the production values of a glossy illustrated White Wolf corebook.

I think Sorcerer, My Life With Master, and Dogs in the Vineyard were all very nicely presented in terms of layout and art. None of them is glossy, but all of them are attractive, eye-catching, and in general suggest that the game's producer has his shit together. That's what counts, IMO.

Danny ... (sigh) ...

Obsidian. Deliria. The Riddle of Steel. A/State. Crimson Empire. Beautiful hardbacks, all of them. And you are dissing Sorcerer, my friend - its production value stands with all of these.

All this stuff about the low production value of independent games is starting to piss me off. Take a look at the history of the hobby, and you will find the most godawful, crappy-edited, badly laid out, and cheaply put-together stuff from the non-independents, consistently. White Wolf and TSR are the exceptions, not the paragons, and the former ain't had such a hot track record with the editing.

All this is aside from my current outlook that the 50-100 page non-standard dimension paperback book is the best way to go. I really think Nathan screwed the pooch with his sleeper paragraph, despite my immense agreement with everything else in his post, and what really irritates me is that people seem to be agreeing with him, wide-eyed, without considering what the hell they're looking at.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: All this stuff about the low production value of independent games is starting to piss me off.

Ron, yeah, pretty much. I had no idea that was gonna be such a big deal. Heh. It was almost the *only* part I hadn't planned out ahead of time on my way home from work. It just slipped through my stream of consciousness while I was writing out the post. Guess that'll teach me.

Danny, I don't really give a crap about how a product is bound, or what kind of art it has. My points in my original post apply equally to electronically produced products as they do to anything else. I'm talking about writing period. TROS *looks* like it ought to be an awesome game. The cover shines. It has a huge bloody arm with as word on it. It's got great big firey gothic letters. If you sit down and spend about a month figuring out what it actually says, well, hey, golly gee whiz, there really *is* a great game in there. But *man* the text sure doesn't help you find it.

It is a standard we should all strive for, I'm completely with you Nathan. I'm a big tooter of that horn myself. I just disagree that there is a trend that indie designs are greater offenders in that regard than any others...not that there aren't indie games that could have been better written but that I don't percieve the "could have been better written" to "Good as is" ration to be higher for indie than non indie game lines.

Ralph, could just be a percentage thing for me. I see more indie games than I see non-indie games.

I think that when Paganini speaks of poor writing and presentation, he is not attacking any particular person's products. Thus, no particular person need leap to his own defence, or the defence of his favourite games.

In my recent post, I didn't emphasise something that had occurred to me, which is that poor writing is no particular monopoly of rpgs, or even indie rpgs. It's everywhere. A glance across the internet or the ten-pound Saturday newspaper will tell you that our society emphasises quantity over quality.

So, in our poor writing and presentation, we're no worse than most of those who write and present. However, we ought to still strive to be better. Wouldn't it be nice if, instead of having a reputation as only being as good or bad as everyone else's writing, rpg writing had a reputation as being better than other writing? It's difficult, of course - but not impossible.

I don't think indie games are particularly bad for writing and presentation. Roleplaying games in general have not very great standards. Sadly, nerds are not very discriminating. They'll complain constantly about how something was produced, yet still buy it. As with the Lord of the Rings or Star Wars movies, nerds all bag them, but they still go to see them several times.

When it comes to rpgs, naturally the publishers look at the balance sheet, and look at the columns in magazines and internet forums, and decide that one is more important than the other. It's a business, so for that we cannot blame them.

It cannot be denied that writing, layout and editing, and art, are all different skills. And it's difficult for a person to be very proficient in several skills. I think here of some software millionaire who, when asked how he'd made his fortune replied, "I figured out the things that I was absolutely outstanding at. Anything I wasn't outstanding at, I assumed I was utterly incompetent, hired someone else to do, and left them to it."

While we may not all seek his financial success, I think that a similar method might be the path to the other thing we seek - prestige.

Many of us pay for professionals to do the artwork for us. Why not, also, pay for professionals to do editing and layout for us? For my part, on my recent publication d4-d4, I did editing and layout myself, but did pay for someone to give me a couple hours' advice on it. The editing and layout I hired out, like the artwork I hired out, was limited by my budget.

I wouldn't trust the computer to check the grammar in my piece. I prefer to use my own brain or, better yet, that of someone who's a professional editor.

We hire professional artists for our work. Why not professional editors and layout and design people?

Hello,

Kyle, you're makin' me squint. Most of the publishers here do pay others for layout services, specifically others who do this kind of thing for a living.

Bluntly, this thread has gone to hell in a handbasket. It was badly, badly hijacked by its own founder, specifically a throwaway paragraph that represents an excellent case of fingers outstripping the brain, which eclipsed the content of what could have been an outstanding thread-opener.

I think Nathan's first post needs to be reviewed by everybody. Never mind anything to do with production value or spiffy presentation. Focus on the "writing for people" issue. That is a great point and worth considering in dozens of ways that I cannot even begin to talk about in the thread as it stands.

Best,
Ron

OK. In my initial post, I used the word "presentation." I said if your presentation is not good, then your ideas are worth squat. In case someone hasn't figure it out yet, that phrase, and all similar phrases, were in the context of the subject of the thread. In other words, it doesn't mean "your game has spiffy art" or "your game has a big fat shiny cover." It means that your game is (or is not) presented to the reader in well-writen text. Text is what presents the game to the reader. The artwork doesn't do it. The binding doesn't do it. Even the layout doesn't do it, although the layout does need to support the text.

So, Ron, if you want to try and "fix" this thread by splitting all the sleeper stuff off into a "Indie Production Values" thread, or something like that, feel free. Alternatively, anyone can spawn new threads that point back to this one, just like usual. I'm planning a post out on this subject to start a new thread, but it's not ready to go yet. In the meantime, no one has to wait for me. If you want to continue to discuss the topic, *please* post a new thread. That's why I posted in the first place... to get people thinking and talking about writing standards.

So, if we are talking about text i have some questions for the more experienced writers. Nathan specifically notes technical manuals in his first post so experience with such things would be especially appreciated.

So, organization. How do you organize the text? Character generation, skills, feats, combat, equipment. In that order? The order you will encounter the rules in? Building blocks where simple concepts preceed the advanced concepts that build on them? And how do you go about doing all that?

Thomas

Ron Edwards wrote:
Kyle, you're makin' me squint. Most of the publishers here do pay others for layout services, specifically others who do this kind of thing for a living.

Bluntly, this thread has gone to hell in a handbasket.

I think Nathan's first post needs to be reviewed by everybody. Never mind anything to do with production value or spiffy presentation. Focus on the "writing for people" issue. That is a great point and worth considering in dozens of ways that I cannot even begin to talk about in the thread as it stands.

LordSmerf wrote: So, organization. How do you organize the text? Character generation, skills, feats, combat, equipment. In that order? The order you will encounter the rules in? Building blocks where simple concepts preceed the advanced concepts that build on them? And how do you go about doing all that?

Thomas

Hey James,

For a smaller RPG, particularly one with a "quick-grab" setting (Space Opera! Western!), I think you could do well by the boardgame model of organization.

For an example along these lines, take a look at Tim Kleinert's playtest rules for The Mountain Witch. I'm pretty impressed with how close he is to delivering on the accessibility of a boardgame/cardgame style organization.

Paul

I completely agree with Paganini and Ralph- This issue, more than anything else, is the thing that makes or breaks a game for me. But yes, there are too many issues wrapped up in here to deal with it even remotely coherently in a thread of under 200 posts.

There are so many pregnant topics here that my head hurts:

Production Values (which was actually more of a distraction to the thread, so should be respawned elsewhere).

Corehent, Functional Layout (as Matt indicated) - We need to talk about this more pragmatically. What makes a layout functional. Examples of pretty and good layout, examples of pretty but bad layout. In depth discussion on the underlying issues with layout, etc. This forum is all about talking shop. So let's talk shop on this. New thread, someone?

How to get people interested in the game through the text alone, which includes all the following: How to make the game approachable and understood. practical methods of using tone, flavor, and certain types of description to convey both the rules and the feel of the game. Relying on triggers to understand the game other than "pretty cover and interior art".

Why it's important to make the game approchable and understood by folks. Including, "Should I bother widening my target audience?", "Am I actually doing the hobby (as I like it) harm by not making the game more accessible to possible interested people?", etc. This, I hold, is the core of what this thread was initially about. Maybe its time to continue this thread here, or else start a new threat, a more directed thread, at this issue.

Anyway, just a thought. Maybe it's time to start some new threads to deal with these concurrently spawning but important and relevant topics.

From my end, cause Ben is on my case :) , I'm going to scan in and translate those comics from that Tenra Bansho Zero game- For those folks at GenCon, this was the game where there were little cartoons that demonstrated how the rules worked, as the game was decidedly marketed and fucking gorgeously crafted by the designer to appeal to and be instantly understood by total RPG newbies. This technique has only been used in a few Japanese games (literally under 5 or so, and all from the same company), but this fluke, this rare example, should shake us to our very foundations, as art has never been used in games, ever, to appeal to visual learners or new RPG players. Art is almost always used as was earlier indicated somewhere (was it in Sorcerer even?) as either a "mood enhancer" or a "placeholder" ("Here's my book, check the rule for yourself - Which page? I forget, but the rules are on the page with the chick with the huge hooters in a chainmail bikini holding an axe.").

Anyway, look forward to a new thread on this sub-subtopic this weekend. Gaming tonight, company tomorrow night, local con on Sat, I figure I'll get started on Sunday.

-Andy