Quote from: Simlasa;943334But for the audience nowadays, especially the 'connoisseur' collector crowd, visuals seem a whole heaping lot more important and can sell otherwise blah product.

Part of it that there is no semi-standard review process for RPGs.  So likely you have little to no idea of the quality of the game when you pay for it, and with a pretty product you have two advantages.

1. At least it's pretty.

2. If they spent the time/$ to make it look pretty, it's more likely that they at least polished the mechanics more.  (Sometimes it's polishing a turd - but at least it's polished.)

Quote from: Simlasa;943355Brussels sprouts are great! I bought some today. Good baked in the oven with some balsamic vinegar on them.

I was pretty sure it wasn't the Nutter Butters I had for dinner.

OTOH, Sine Nomine did a good job of summing up why many of today's RPG rulebooks are such a chore to read.

Quote from: SineNomine;943274Big border art tends to be the result of a few different motivations. A lot of these things have to do with the really, really weird aesthetic presumptions that have built up around RPG books. By standard book design principles, RPG books are insane. (Clip lots of absolutely true stuff) (N. B. Yeah, I sometimes use border art and tinted backgrounds because that's what the market loves. I just have the basic decency to let PDF readers turn off those layers if they don't like them.)

I make user guides and manuals and instructional books for a living, and have to agree on every point. Thank you!

Flyingmice, what design issues / aspects do you think RPGs could benefit from borrowing from the user guide world?

Quote from: RunningLaser;943331How many games out there would be stand on their own merits without art to help prop it up?

All the good ones.

AKA, if a game gets repeated actual play (not just online wank and spank), its artwork isn't the key factor.

Quote from: Simlasa;943355Brussels sprouts are great!

:eek:

My mom fries them in bacon grease, then pretends they are still a vegetable.

Quote from: Cave Bear;943060A lot of roleplaying game books have these sorts of decorative elements in the margins away from the spines.
Do these serve any purpose besides decoration? What is the technical term for these, and what is their function?

Stupidity is what it is. Those in the Liberal Arts will say it is room for scribbling your own notes. Anyway, all the crap game books use that DOCX template.

Quote from: RunningLaser;943331My classic traveller book should be coming in tomorrow.

What you just wrote makes me wonder.  How many games out there would be stand on their own merits without art to help prop it up?

Far more than the gaming industry would have you believe.

Probably upwards of 75% of game sales are sight unseen other than the cover. A rare few you might see art previews, but its usually not much. And not all book stores allow you to leaf through a book. And even then its not as big a sale point as many would have you believe. And some older games you couldnt look in them period as they were boxed sets or shrink wrapped.

Quote from: Spinachcat;943389Flyingmice, what design issues / aspects do you think RPGs could benefit from borrowing from the user guide world?

Well, a whole lot. Some just will never fly even though they are way better, for reasons out of anyone's control, like different media for different uses. Reference documentation really should be extensively hyperlinked web documents, not page oriented text-with-graphics. Extensive hyperlinking allows you to present a skeletal doc, and lets the reader decide how much detail they want in what area, and able to indorporate motion video as well as static graphics, but that just ain't gonna happen as a commercial product, but people refuse to buy hyperdocuments because they associate them with free web sites, so developers won't develop on that platform.

Generally, what can be done easily is more white space, less columns - columns are hard to read on computers, let alone tablets and phones - fewer but more meaningful and targeted graphics, Side-head call-outs, and displaying informational graphics over pictures. Stay away from busy graphic elements. Keep things clean and emphasize readablility over ornamentation. This, however, will get your games called ugly and brutal, because they are not what the market has defined as the way things should look. I know. I tried it for years. SineNomine wisely does not buck the system very hard, and his books sell. Very smart. I am the dumb ass.

My latest stuff has gone more and more to a "one page per concept infographic" look, 'til my latest game is nothing but. Each page should be relatively self contained, clean and readable, with functional graphic elements incorporated into the page.

Good stuff Clash:)

Just thought I'd throw this out there, but does anyone like how rules were presented in wargames?  The decimal system- 1.1.2, 1.1.3, ect.  I always preferred it.  Made it easy to find a rule quick.

Quote from: RunningLaser;943634Just thought I'd throw this out there, but does anyone like how rules were presented in wargames?  The decimal system- 1.1.2, 1.1.3, ect.  I always preferred it.  Made it easy to find a rule quick.

Yeah, I don't mind that. The rulebooks for wargames I own seem a lot better about keeping things tight and getting to the point than some RPGs... well, except stuff like 40K codices, which are pad out what otherwise would be a few pages of army list and stats.

Quote from: SineNomine;943274The biggest factor is the fact that most RPG books, those of the author included, are put together by people who are not book designers. They have a rudimentary grasp of the tradition at best, and most of them are capable only of doing what has already been done, but preferably with More Ink. A lot of RPG book designers are just really terrible at it by almost any standards, but they're the guy with the copy of InDesign and the nominal ability to churn it out, so hey, they're the guy who does it.

That being the case - do you think that more RPG writers should outsource that part of the process?

Or do you think that there isn't enough benefit to that to be worth the cost?  (I'm quickly reaching the stage in my RPG where I have to decide whether to grab InDesign or need to start looking to hire someone.)

Quote from: flyingmice;943629My latest stuff has gone more and more to a "one page per concept infographic" look, 'til my latest game is nothing but. Each page should be relatively self contained, clean and readable, with functional graphic elements incorporated into the page.

Which game would you say exemplifies your design style? I'd love to see it myself.

Quote from: Charon's Little Helper;943667That being the case - do you think that more RPG writers should outsource that part of the process?

Or do you think that there isn't enough benefit to that to be worth the cost?  (I'm quickly reaching the stage in my RPG where I have to decide whether to grab InDesign or need to start looking to hire someone.)

RPG writers can't afford real designers. And if they could afford them, their customers would complain that the book's done all wrong and doesn't look like a real RPG book. To get anything for his money, the writer would have to hire a talented professional book designer with an extensive understanding of the RPG market space and historical gaming book traditions. You could count designers with those qualifications on the fingers of a leper's bad hand.

For a new-to-the-market indie RPG publisher, the answer to any question like this is almost always going to be the answers to "What adds the least production cost?" and "What produces the highest rate of finished product output?" Newbie publishers need to operate right down on the bare metal of minimal capital outlays so they can start getting into the black on their products as quickly as possible. Then they need to make as many salable products as is feasible, as quickly as they can, in order to start building the all-important back catalog and IP stable. Workflows and tool outlays all need to be measured against these two basic imperatives.

For most newbie RPG publishers, the final answer is going to be, "Download Scribus, download all the Sine Nomine freebies talking about Very Basic RPG Book Layout, and git gud for free," because fancy tools are useless unless you know exactly what you're doing with them. Once Scribus can't readily implement the layout you're imagining, then it's time to spring for the $15/month InDesign a la carte subscription, but you don't do that until the time and effort it saves you over Scribus is worth $15/month in your productive time.

A good designer for a short rulebook or setting could be secured for a few thousand dollars, particularly if they're young, hungry and talented. In terms of how to lay it out for intelligibility or ease of access at the table I think the would require the collaboration of the game designer and the graphics designer. Can't see why that couldn't be included in the production costs of a Kickstarter.

Quote from: SineNomine;943274This is a scan of a Gutenberg bible page that I just made a few minutes ago.

What? Such a page is an item worthy of an Antiquarian collection. I salute you, sir.

Quote from: JamesV;943670Which game would you say exemplifies your design style? I'd love to see it myself.

Hi James!

Well, StarCluster 4 - Out of the Ruins is entirely laid out in this style, but StarCluster 4 Free is laid out almost entirely this way as well - I think only the developer's license description is standard text oriented - and it is free to DL or available at cost in print.