To switch gears back towards 5e, I find the layout of the 5e PHB pretty odd. Does anyone else agree?
The book describes some basics for how TTRPGs/D&D work, and then asks you to think of a character. Then the first thing the book does is dump you into a deep list of Races & Classes. Only after you wade through 100 pages of crunch does the game introduce the idea of creating a backstory. Then there's a ton of stuff on equipment, multiclassing, feats, and only after we've waded through all that do we get to character attributes.
I get that in a certain sense with 5e, background story & character attributes aren't really all that important, and they are mentioned briefly beforehand, but I find it strange to dump players headfirst into Race & Class selection.
I’ll agree with the sentiment. Lord knows I didn’t use it for my own book.
To me a logical layout is;
- Introduction & Basic Rules
- Universal Rules (skills, movement, etc.)
- Character Creation (concept, player motivation, character motivation)
- Kind (my equivalent of Race; so what you’re born as)
- Background (who you are outside of adventuring)
- Class (your combat/adventuring abilities)
- Equipment
Basically, all the rules you really need in play are in the first 30-40 pages. Everything else is only needed when building/leveling up a character and will be on your character sheet. Character creation is laid out in the order of concept, what you are, how you were raised, how you were trained to adventure and what equipment you use to do it.
I took a similar approach to the GM material;
- Setting up the campaign (concepts; silly or serious, heroic or horror, restrictions/house rules).
- Building the setting
- Building NPCs (and custom opponents)
- Building Adventures
- Adventure Rewards
- Pre-Gen Opponents (i.e. the Monster Manual)
So again... concept, the world, characters who live in the world, things that happen in the world, rewards for PCs who get involved in the world and finally an appendix of opponents to pit the PCs against if you don’t want to use the NPC section to build your own.