Thanks. Finished Robin Laws' Laws of Good Gamemastering. It's good. I suspect the insights in this book reveal themselves as you run games with this book in the back of your mind.

Skimming through the free version of Stars Without Number. Great recommendation. I loved the parts about faction management. It captures my imagination. I like the idea of only having a faction turn once a month, ie, between adventures. For my game I assumed the factions would make moves more often and it would bore the players. I also like how faction actions show up as rumors or news. Very cool - I had the same idea and I'm glad I'm not alone. It also cool that a faction can only take one kind of move but can take it everywhere it exists. This all goes to make the faction seems very large relative to the PC's. Large and slow. I think I'll have to borrow that somehow.

Now, who has good rules for Faction bookkeeping? I'd like to be able to have a faction make moves right in the middle of a session, but I'd need a way to record what a faction is doing that's faster than writing it all down longhand in a notebook, and keeping two seperate full sized overworld maps (one for hidden info) doesn't seem practical.

Good models for large scale Faction bookkeeping or bookkeeping for active monsters that act off camera in a dungeon crawl?

Late edit: I realize I'm getting away from my OP... it's hard not to be discursive when I'm reading so much interesting stuff.

Of recent products, I thought Primeval Thule campaign setting was very well presented. I play 5e D&D, but the 13th Age version is cheapest on amazon if you want to have a look.

For older material, the D&D Mystara Gazetteers were mostly very good, except some had a dark watermark image that made them hard to read. Likewise the 1e Forgotten Realms campaign setting was well done other than its brown ink on sepia page design.

Quote from: Ashakyre;920216Late edit: I realize I'm getting away from my OP... it's hard not to be discursive when I'm reading so much interesting stuff.

Which is why the last ten years been a second golden age of RPGs. The combination of open gaming and easier to use publishing tech has opened the floodgates.

Quote from: estar;920291Which is why the last ten years been a second golden age of RPGs. The combination of open gaming and easier to use publishing tech has opened the floodgates.

Makes me wish I could get my game done faster. Any models about faction book keeping?

Quote from: Ashakyre;919523Hi everyone. This is my first post here. I've lurked for a few months though.

I'm working on my own little RPG (unique mechanics and gameworld) and as I go into more detail about the world with items, creatures, etc., I feel I might need a few models to imitate in terms of layout and clarity. I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations.

So, to be clear, I'm asking what folks' recommendations would be in terms of comprehensiveness and ease of use. What core books or campaign supplements would you recommend? Its not about your views on the quality of mechanics or whether you like the game world, but can you give an example of a few books that really tell you everything about the gameworld you'd want to know, and give you an easy way to access it.

For what it's worth, if I choose to self publish it won't be to make money but just to create something I like - but the purpose of a rulebook is to make everything clear, so someone else can run my game without me there to explain anything.

Is what I'm looking for clear? Im not trying to start a debate about the principles of book layout, just good examples and I'll look into it myself, buy a few, and imitate what seems to work for me.

For what it's worth, my game colors outside the lines enough that I'll have to make a solid effort to make it clear to everyone what the game world is all about

Welcome to theRPGsite!

In any case, I think my own Dark Albion is pretty thorough...

I would recommend Covert Ops by DwD Studios. It has everything I want from a game in terms of practicality. Example character types, base mechanics, a broad world setting, enemy generators and a mission generator. DwD Studios is good, but I would also recommend Unisystem, GenreDiversion and Savage Worlds. Unisystem and GenreDiversion usually have no mission generators though and Savage Worlds might be too gimmicky with it's mechanics and maybe too much action/combat focused.

Quote from: RPGPundit;921416Welcome to theRPGsite!

In any case, I think my own Dark Albion is pretty thorough...

Arrows of Indra is more up my alley, even if you don't like Goenka. Is it just as comprehensive?

Quote from: Ashakyre;921465Arrows of Indra is more up my alley, even if you don't like Goenka. Is it just as comprehensive?

Arrows of Indra is not AS comprehensive, setting-wise, as Dark Albion. Because of course it covers a much vaster campaign setting. But it has a ton of great setting detail.  The focus is very much on using it for adventuring. It also of necessity needs to spend more time on covering the culture side of things.