As the title mentioned, when it comes to the actual RPG book--what are your preferences and dislikes. Is there a font type you love (or hate)? Does size matter  when it comes to the book? Which ones , in your opinion, hit a home run? Give me some of your opinions please.

I don't really have a type or font face or particular look that I'll go for instead of others. I would *generally* go for clear, clean layouts with text that is easy to search and easy to read, but then again, I'm a fan of Gygax's prose too, and I like Pathfinder's uber-charged layout in terms of feel.

I think that these elements mostly need to be in sync with the vibe of the RPG you are going for. The art, the layout, the color scheme if any work for or against the mood of the game. The kind of everything-goes-black-and-white layout of DCC RPG works big time in the favor of its Swords and Sorcery old school theme. The cleanliness, short sentences, precision of the ACKS book likewise brings a clarity that works in favor of its various sub-systems. Each layout works differently to add something to its own game feel, so to speak.

First, you should have an Index.  That's one of the best features in all my favorite gaming books - if you expect the book to be a reference, an index is really handy.  

Secondly, if the book is going to be a frequent reference, it has to be tough (assuming it's printed).  If you pack too many pages in, the spine will break if you have to open it to different areas.  I prefer to have frequently referenced sections in a separate document - ie, spells belong in a 'book of spells', not in the Player's Handbook.  

Assuming normal sized pages, columns are the best way to organize text - an unbroken line of text across the entire page is hard to read quickly.

I think it greatly depends on what you're trying to do. If you're:
a) Distributing some homebrew rules among your friends.
b) Looking to bridge into professionally layout design.
c) Have no life and lots of money and want to go as far with this as possible.

So far as a) goes I find it's pretty easy to whip up a folded legal sheets of paper and about 20 pages and come up with a very presentable ruleset in adobe indesign or scribus. If you want b) or c) then you need to rule on design sensibility.

Do you want high image (colour or b&w, either can be done well) with mid-page wrap arounds? Do you want capture borders - more of a zine quality or a formal quality? Are you trying to push the ruleset, or the 'culture' of the game and how interesting it would be get involved in such (which promotes over-glossy high colour art and easy reference tables over the rules content itself).

Essentially, what are your goals?

//Panjumanju

Quote from: Panjumanju;560894Essentially, what are your goals?

Not sure. I was wanting to hear from you (and others) on what you like and dislike. I know it was an odd size, but the hardcover Nobilis was a beautiful book. There are pics from the reprinted 1e AD&D books that look great as well.

Don't lay it out like GURPS 3rd edition stuff.

I admit that I like nostalgia to influence my books.  That's why I'm a big fan of the souvenir font and TW Cent font.

Quote from: vgunn;560856As the title mentioned, when it comes to the actual RPG book--what are your preferences and dislikes. Is there a font type you love (or hate)? Does size matter  when it comes to the book? Which ones , in your opinion, hit a home run? Give me some of your opinions please.

For size preference, I prefer 8½X11 or the half-that booklets of Classic Traveller and games like Dragons of the Underearth.  

As for overall design, I think of them in several classes, all of which can work if they match the genre and feel of the book.

Clean and Simple:
Good: Classic Traveller, The Traveller Book, 1e AD&D Books, Hero System 4e & 5e
(Most of the games that mess this up are small press games, though GURPS is a semi-fail here for me)

Bold:
Good: DCC RPG, Starblazer Adventures, Bounty Head Bebop
Semi-Fail: BASH (too cartoony)
Fail: Mongoose Traveller (it's just... off and doesn't look right to me)

Framed:
Good: Legends of Anglerre, Warrior, Rogue & Mage
Fail: Mongoose Conan (the topless women are tacky and the border is too busy)

Informational (emphasizes information types, icons, & diagrams):
Good: Dream Park, DungeonSlayers
Semi-Fails: Eclipse Phase, Fuzion (and, specifically Champions: New Millennium)

Finally, there are games that try to be artistic with color, textures, artwork, and even fancy inks and, to be honest, I value readable text such that Airship Pirates (very simple) or maybe D&D 3.x is about as far as I want to go down that road.  Bottom line here -- don't make the text hard to read.

Artistic:
Good: Airship Pirates
Semi-Fail: D&D 3.x, Runeslayers (aka Runquest Slayers)
Fail: Tribe 8 (hard to read), The Secret of Zir'an (metallic inks, backprinted characters behind the text)

I found D&D 3e bloody awful to read. My overall impression of the game was 'Brown'. Couldn't tell you what it was like to play, but it was brown. No thanks.

I like Souvenir Lt BT font (it's my standard font in word) and two or 3 column layout, though with the top 'bar' across the page explaining what would be coming up in that section, Moldvay Basic style.

Art wise, black and white, all the way so that the PDF can be printed easily. Not too many 'solid' black pictures either, otherwise the paper will sag (and cost more in ink).

In the margins/border, some kind of index or note about the text, like a reminder for more information on page X, though 'too busy' or cluttered makes things untidy.

General index at the front, more comprehensive a-z at the back.

I like clean layouts. I'm not a huge fan of wrapping text around every illustration in the book or overlaying text onto a screened illustration. Both of these techniques can make reading an entry difficult.

As far as fonts go, I tend to like serif fonts for body text and sans-serif fonts for headers. Come up with a hierarchy of headers and stick to it consistently. It makes scanning for information within a chapter very easy.

Think about white space. I'm not saying that you leave half of every page blank, but do consider insetting the margins of the page by 2-3 picas. This will make the page look less crowded and the text will not look as if its just been crammed onto the page. Also don't tighten up leading and kerning to much. For example if you are setting you body copy at 10 points, go for at least 10.5 or 10.75 leading (ymmv depending fonts ascenders and descenders). If you squeeze leading too much you will wind up with a really cramped 'phone book' style presentation.

If you are going to have sidebars or example boxes, think about shading them a so that they pop out on the page a little. A 10 percent opacity setting on whatever color you choose should work fine. Don't used 'reverse text' though. Reverse text is when you overlay white text on a solid background color. It can be effective has a header for a section but an entire box of that text will make someone's eyes water.

Tables of Contents and Indexes should be a must for every game.

Edit: Oh and when choosing a paper stock to print on I would suggest sticking to plain white stock of the best quality you can afford. Interesting shades or textures in your printing stock (like sepia or parchment) might look neat in the catalog, but it can lead to surprises once your book is printed.

I was hanging out with Kibo in a game store once (Kibo, for those who don't know, did professional design.) He was very critical of some of the RPGs we looked at, like Nobilis, and imparted this bit of wisdom to me: there's a difference between "fun to look at" and "fun to read". A lot of the design in RPGs makes the text a pain in the ass to read.

The example that comes to my mind is some of the old White Wolf WoD books. Lots of hard to read text on black, dark gray, or other bad backgrounds, because that was "artsy". It's best to keep the background as unbusy as possible. A very simple, faded watermark, maybe... but keep the color distinct from the text color. You could do a pale blue or pale yellow watermark behind solid black text, for example.

Fonts should be simple and uniform. Do not use display fonts for your main text body. By "display font", I don't mean computer display, I mean decorative fonts, like blackletter, cursive, calligraphy, &c. Kibo actually told me it's stupid to use a handwriting font when you could just, you know, write it by hand. But I'm not as hardcore as he is. Anyways, basically pick just two fonts, three at most: a basic serif font or in some cases a sans serif like 20th Century Gothic for your main text and subheadings, a nice heavy sans serif for tables, and maybe a fancier font for chapter titles and main title/logo.

There's really only two valid book sizes: the full page format (8.5 x 11, which is A4 in Europe, if I remember correctly) and digest (5.5 x 8.5 or thereabouts, or A5.) Use two-column layout for print versions of the larger, one column for screen versions of the PDF. For digest, one column is fine. You can get away with one column in a full-size format if your column is narrower, for some reason. The key is: text lines need to be short, for printed material, but columns are bad, for screen PDFs.

It's best if you don't go more than 3 or 4 pages of solid text in a row. Break up the text with illustrations, tables, sidebar/pull quote boxes, stuff like that. And don't put these things in the exact same location, but vary it. This is to create visual landmarks, so that after a person reads through the book, they can find stuff by remembering what the page looked like.

That doesn't mean you should do away with the index, though.

I also have a fondness for bullet points, but I can't really get as stern and unyielding about them as the "don't make your text unreadable" guideline.

I prefer size 10 or even 12 fonts. Something clear and easily readable. NO grey stuff or art behind text, either.

I'm a partisan of 10-point Garamond on 8.5 x 11, two columns. No more than two different typefaces per page, one for the body text and the other for the headers. I like alternate shadings on the rows of page-sized tables in order to make it easier to read straight across and I have a fondness for small caps on section headers.

For paragraphs, I like no-indent paras with spacing between each, since I like the extra whitespace in order to avoid big wall-of-text letter-sized pages. If you indent your paragraphs, I don't want to see you putting space between them, too. And please, even if you're doing things at a purely amateur level, try to avoid widows, orphans, and infernal beheaded headers. The latter look genuinely terrible even on a casual read.

For interior art, I'm a take-it-or-leave-it sort. I like a little flavor, but art direction is Hard and not a lot of people do it well. I certainly struggle with it. Too often you get books with Insert Random Illustration Here art direction that really hasn't got any tie-in to the specific style of the game. One of the things that Exalted did really well was this sense of purposeful composition. Whether or not you liked the style, it gave you a very good idea of the general tenor of the game and the look of its inhabitants. Too many other games just give you Generic Fighter Placeholder #4 because that's where they're talking about fighters, and this particular one has nothing special to do with the game or its unique flavor.

Quote from: talysman;560943The key is: text lines need to be short, for printed material, but columns are bad, for screen PDFs.

Your problem here is text lines need to be short for the screen too. That's why you get complaints about the wall o'text everywhere, and so many blogs and other publications use narrow single column. Of course do that in an RPG and you get accused of padding your pagecount.

My compromise, and I don't think this is a very common approach, is a two column layout, but it stops about halfway down the page so you'd read it in this order
1 2
3 4
with a graphic or something between 1 2 and 3 4.

Personally, my two favorite layouts are Pathfinder (which I don't actually enjoy playing, but the books are very pretty while retaining functionality), and Legend of the Five Rings Fourth Edition (which I do like both as a game and just for the really nice look of the books).

I'm pretty easy to please though. As long as its fairly readable I'm ok. When thing I hate is awkward page breaks though. Like try reading the class section of the Fantasy Craft main book. The constant splitting a class part of a column on one page, then the next page, then like, two sentences on the last page along with the level chart... its just insane.

People need to know how to utilize their art to move their text around into sane page breaks.