Today's blogpost is all about my flailing to refine and streamline my design docs into a coherent rulebook. I read enough of the d**** things you'd think I would know how to compile and order one. I understand the basics and where I went wrong, and have roadmap, but compared to design development is long and grindy.
Would really love if other folks have input on what makes a rulebook good? what have people done to make their projects easy to get? Which books are your favorite examples? What are your biggest hurdles?
For me I intellectually understand what needs to be there, but actually getting the writing clean and succinct to read is a challenge. I see a lot of DiY books for of background art and such trying to emulate a AAA book but they don't have the text and order of content hammered out 1st, I didn't want to move to layouts until my text was set, but maybe that's a mistake? Curious to see what people think.
As any long-suffering Shadowrun or World of Darkness player can attest, formatting is paramount, and both series completely neglect that aspect.
My absolute gold standard for formatting and reference is the Mothership RPG, which both cleanly fits into my head, as well as the book being easy to reference and to flip through due to each heading being organised by page, and each page organised by topic.