Actually, it's badly organised, not badly laid out. ;^)

I've been steadily reading through the PHB and, yeah, I'm not digging the organisation. For example, I was trying to just get a feel for the feats/exploits and a lot of them say stuff like Hit: 2(W). I'm not sure what that means, so I turn to the "How to read a power" section and look under Hit and there's no explanation of what 2(W) means. I expect it's hidden away somewhere, but I shouldn't have to hunt for stuff like that.

The (W) indicates weapon damage, and I could have sworn they mentioned that in the "how to read" bit ... but probably not :)

This is something I agonized over with Solipsist, what order to put sections in, and it's something I think gets little feedback from people who buy games. Sometimes a reviewer will say "badly organized" but they often don't say in what way.

Compared to play techniques and mechanics, about which our community has a lot of accumulated expertise, how to structure an effective rulebook is not something for which there is a lot of advice around.

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

It's interesting, definitely. Information design in RPG books is pretty poor overall. A lot of it is by habit, we do things without analysing them (frex, my putting chargen before rules in Pulp!, purely by habit, it's not the logical order for learning to play)

Part of the problem may be that there's a production system in place whereby there's lots of system testing, but the game is then passed on to somebody else to layout, who may not be familiar with the game in play. There's not an intermediary stage where the the book layout undergoes similar testing for ease of use.

Actually, given that we often have a production approach where one guy does it all, in their own time, we're in a unique position to take advantage of this kind of testing.

-Matt

Realms Publishing

One thing I have noticed is that the design philosophy of 4e has a very whole-product feel. You have the book, the figures, the dungeon tiles and the character sheet all together. Sure you can use your own version of the last three but ... well ... it might not be as good.

So, for example, the character sheet tells you everything you need to know about everything, including your defence values etc. If you aren't using it, then you are missing out on all of that awesome helpfulness that they have built into it.

I too, however, got caught out on 2(W). I thought - fuck me, it does 2 Wounds? Thats not a lot is it? And then the penny dropped.

I would also add, did you READ the book, page 1 then page 2 then page 3 etc. OR did you jump to chargen, flip forward to the races, check out a few classes, hunt for the level table, nip back again etc? This is something I have found with D&H playtests. The words are there, on the page, but the GM and the players actually ignore them. They skip over them.

It doesn't matter what order the book is in, how well laid out it is or what wonderful techniques you use to get that information across if the person holding it doesn't read it, PROPERLY.

Neil

Take the King's shilling at http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/dutyandhonour/

Nope, it's mentioned briefly on page 219 during the weapon descriptions and then explained properly on page 275 under Attack Results in the Combat section. Given that the section claiming to explain "how to read powers" is on page 57, that's over 150 pages away from the place it's supposed to be . Frankly, that's piss-poor.

See, I'd strongly disagree. I'd go so far as to say that if you haven't created your book to handle this kind of interaction, one that's standard for any gamebook, you don't know your customers and have failed to design for them.

More to the point, good information design is primarily to facilitate transfer of information, it'll enable them to read the book "properly".

Now this stuff is definitely tricky and sometimes counter-intuitive if you're embedded in the subject matter. There's a whole discipline of user-centric design that's focused on identifying how the user's mental models and the designer's mental models differ. There's a whole host of techniques to identify this kind of stuff, which people use every day when designing websites, books and products in general.

That turned out more ranty than I expected, sorry about that... I'll go grab a load of links for folks to read.

-Matt

Realms Publishing

Sorry Rich!

Anyway, I would disagree with Neil as well. Yes you should expect a person to read your book from cover to cover, but the main interaction for a book like this is going to be how it is used in play.This more the case for D&D where there is a lot of mechanical explanantion and less story.

I haven't read the whole thing, there is a lot you don't need to immediately like all the powers, but I have read all the stuff that mattered in the order it is presented in. When it came to making a character the book falls apart as a functional item and things like W, which is only explained in the combat section, really need explanantion under powers about 200 pages earlier.

The thing that really sums it up for me is the first time you come across how to create a character, where it refrences chapters out of order. It then, at one point, when you are filling out lots of additional numbers, to a page explaining the character sheet. This page sends you flying round the book in a completely illogical manner.

It is the sort of thing that would be caught if the books were sent out as they had been organised, see I learn Rich, for playtesting. I think too often we send out a book without any thought as to the order expecting playtesters to pick their way through it.

Thoughts?

Cheers

Iain

'The Giant Brain': 'Revenge of the B-Movie' out now!

Mob Justice now available!

I wrote a massive explanation of what I meant, but it was massive and essentially ranty.

Just to say, I don't disagree with your examples or your propositions however I maintain that there are a number of occassions where people assume they know what they are reading rather than actually reading it and at those times, theres precious little we can do as writers.

Maybe a good topic for the pre-Furnace drinking sesh?

Neil

Take the King's shilling at http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/dutyandhonour/

Liam at Black Lion says it's been selling like Hot Cakes in his shop. I guess the proof of the pudding will be when university starts back and I see how many people are playing it instead of 3.5, etc.

AD&D 4th *should* be selling like hot cakes. It's a good, solidly and coherently designed that knows what it's about and appears to do it very well. Although I haven't played it yet, I really, really look forward to throwing down with it (either as a player or as GM).

The PHB on the other hand could be much better organised. It's not a perfect tool for teaching the game, but it's the only tool there is for it not counting playing it with people who know how to play already. One of my friends was fond of saying (about 15 years ago) that nobody at all ever learned to play AD&D from the books. They all learned to play from playing with friends. He maintained that it was actually impossible to learn to play AD&D from the book, you had to actually be taught by a person who already played.

I certainly don't think this is the case with this version (I've figured out how to play it and I've never really played AD&D before, I think 2 sessions of 2nd ed in 1991 and one of 3rd back in 2002) but it's irritating that the mack-daddy of all big budget RPGs didn't have more money spent on the organisation, maybe skimping on the goth elf pr0n budget?

I mean, they got the quickstart rules in Keep on the Shadowfell so right, how come the core book is so annoyingly organised? To be fair though, organising 15 pages is much easier than organising 320.

Grrrr.

This is only annoying for consumers when the game has merit. If I thought AD&D 4th was just another re-hash of the same-old same-old as the other 3 and a half versions, I wouldn't give a toss how the book was laid out.

But that's enough of that, this thread is in danger of going way off-topic...

I think there's certainly merit in playtesting not only the system, but also the physical artefact. The most beautifully crafted game can be let down horribly by a dreadfully presented/organised book.

With POD technology, would it be so hard to run off half a dozen copies via Lulu and playtest the actual book for a bit? I guess the ridiculously tight deadlines we often impose on ourselves is a barrier to that, but there's little other reason why not.

I'd agree with Neil that if people insist on reading random pages of your game in random order that there is not much you can do. But people do read chapters and sections in random order and they should, as far as possible, be self contained, and repeat key concepts if possible

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

I spoke to the D&D man on the street (Lukas!) and he thought the books were OK to use. But then he is a player who is already into D&D big style. So, for the already committed D&D player it's been easy to pick up and use. I'm reading it this that the barrier is for new players to D&D?

More of a speed bump than a barrier for me. Irritating, not deadly.