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.
I've only ever worked on personal splatbooks and although it's not a resource for making better content, the biggest resource I've learnt from is the difference between Fate Core and Fate Condensed. Fate core is 5 times the legnth of condensed and practically unlearnable from the book alone, fate condensed changes nearly no rules and you can learn in an afternoon without issue. Both have free SRDs online to actually peruse and I'd love a resource that explored how the creation of Fate Condensed went. But even without that, it's a fantastic study in streamlining and blocking sections.
That's a neat example. I bounced off of teaching myself fate from the big book because it didn't seem worth the trouble, I guess I should have looked at the little one.