Yes! Here’s the basic typography guide that I share with my students when they start looking at design—it’s simple, but opinionated, and overall pretty good. 
Examples of self-published RPGs that are well designed, laid out or formatted?
6 Likes
It looks like the designers are here, because @Rickard and @Majcher suggested exactly what I was going to say!
I made an article about layout called Layout and the Grid which mentions Butterick’s Practical Typography among others. If you don’t want to invest too much time in a layout program, I recommend working with google docs. Dai Shugars has the perfect article for it and a template!
Sidenote: @Rickard, your work is incredible. I didn’t know you played rpgs!
6 Likes
Thank you. Yeah, I have had my hand in most Swedish minor roleplaying games that comes out, either as a proofreader, commenting on the game design, or giving feedback on or creating the design.
I really liked your manual as well, especially all the links. Ploughed through all of them last night.
3 Likes
Maze Rats and Knave are glorious in their simplicity and if you’re simply looking to create something solely for yourself and friends… well its a simple something to aim for. Its also a fine example of simplicity in content.
2 Likes
Offworlders has an exceptional layout. It’s a lot airier and modular than other more traditional game designs I especially like the way it composes its images. Meanwhile,The Black Hack takes the two column-layout and squeezes it for every drop of innovation it can.
Maze Rats and Knave are gloriously simple but that’s partly because the games themselves are gloriously simple. What I especially like about them is how accessible their design is. They were laid out in Microsoft Word. The typeface does the heavy lifting.
1 Like