I’ve been reading a lot of roleplaying game books lately, for work and for this project:
http://www.juhanapettersson.com/category/a-game-per-year/
To be blunt, many of the books are a slog.
Naturally, I’d like my own games to be readable, so I was wondering what makes an rpg book more readable to you? What rpgs are fun and easy to read? Do you read rpg books cover to cover or in some other way?
A big one for me is two page spreads. I want to have all the info relevant to any specific “thing” be visible across two facing pages. I don’t want to have to flip pages to continue reading something. @BenMilton points this kind of layout in his review of Stars Without Number.
Another: a really good index. If your game is long and complicated index it well and extensively. Make it as easy as possible to find stuff.
And if you are doing a PDF (and who doesn’t these days other than Whitehack) for $DEITY’s sake: use linking (bookmarks) extensively. Make it easy for me to go from the table of contents to a section. Make it easy for me to find the definition of a move. If you have maps link to room definitions from the maps. (Amongst many others one of the biggest things I love about Sleeping Place of the Feathered Swine is this linking between map and area explanations.)
White space. Most RPG pages are far too crowded to be comfortable to read. Widen margins and let some elegance in.
Concision. Cut the text in half. It really doesn’t need all those words. Especially get rid of sidebars that are mostly present because sidebars are expected in the text.
Repetition. Since the books serves at least two masters (learning and reference) a perfect organization is probably impossible. So repeat necessary text rather than reference it. At least summarize prior material needed to understand current material.
Humanity. Write like you’re a human being. Technical manuals are a slog so, while understanding why the organization of good technical writing works, also understand that a human voice is desirable. I want to feel like a human being is communicating with me. Ideally someone I like.
100% agree about white space! So many rpg books are laid out as if you needed to cram every corner full of something and it makes the reading experience so exhausting.
More people with user experience backgrounds. We need to write with an understanding of how people consume material, especially instructional material. There’s a lot of neat tech out there (for example, the various play examples in Blades in the Dark followed by prompts for thinking) but we have a ways to go.
PbtA playbooks were a huge step forward in presentation because they minimize the amount of reading players need to do to play the game, and emphasis on only requiring one player to have read the book meshes with the way players approach RPGs: one player buys and brings the game, the rest play.
Shift rulebook storytelling from textual fiction to nontextual storytelling and snippets of fiction. The facts of an RPG world are less relevant for initial contact than the emotional texture of the setting. Details can be filled in.
Reference tables and diagrams to illustrate rule functions.
I was thinking maybe in addition to playtest, we should have book tests where someone reads the book and we check if it works. (Maybe someone already does this…)
Sometimes when I read rpg books, it feels like the designer has created a system and then written down a schematic of the system, instead of instructions and guidelines of how a user might engage with the system.
In my opinion this should happen via playtesting. But not the author’s playtesting. You have to give the text to other GMs and have them run it blind. Give them the high level stuff. Then have them read it and note any questions. Then run it (Ideally recording it) and noting any questions and then giving you all that data. This is all assuming you feel GMs should learn everything they need to know from the text. (I could totally see a future where the text isn’t the primary teaching vector - likely videos would do that.)
Although I have qualms about the design of the Blades text I think you are right on the money @Curubethion re: the teaching examples John has in there. I have never seen that in a game text before and I think it does a fantastic job of supporting the new Blades GM.
I’ll also follow up on your comment re playbooks: player materials need to be concise. (And again - two page spreads.) Think about how people are going to be playing your game and how much physical or digital space they are going to have. Don’t make them have to be flipping back and forth between sides of paper if you can at all help it.
To me, the following is critical for me:
Also, a few tips:
For this topic, @Cass’s articles about accessibility should definitely be taken into account:
There also needs to be an awareness that any game text faces a dilemma between two objectives, if not diametrically opposed are at least at huge odds with one another:
The aim to teach the game and the aim to support play while it is happening.
For any more involved and intricate game this becomes almost unsolvable because those things demand different structures. One needs to be a well paced text that flows and the other needs to be easily referenced and quick in how it conveys information.
There is a reason that Fantasy Flight is providing two rulebooks with many of their board games: one is for getting you started and the only one you need for your first forays and the other is not meant to be read cover-to-cover.
Maybe it’s not typical but I NEED illustrations / pictures to stay motivated while reading. I’m old now and I just don’t crunch rulebooks like I used to.
Should I read the next page / chapter? Just let’s see what’s on the next page.
Oh, this looks cool. Can’t wait to understand why this is here and how the game will use it. This is a cool diagram making the flow more clear. Let’s read on.
or
Oh, double side of small text, mm… maybe the next page … oh, even more text. Ok, let’s have a break (and maybe don’t come back?)
I like to have (at least a little) fun while reading and diagrams / pictures / illustrations will give me that.
Images are also really important for usability if you have a text that is more than a few pages long. Players use images as guideposts, so they can find the rules they need when consulting the book. When I flip open the Player’s Handbook and I’m looking for the stats of a crossbow, then I flip through some pages. If I see the image that is the beginning of the weapons chapter, I know I’m close. But If I remember that the picture of the sorcerer fighting a troll comes 30 pages later, then I know I need to flip back a couple dozen pages. Making unique page spread, with distinctive art, helps makes the game more usable.
It’s probably not needed if your game is 10 pages or fewer, but art is important for longer works. And for longer works, you probably can’t afford quality art on every page. But if there are unique design layout choices and art every couple spreads, then it helps navigating the text a lot.
Following up on what @Mathias noted here about breaking things up for different reasons: if there are pieces of text that are for players and pieces of text that are for GMs - group all of that together in separate sections. If you can, go one step further: put them in separate documents/volumes. This might end up requiring duplication of text or repetition of ideas - that’s fine. I absolutely love that The Black Hack 2E has The Black Booklet available for players. It has all the player facing materials in it. The first part of the main book duplicates a lot of that stuff and that is fine. This allows everyone to have access to the rules and info they need to learn and play the game but not more.
I think the RPG community can learn a lot from boardgame community in this matter. Boardgame manuals have long invested in proper UX, to the point that there are standard practices for it. If anything, seeing how things are organized in a boardgame manual is a good start to learn about information hierarchy.
I think the “pdf revolution” has hurt readability in our hobby. Many of the small, early 2000s products did not bother much with layout and graphic design. As long as the file was converted to a pdf, it was good to go. Then we had OSR movement, which was almost an excuse for cramming every page full of text in single or double column. After all, if it was fine for the original texts, why should we mess with it?
I am really happy where the indie market is heading right now. The hobby has grown enough that authors can afford paying for better layout AND readers expect a good layout. I love seeing reviewers commenting or giving hints on it (e.g Questing Beast)
Long story short - How to make RPG books more readable? Follow good design guidelines. Either get a graphic designer to do it for you or learn more about design and UX for books.
In the spirit of going super fuzzy and subjective, one thing that I like when reading rpg books is poetry and beauty. Even if it sometimes doesn’t make sense from the point of information design. These aesthetic things convey to me whether the dream is worth pursuing.
There was a great example of this in the Korean game Moonflower, by Sangjun Park. It opens with this line:
“after 10,648 years,
flowers bloom again in the garden.”
What does it mean? I don’t know! But I’m a sucker for this stuff and will definitely go on to learn the game.
(The game’s here: https://magisterludikr.itch.io/moonflower )
I agree @juhanaonparas.
There is a lot of “fluff” that can be conveyed indirectly through word choice, flavor text, art or even ornamentation. I think such elements, more often than not, can be fit with the information design in a very successful manner.
I think an extreme example of such approach can be seen in Dark Souls games where the item descriptions are pretty much the only way of conveying the narrative.
As an example of what NOT to do, don’t bury important mechanical information in a paragraph of text. Have the mechanical information, then have whatever additional text/flavor/instructions.
The fantasy flight Genesys system and StarWars games do this, and I’d get most of what I needed on the read through, and when I needed to reference it couldn’t find it to save my life.
My view here is a little odd: Stop writing a book. Write a game instead.
Boardgames provide a fantastic example case of this. It’s not like Catan has a huge book, and the instruction book that these games do have are a few pages with lots of pictures. Of the actual product, which is never the book.
It’d take a real good argument to convince me that an RPG needs more complicated rules than, say, Castles of Mad King Ludvig or Pandemic.
So: Why are the instructions so much more complicated?
I think a good reason for the length of rules texts is related not to complexity but to the comprehensive nature of many RPGs. Boardgames can get by with shorter manuals because they have very clearly defined mechanics and a small narrative element that exists as a combination of component design and mechanic names. (Come to think of it, the fact that boardgames use lots of physical components also contributes to the short length.)
In an RPG, the rules are a toolset, and RPG texts are a combination of instructions and strategy guide. Perhaps this is an indication that RPGs don’t provide enough inherent direction, then. Just like some boardgames that only come alive once you understand the principles of how they work. RPG texts are generally very invested in telling you not just what the rules are but how you’re supposed to apply them.