How to discourage me from playing your game – Part 2

This is the second of a three-part rant discussion on things publishers do that turn me right off their role-playing games.

• Part 1: First Impressions
• Part 2: Readability
• Part 3: In Play

[Edit: Traduction française disponible chez ptgptb.]

Naturally, a single mistake probably won’t do it unless it’s ginormous and egregious, but a few too many and I’ll move on to the next game on my long wish list.

2. Readability

A big challenge in role-playing games is that they are usually read several times in greatly differing circumstances.

• The leisurely reading you do on the bus when you just received your book from a Kickstarter campaign.
• The selective reading you do to familiarize yourself with the setting and make a character for next Friday’s meeting with your gaming group.
• The studious reading your friend is doing to prep for that same game as game-master.
• The frantic reading in the middle of a game session to locate a particular piece of information or interpret a rule.

I know first-hand how difficult it can be to address all these needs; for example, a book may be perfectly well organized to present the setting information in an orderly fashion, but make it a nightmare to retrieve in a hurry at the game table. Today, I want to examine the ease of reading proper, all the kinds of reading we do when we are not actually playing.

How to discourage me from playing your game – Part 1

I’m a gaming junkie, especially where it comes to role-playing games. I’ve been gaming for decades, I have played or run at least 177 RPGs as of this writing, not counting different editions, playtests, or homebrews, and my shelves are overflowing with more I have yet to play. All this to say, I want to love your game. But it’s amazing how many published games still turn me right off because of mistakes that could be avoided with moderate effort, and sometimes even quite easily.

Not that that writing games is that easy, I know! There will be competing objectives, budget and schedule considerations, and so forth. But there are also some elements that can be incorporated in the planning, and hurdles that are make-or-break. In our cottage industry of devoted hobbyists, some mistakes are being made over and over. Even free games can be ruined so thoroughly by some of these mistakes that they lose the chance for a good review, which can’t be why you’re putting them out there!

One big challenge for game publishers is that there are several ways to approach the reader or, if you want, several opportunities to lose a gamer, so let’s look at them separately.

• Part 1: First Impressions
• Part 2: Readability
• Part 3: In Play

I’ll post the other sections over the the next few days.

[Edit: Traduction française disponible chez ptgptb.]