Designed to be Useful
RPGs are not just art books
There are a number of things I’ve had to learn in my forays into game design. Some of the most difficult lessons have been around the presentation of information. On one hand, RPG books are informational and have to communicate specifics for how to play in a clear and concise manner. On the other hand, RPG books are works of art that have to engage readers with interesting visuals and creative concepts. Move too far into the realm of informational presentation and you have a text book or something sterile like Old-School Essentials. Move too far the other way and you have something like the above image from Cy_Borg which has completely sacrificed legibility for the sake of the aesthetic. Where do we find the mean between these two extremes? Why do so many RPGs opt to completely throw usability out in favor of aesthetic or message? That will be the discussion today.
When I think of beautiful layout that clearly presents information in a way that captures the imagination, the first thing I think about is not actually an RPG book. Instead, I’m transported to my youth in the school library where I endlessly confused and irritated my teachers, librarians and parents by checking out the Dorling Kindersley Eyewitness books. I was the type of kid who would rather look at the vivid photographs and read about the firing mechanism of the Colt Single-Action Army than read Superfudge. If that made me weird than so be it. DK books hold a very specific nostalgia for me and a few of them still have a place in my personal library. They’re great because they offer eye-catching visual reference and the fact that they are mostly written for kids means that the descriptive text is simple, however it never talks down to its audience. The DK Eyewitness and Visual Dictionary books covered a wide variety of topics both historical and fictional and when I read them, it felt like I was absorbing knowledge in a different way. Each page covered a different topic and a majority of them were built around a central image. In larger text is the main body paragraph that gives a general overview of the subject of the page. Surrounding the central image and text are smaller pictures that identify specific details or elements that reinforce the points being made. It’s a really neat format that gives a lot of written and visual information and I learned a lot from reading those books that I only pulled off of the shelf because they were full of pictures of guns. Truly wonderful, the mind of a child is.
The DK books adopted this format because they had both images and information to share. There is a good balance between the two and any good RPG book should have a similar balance, albeit with a different presentation style. However, many RPG creators find themselves in situations where there is either a dearth of information or visuals. After all, art is expensive and writing is hard. In those circumstances, creators will often cover up what they are lacking. Generally this happens when a creator lacks art and starts filling the book with stock photos. This will often create visual dissonance with the artwork they do have and sometimes it can make a book look like a Prentice-Hall text book. On the other end, you have something like Mork Borg or its inbred cousin Cy_Borg where the writing is so thin it’s barely there. Everything is presented in a stylized manner but one that makes it very hard to read. While some may object to my inference, I can only assume that this was done to disguise just how rules lite Cy_Borg is. The fact of the matter is that there isn’t much substance to the Borg books and they exist primarily as art books. If that’s what they sold themselves as, it wouldn’t be so much of a problem, but these books are marketed as playable RPGs and when you examine the contents of the books you will find them extremely difficult to read and threadbare when you actually decipher them.
A proper RPG book should be designed to be useful. It is a reference book at the end of the day. Players and GMs will constantly be going back to the book to find information about how to run the game or handle certain situations. For this, we should turn back to the example of the DK Eyewitness books. Those books were designed to teach kids about certain topics, but they were also designed to teach kids how to use reference books. They’re well-organized and present information in a clean and concise way, usually with an associated image. This is exactly what RPG books should do. RPGs should have useful information presented in a concise manner with a visual flair. The problem facing creators though is that this isn’t as easy as it sounds. An RPG isn’t a visual dictionary so there can’t be multiple pages all covered in artwork. It’s a challenge to be sure and one that weighs heavily on me as the layout man for Guts N’ Glory. Still, it is one of the most important considerations I have in front of me as the hour draws closer.
The most important thing for a reference book is also the most important thing for an RPG book. The answer shouldn’t be buried beneath useless information or visually disorienting design, but it should be accessible to those who know how to use the book. There is a utilitarian nature to every good RPG book because these books are, or at least ought to be, designed to be used repeatedly. Still, when a book strays too far into the realm of a text book, dictionary or technical manual, it becomes a boring slog to read and that is unacceptable for something that should be a leisure activity. As with many things, it becomes a balancing act and one that many people struggle with. The perfect synthesis of excitement and utility is the thing all designers chase. It’s the ideal we ought to pursue, regardless of how difficult it is. I doubt that I’ll nail it on my first try, but here’s hoping that I get off on the right foot by leaning on influences of my childhood.