The Technical Writing In RPGs Rant

The other day on Twitter, I had a bit of a rant about pisspoor manuals in tabletop adventure games.

What is clear is that, regardless of your take on the hobby, what is severely lacking is clear technical writing in hobby rules manuals.

You must break it down to Explain Like I'm Five levels of simplicity and specificity.

It has to be "Do this, exactly like that, and (do the other thing)."

Keep the big words to a minimum. Keep the jargon to a minimum. Flowcharts help a lot.

Your hobby game is a machine. The user has never operated your machine before. You must walk him through its operations step by step.

You cannot have any ambiguity regarding operations, anymore than you can when teaching your child how to drive a car. It must be that specific and thorough.

Far too many would-be folks and establish designer and publishers fail to meet this requirement.

If there is criticism to be had, this is where you will find valid grounds for it: a lack of crystal-clear specificity in the technical writing AND in the manuscript layout to put what a new user needs to learn before his eyes.

That this is not the case across the board says a lot for the tabletop end of fantastic adventure gaming.

There are a lot of terrible manuals out there. A lot of that comes down to poor technical writing, poor manuscript layout, or both. This is not confined to Le Indie Darlings. There are plenty of Muh Industry Veterans out there that couldn't write a proper technical manual if their lives depended upon it, including some very popular products and people- and given who reads this blog, that likely includes people you know or worked with.

"But what does good look like?"

Anon, you are fortunate. There is a shot on target to start with.

For an excellent example of rulebook clarity look no further. Each section is capped off with a summarised version of what was previously explained in detail along with the relevant tables. Perfection. https://t.co/0UfbiautWz pic.twitter.com/vSORzFpWkX

— Shire Propagandist (@ShirePropaganda) February 9, 2024

You can buy your own copy to see for yourself here.

Yes, that's by the standards of the late 1970s. Remedial education has to start somewhere, and this is a great choice to study. You can hand this off to someone both at the turn of the millenium and have them up and running fast with Classic Traveller.

Yes, there is also room for improvement therein. This is a good thing for study purposes. "How can this manual be made better, and how?" are questions worth answering.

We'll have to show how it's done over the next several years, because Current Edition (and thus Conventional Play) will not.