Today's blogpost is all about my flailing to refine and streamline my design docs into a coherent rulebook. I read enough of the d**** things you'd think I would know how to compile and order one. I understand the basics and where I went wrong, and have roadmap, but compared to design development is long and grindy.
Would really love if other folks have input on what makes a rulebook good? what have people done to make their projects easy to get? Which books are your favorite examples? What are your biggest hurdles?
For me I intellectually understand what needs to be there, but actually getting the writing clean and succinct to read is a challenge. I see a lot of DiY books for of background art and such trying to emulate a AAA book but they don't have the text and order of content hammered out 1st, I didn't want to move to layouts until my text was set, but maybe that's a mistake? Curious to see what people think.
Let’s see… an easy example is hierarchy - you have Beasts and you have Flying Beasts. So I would draw an arrow from Beasts to Flying Beasts. The arrow shows that A leads to B.
You may also have two items that are directly related and might end up being listed sequentially, but one does not inherently lead to the other. Those I might link with a double ended arrow (or no arrows, just a line).
Meanwhile you have Flight as a general topic. Your Flying Beasts section should cross reference flight. So I would have a dotted line from one to the other.
Keep in mind, this schema is just a rough method I use generally when whiteboarding. If parts of the schema aren’t helpful or overcomplicated, then adjust to meet your need.