Sorry for falling off of the face of the earth for a bit there
Make A Quick Reference
I’ve been quietly toiling away, making design alterations, doing formatting, editing, making character sheets, all of those lovely things that go into publishing a playtest. I’ve walked away from that experience a little wiser, new skills under my belt and an utter hatred for the process of creating form fillable PDFs. I’d like to share some of that hard-won wisdom today, particularly this:
YOU SHOULD MAKE A RULES REFERENCE SHEET FOR YOUR GAME. If it is any larger than two pages, your game needs it. I do not care what your game is, it can be a tactical combat game, an FiTD variant, some chaotic mish-mash resulting in an OSR Lovecraft game, you should make a Quick Reference sheet. There are a lot of reasons why, A LOT of reasons, but here’s 3 big ones:
It really helps GMs and players (this is the obvious one). Having a reference sheet during play makes the game faster, easier, and better.
It forces you to review, revise, and refocus the game’s foundation. You should be doing this regularly as part of the design process anyway, but creating a rules reference will often result in a stark reminder of what the central rules of your games are. If you’ve lost your focus a bit, you’ll figure it out pretty quick.
It exercises your ability to convey information concisely, a necessary skill for game designers and writers. If you’re not practicing conveying the necessary rules of your game in short form, you should be— and making a quick reference will be a wake-up call if nothing else.
That should be enough. If you are not convinced that you should make a quick reference, I cannot help you. Go, live in your blissful ignorance for eternity.
For those who have taken my message to heart, I’m gonna give you a few loose guidelines for making an effective quick reference. These are not hard and fast rules, just things that I use for myself to keep the sheet practical and sharpening.
Include core and common rules first and foremost. This is different for every game, but usually includes one or two important chapters (probably the first one). I don’t personally include character specific options, but to each their own.
Limit yourself to a 2 page spread / single sheet of paper. If you have multiple kinds of play, such as downtime rules or a separation between narrative and tactical play, feel free to create a second 2 page rules reference.
Use boxes and tables. Organize and section related information to the best of your ability.
Limit yourself to a minimum font size of 10 point. This is about the limit of readability on a printed page, for the purpose of accessibility.
Like all rules documents, write the first draft in pure text format.
That’s really it. At the end of the day, any quick reference is better than no quick reference. Whether you eschew these guidelines entirely or specify hard-and-fast rules is entirely up to you. That being said . . . MAKE A QUICK REFERENCE. And if you have a favorite quick reference, or implementation of a quick reference sheet, please let me know in the notes!
Self Promotion
Thank you so much for reading. I really just wanted to get something out, considering how long I’ve been absent. The free playtest for my stealth-action RPG, Footfall, is launching by the end of the day tomorrow! The game is going to include all player facing rules, the rules for enemy creation, and a playable adventure. If you want to be notified when it releases, you can follow me here or on itch at https://rotten-shotgun-games.itch.io. I also have a Discord server where I post about the projects I’m working on pretty regularly, which can be joined with this link: https://discord.gg/wcHnG4V5fH.
Once again, I hope you have a great night and a great day.
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