Writin' Up Rules

So, after roughly 14 hours(!!!!) of putting together the graphic element for Minsterpool, I FINALLY have all the files done for a nice PnP (Print and Play) version of the game. Which is one click away right here. Actually, I'm quite surprised to realize how long it takes to put together a nice looking demo. And this is without the "cutting and pasting to foamcore part" to actually make a real game, which probably will take another hour or so due to all the damn little Action Tiles.

Something I've learned now; writing up rules really requires you to do it at least twice to get it right, and probably a lot more since I'm sure I've missed some typos in the.pdf version. Not including typos, even though you know exactly how the game plays, it's tough to get the correct order of explanation right. You'll notice quite a bit of ordering changes between the html version and pdf.

I first did the full .html version of the rules. HTML is so nice to work with in the current tools to help layout graphics and "how to's" with text. Unfortunately, after trying to printout that version, I realized it was a nightmare. The curse of doing things on a hi-res monitor!!! Hence, the quick rule set.

After that, knowing how much people love the world of .pdf's for some reason, I put together another version of the full rules in Word. Which, for all the bloat and processing power, seems so unforgiving in the way it handles/mangles images and text combos. And it doesn't when it "auto-guesses" something you want, and you can't get it out of that mode. Open Office is starting to look more attractive every day.