Recently I've had to review a large number of RPG downloadables. I'd gotten more than a bit behind in my reviewing duties, and found myself having to pound through a decent number of D20 Character ideas, Magic Item Lists, and even a whole new system. And you want to know what happened?

Well, of course I got everything done. But more importantly, I got an upfront dose of a large number of things that have been annoying the hell out me for a long time. I just hadn't put them all together. Now that I have, I'd like to take this month's column and lay out a few pointers for those who want to make RPG products for the web. I'm not an expert. I've taken Web Design, which provides similar information, but I'm certainly not claiming any skills with Adobe or anything like that. I'm just a regular user who's got some definite ideas about how to improve the state of RPG downloads.

Shall we begin? Lets start off with some basic commandments.

Thou Shalt Not.....

......Expect people to read more than seventy pages off the screen. Unless you’re selling an entire new game, please just say no. Here's a basic secret to life. Many people hate screen reading passionately. We'll get to some reasons why momentarily. But for now, just know that it isn't everyone's favorite thing. 'Well who cares,' you’re probably thinking. Yes. That's very smart, don't care about alienating potential costumers.
And as for the argument that one can print up the text, this is true. And it's also true that printer ink costs. Bear this in mind if you feel you need a long product. You may be asking people to put out even more money to print your work. Most people I know are busy printing useful things, like homework and hentai. Unless we really, really love what you've created, we're not going to want to spend ink on it. Let me put it this way; I've reviewed numerous PDF files that I liked. I've printed up less than ten to actually keep hard copies of.

........use constant, unbroken double columns of text. Doubling columning like this is an annoyance, as the reader must scroll back and forth across the page, and it can get confusing figuring out where one entry ends and another begins. Make sure your text is broken up into small, easy to digest portions.

.........use evil fonts. What's an evil font? One that that, especially combined with a white background, causes the eyes to squint and unleashes headaches. These fonts can creep up on you; treacherously pretending to be innocent until under the gaze of an irate reader. Verdana is generally considered a top of the line font for comfortable reading. I believe Helvetica is another. Consulting a Web Design text for more ideas is recommended. And never, ever, use anything smaller than ten point size. Ever.

Thou Shalt...

.........Use Small Paragraphs, please! Mammoth paragraphs are a headache and a half on screen. I understand people don't see this advice much, as many web designers seem to have learned paragraphing from Victorian literature. Now you know. Also, break up pages with charts, etc so the eyes aren't forced to constantly stare at blank text. This lets the eyes and brain rest.

........Save Heavy Graphic use for a 'screen only' version. Especially if your pix are in color. This ink saving advice should need no further explanation. If your artist has put a lot of work into the graphics, consider putting them in a separate file. I know in my case, some of my favorite art pieces come out of gaming books; and I like to be able to look at them separately.

.........Learn a background color that isn't white. Next to Evil Fonts, this is a prime cause of headaches. There's an option in Adobe, I believe its called Landscape, which provides a background for your text that is a very light gray. Being a darker color, it’s much easier to read off the screen. Please, please, for the love of all that is holy; stop the white background insanity!

Now that we've got all the basic design advice out of the way; lets talk about what you should be using your design on.

First off, provide me something which I cannot find on the shelves of my gaming store. Why should I download your product if I can just as easily get it with a hard cover and nice paper?

Along with this, try to make things that are uniquely useful in digital form. Collections of maps are a great example. Your users are going to want to copy and write on these anyway, so having them in an easily printable format is great. And to continue with the ideal of unique material, as we're talking about maps, make maps that are hard to find. Maps for mansions and manor houses are a good example. Extremely hard to find. The only maps you'll find on game shop shelves are castle maps, or dungeons. Newsflash; I can go to the library for those, or make them easily. But I can't easily find maps for a seventeenth century manor house. Fortunately, there's an online game company called Darkfuries that has a $5 collection of maps that could probably keep me for years. To quote the movie Robots, "see a need, fill a need."

If, for some reason, you MUST have a new system for your game, keep it simple. All the best downloadable games I've seen came with a system so easy a five year old could work it out in five minutes. If I'm going to be forced to study a new system off an uncomfortable screen, or blow ink on it, I'd prefer to have to do as little thinking about it as possible. The downloadable RPGs Vs. Monsters and Wire-Fu are fine examples of this ideal. Both have systems a five year old could understand; their designers chose to focus on story, world, and mood. You know, the small but important things.

Bottom line, many gamers might like your world, but they have no interest in learning a new system. If you have to get complicated, that's what D20 is for. Some intelligent rules management can turn even this number crunching system into a smooth running model of simplicity; for those of you trying to make easy to use systems to promote role playing. The new Green Ronin 'TrueD20' RPG Blue Rose, which uses a D20 as its ONLY die (and whose rules can be slimmed down to a half page) is a good example. Come to think of it, Steve Jackson Games GURPS now has an online arm looking for submissions. Check them out too.

My Gold Standards

I've used the term 'Gold Standard' once or twice in my reviews. I only say it when the product in question isn't just perfect, but is better than anything I've ever seen or expect to see again. This time it’s a bit different. The companies I'm going to give a digital shout out to regularly keep up their quality levels, and anyone can try to match them.

First up, lets consider The Le Games, my gold standard for general product quality. The Le puts out the excellent Unorthodox series of alternative D20 class ideas. Each time they put out one of these gems, they put several things in the package. First off, there’s a screen version. This uses the Landscape background, and is easy to read off your computer. The second, printer friendly PDF version, has plain white background, and is more tightly formatted. And then finally, get ready for this, there’s a plain Word Version! So you can do stuff like, I don’t know, copy and paste useful text. And do you wanna know how much this all costs? A whopping $2-4 per book. Oooh, feel the burn. They even throw in little extra bits, like the entire basic D20 spell list in books for spell casters. This is how every download product should be, period. If these guys can deliver this much quality for three dollars a pop, I don’t see any reason why others can’t.

Moving on, lets talk content. Dark Quest Games gets my nod for this. Why? Because they put out the little things that players need. Like books on coinage systems, for GMs who like to keep realism in their treasure. Or easy to use, but artfully constructed selections of businesses to set in a particular city locale. Need shops and shipwrights for a nautical Campaign? They’ll get you sailing. Forthcoming releases will give you materials for places like a cities’ Red Light district. Usually information like this is trapped in thirty to forty dollar City Books. Lets just say Dark Quest gives you a much better, and cheaper, deal. Then there’re books that are just plain good. Like Hammer of the Dwarven Lords, which gets Dwarves out of their generic Tolkien derived roots and puts them squarely in the Celtic and Nordic cultures which Tolkien based them on.

All right then. I’ve laid out how to do it, and what it should look like when it’s done. Applause to the companies who consistently get it right, jeers to the ones who force me to read demon fonts off white background. And a general plea for others to heed my writing and put out better product. It's simple, and fun! Just like gaming should be. Catch you next month.