@mattkay @shawntomkin I'm going to say something heretical: the “artistic” stylings of Mork Borg, Thousand Year Old Vampire, and Eat the Reich get in the way of them being a useful technical document for the execution of playing a game.

At a certain point, you have to accept that style over substance means that you are getting less substance. Of those three, Thousand Year Old Vampire is the most playable, but it also has the most straightforward mechanics that don't require very much in the way of explication.

Mork Borg is the worst of them. Absolutely horrific in terms of actually producing a usable document that's playable and readable.

(And don't even get me started on how bad that book in specific is for people with visual impairments. I have an entire multi-hour rant which is made up of 80% profanity taking on that particular subject.)

Another good layout and design source to check out would be Five Parsecs from Home, Five Leagues from the Borderlands, or Ivan's latest book, Forgotten Ruin (https://modiphius.net/en-us/products/forgotten-ruin-the-adventure-wargame) — perhaps the last one best of all because it is deliberately structured as a newcomer's introduction to “adventure wargaming.” Beautiful stuff, though Parsecs and Leagues are both pretty dense and complicated in places.

#FiveParsecs #FiveLeagues #ForgottenRuin #TTRPG #AdventureWargame