Designing a book is more difficult than many would imagine. I'm not meowing; it really is.
Though the prose for the game have been finished for quite a while, I struggled a long time with where to begin. Who is the audience and what is the reading level of that audience? Should it be written in an informal or informal style? Should it be in the first or third person? Will it have an academic, textbook, or flowery flavor to the prose? Will there be footnotes or end notes? A glossary? An index?
And once I had completed that task, I struggled with graphic design decisions: what will be the color scheme? black and white? Tricolor? What weight and type of paper? How is the artwork to be layed out? Typeface? How many and how will the tables look? Standard A4, comic book, or some other novelty page size? Over the years, I have started and stopped layouts because they just didn't "feel right". The designs and plans I had made, cancelled, and remade...that I had jotted down and thrown in hanging folders...that I had implemented and finished 10+, 20+ or even 40+ pages of and placed in loose leaf binders that have piled up in my spare room...all have shaken free of their chaff and the wheat within has been rushing to the forefront of my thoughts.
Something changed when I started the HiBRiD Basic character sheet; and now that I have finished it, I found words and answers to all of my design questions drawn from within me. I have reached my Zen. I have finally rediscovered my muse.
HiBRiD was meant to be what I wanted a role playing game to be and my attempt to share it with the world. Nothing more. And with that, I am diving forward into Book One with not an inkling of doubt.. About anything.
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