HiBRiD Status Update: Pronouns

So I am doing the final prose review and thought I would share this snippet regarding pronouns from the Foreword.

Pronouns

It goes without saying that the players and Directors of any roleplaying game may be male or female, as may characters in heroic stories. Traditionally, however, the male pronouns (“he”, ”his”, and “him”) have been used to refer to any person regardless of sex. While both culture and the English language have changed, they have done so at different rates, creating a significant debate with this traditional use of the male pronoun in  writing.

Since this book is written in the second person (talking directly to you, the player), the matter of which pronoun to use when referring to the player presents no real issue. When referencing the Director and player characters, however, choosing a pronoun presents a unique challenge.

In the spirit of innovation, I have chosen to use the different pronoun sets based on the role that the person being referred to plays in the game rather than the traditional use. Male pronouns (“he” , his”, “him”) are used to refer to player characters while female pronouns (“she”, hers”, “her”) are used to refer to the Director. Examples will feature a female Director named Sarah and male player characters to maintain clarity with this approach, however the players will occasionally alternate between males and females as a nod to various players who have inspired me over the years.

HiBRiD Status Update: First Readthrough complete

All:

As you may or may not know, the second rough draft of the character creation rules is complete and is now going through a series of readability edits. Involved in the process will be a 10-, 12-, and 14 year old, and my good friend, Flippy, creator of the Tiny Horsies RPG, whom I had the pleasure of meeting after I had reviewed his fantastic game on this blog several years ago.

The HiBRiD character creation prose are complete and have finished their first read through at the 10-year old reading level. In general, the reader found the rules easy to follow, found a few places where clarity needed to be added, and requested a few more examples to understand the step where the player chooses a character Origin.

In the process of fixing the manuscript, I was able to eliminate another 2 pages of cruft from the rules and streamline the prose a bit.

I have finished my revisions and moved on to the next reading level: 12 years old. If anyone else is interested in doing a readability audit, please let me know!

Until then, keep playing games and spending Ite'!