Post originally by Dylan Horrocks at 2004-03-01 12:53:34
Converted from Phorums BB System

Hi Jake - good on you for responding the way you have. I would love to give you a long and detailed response, but I'm just too busy (I have a stack of urgent deadlines right now and can barely take the time to type this!).

I do recommend taking a close look at HarnMaster, which for my money is a masterpiece of presentation (it's very very clear and easy to read and grasp the mechanics quickly - and well designed to refer to frequently during a game). Mind you, it's the antithesis of the current most popular aesthetic of game presentation (fancy borders, chatty rule descriptions, etc). A good compromise between the two, imho, is Mutants & Masterminds.

My main recommendation is: think of the rulebook as a user's manual (like the instruction book for a VCR or something), rather than a book for people to sit down and read over their summer break. The "narrative" inserts add nothing, imho (however fun they might have been to write) and key mechanics need to be presented in clear, easy-to-read bullet-point form, rather than in long, dense descriptive prose.

This is off the top of my head - and I apologise for not going through the book in detail; maybe if I get a free bit of time (if only!), I'll try to be more specific. But HarnMaster is currently available from Columbia Games as a free download (pdf) and if you haven't already looked at it, I heartily recommend doing so (not for the rules as such; but as an exercise in clear and useful presentation).

And as I said - RoS seems to me to have very promising mechanics; they just need to be presented more clearly. ;-)

Best wishes
Dylan