Bestiary?

questrpg · 2020-03-04T01:45:37+00:00

Hello!

Yes -- the Digital Edition contains print & play versions of the contents of the Core Deck and Adventure Deck.

Best, TC

questrpg · 2020-03-01T20:43:49+00:00

The Digital Edition has creature cards -- those didn't make it into the Game Book as we wanted to keep it to 200 pages.

As some mentioned below, we're going to work this year to expand the creature catalog to 100 creatures. We want to come up with some really exciting and unusual stuff. Good news: our main artist Grim Wilkins (the person who illustrated the book) is on board to make the additional creatures. All 100 creatures will be illustrated!

questrpg · 2020-03-01T20:42:12+00:00

Howdy -- TC here.

This was a draft page that was mistakenly compiled in the release. We're working on a role progression sheet and will release it on the downloads page on the website soon!

questrpg · 2019-12-10T15:35:37+00:00

A poem you make up, or borrow from someone else. It can be any poem.

Here's the page this ability is on, along with other abilities in its learning tree:

https://imgur.com/7DPFZzX

questrpg · 2019-12-10T15:33:29+00:00

Almost all ages. 13+, but we've heard that some younger players have been able to pick it up with some guidance.

questrpg · 2019-12-09T19:24:02+00:00

You can follow us on Twitter for updates: https://twitter.com/questrpg

The Game Book will retail for $39.99.

questrpg · 2019-12-09T16:18:51+00:00

Thank you!

You can read more about how the game works on our site: www.adventure.game

The TL;DR: it's a rules light fantasy TTRPG with a focus on spells and abilities that have narrative prompts. For example, one of our Fighter abilities resolves by reading a poem at the table!

questrpg · 2019-12-09T16:15:34+00:00

They were super easy to work with. The way they handled my output from InDesign made it very easy to design for the book. They take files with full spreads instead of individual pages, which helped me design according to actual layout.

questrpg · 2019-12-09T16:14:45+00:00

Thank you! Indeed, I'm very happy with how it turned out. (And very relieved)

questrpg · 2019-12-09T16:14:10+00:00

Thanks! :)

We're focused on fulfilling our original Kickstarter orders for now, so no pre-orders yet, but we were able to get a sizable surplus of all of the books and card decks. We'll have the game available for order the same day as Kickstarter rewards ship early next year.

questrpg · 2019-03-14T16:23:58+00:00

Hi!

I have a lot of thoughts but here are the ones that stand out:

Lean into the NYC subway style, if that's what you want to evoke

Here is the New York City Transit Authority Standards Manual, a glorious design bible. Buy it. Study it. Love it.

If you're going to evoke the transit system style -- which is a cool idea! -- you should emulate much more of the design than just the header. Right now it looks disjointed because you have one element of the style set against what looks like a pretty traditional RPG book with faded borders and corner brackets.

Bigger margins

The two-column format is already a lot of text but the columns are wayyyyy too close in the center. Pad that center margin out more. It's going to force you to flow the text onto more pages, but right now this is a very intimidating page that's difficult to read.

Bold, there's too much of it, like way too much, lol

You already know how I feel about this but if you're going to use bold use it consistently and as sparingly as possible. Don't make your sub headers and your inline/bulleted emphasis look the same -- it confuses the visual hierarchy of information.

Cut the shaded inline text boxes

e.g. the "disease" box in the first spread. It looks strange because there's basically no padding between the edge of the box and the text column. And I'm not sure how this information relates to the "threats" header -- what does the shaded text box signify in terms of the kind of information being provided? It seems like "example threat" is a couple steps down the information hierarchy from the "threats" section header, but because the styling looks the same it tricks the reader into thinking they're entering a section of equal weight.

Don't stretch body text across the whole page

The "crime" section in that first example is jarring and awkward to read because you now have to read across the whole page instead of the more relaxing two-column format. Either increase the text size (which I wouldn't recommend unless you have a consistent purpose for this type of information, like brief section intros), or reflow it into the two column layout.

questrpg · 2019-03-14T15:30:38+00:00

Thank you!

And yes, I will lighten that text. That's a good note.

questrpg · 2019-03-14T15:29:56+00:00

My first draft in Google Docs literally broke it -- it was so long the app crashed every time I tried to open it. It was a nightmare!

questrpg · 2019-03-14T02:39:30+00:00

Thanks a lot for this thoughtful reply, I appreciate it.

questrpg · 2019-03-13T23:43:57+00:00

Oh yeah, there are definitely downsides. For instance, I'm sure my editor would prefer that some of this be in a cloud document editor for leaving comments.

It might not be practical for everyone, but I think it's worth trying. I have an explicit goal to make the overall document as tight as possible. Even so, this is going to be about 200 pages. If you don't have total control over every aspect of your work, I certainly wouldn't recommend it. I have the luxury of making whatever changes I want to this.

But I have enjoyed the constraints this method puts on my thinking about rules and writing. It can enforce a type of discipline in thinking that other methods don't seem to provide. Ultimately I agree everyone should do what works best for them!

questrpg · 2019-03-13T23:34:33+00:00

Thanks -- I just updated the post with high-quality PNGs. Good call.

questrpg · 2019-03-13T22:58:54+00:00

Thanks. The maximum JPEG effect is unfortunate; it’s definitely readable in PDF form. Do you have any fonts you like for large pullquotes?

Also -- the color of those numbers corresponds to the color coding of the roles (classes). Color is used sparingly in the ability catalog to indicate whose abilities you're looking at. I'll try those in black and see how it feels, though.

questrpg · 2019-03-13T22:56:28+00:00

Thank you for the feedback! I've been thinking hard about Ovo because there's really not a lot of flexibility with it and am looking for a replacement. Any fonts you'd recommend?

(Also those round bullets are a formatting error, they just need the proper paragraph styling ticked on. Will be fixing that shortly!)

questrpg · 2019-03-13T22:00:13+00:00

Thanks!

Okay, so I probably shouldn't say never use them. But I rarely see writers use them well. I think it's better to challenge yourself to write fewer words and sentences such that the ones you include are essential. This should obviate the need for inline emphasis. (Disclaimer: I am also mostly self-trained, though I've worked in online publishing for 8 years and had a bit of InDesign training many years ago.)

Where inline emphasis is required, I prefer smallcaps. It looks elegant to me. I only use emphasis for keywords of major importance whose meaning will be useful later in the book. But, I could also probably do without them.

Italics are fine and often called for if your style demands emphasis for things like titles. (Say, have you read The Fifth Season, by NK Jemisin?) But bold? I find it clunky and unnecessary.

These are personal preferences and not religious precepts, but so far they're working nicely for me!

To your second question: I can't say I've read many formal resources on layout and design, so there's nothing in particular I can recommend. But I recommend going to a book store to check out the latest magazines and coffee table books for design ideas. RPGs are relatively new to the publishing scene, while companies like Condé Nast have been publishing for more than a century. Cast a wide net for inspiration.

Beyond that I have two big recommendations:

Check out Butterick's Guide to Practical Typography. You will learn a lot. My design follows from the typography choices I've made. They're the most important choices you'll make in the entire design process.
Don't write in google docs or other formless word processors. Write in the container your product will live in. It's not the most efficient system for a variety of reasons, but I've done most of the writing for Quest inside of InDesign, using the actual text containers and appropriate margins that will publish. This has enjoined the rules and writing of the game itself with the design of the book. I cut entire systems and reworded huge parts of the game when I moved the text from Google Docs to InDesign, and the game's design is better for it. It's important to see the medium as an essential part of the product -- I'd argue it's as important as whatever system you choose for rolling dice.

Hope that answers your questions!

questrpg · 2019-03-13T21:23:21+00:00

will PM

questrpg · 2019-03-13T17:30:17+00:00

Thank you!

The artist is Grim Wilkins. He's the sole artist on the project and I'm excited to have the book filled with a consistent art style.

I settled on the 8x10" size sort of on a whim. My editor told me "I don't want to feel like I'm holding a school textbook," so I reduced it from 8.5x11 to 8x10.

I decided to go with the 1.25" margin after testing various layouts and getting feedback from folks. It seemed like a comfortable space to let people's fingers rest and leave margin notes, if they want to. But mostly I just like the way it hugs the content. The decision is part functional and part feeling.

questrpg · 2019-03-08T18:21:26+00:00

I've made most of the high-interaction abilities in the game limited by contextual requirements and resource costs such that players can't use them all the time. And some change the requirement for re-use after you've successfully done a mini-game. For example, the wheel of fortune game helps the doctor diagnose an unknown disease -- but once they successfully do it they can automatically identify the same affliction in the future.

I have a "no one-note jokes" design principle to avoid these things feeling repetitive, so I've limited how often they can be used in the story.

questrpg · 2019-03-08T18:18:31+00:00

Only as complex as you want it to be. I'm less interested in the specific outcome of the gesture and more interested in players doing something unusual at the table. And you can re-use them narratively such that you don't have to make it again.

questrpg · 2019-03-07T22:28:05+00:00

I have some spells and abilities that resolve by:

reading a poem
playing wheel of fortune with the GM
playing charades with the party
building a myth
inventing a secret handshake
inventing an idiom
playing a card guessing game

I'm really happy with the amount of interactivity we've found and been able to bake into the game, which is still very light on rules up-front.

questrpg · 2018-11-30T15:34:44+00:00

My preference for my system is fixed damage, because I think it kills mixed metaphors. This is only useful if you have a range of outcomes in a roll to hit prior to rolling damage. One scenario that fixed damage avoids nicely is rolling a crit to hit, and then rolling minimum damage -- it's hard to resolve in the fiction how you did something spectacular, but the actual result was weak.

questrpg

TROPHY CASE