For the present I seem to have settled on my 3D dice WW2 house rules. My available hobby time this week has been spent playing and testing these rules with some small games. One thing I really wanted to do was get the rules slimmed down so they would fit only one page. As I like simple rules and preferably short rules.
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| The finished wargame rules as a "zine" booklet |
The reason behind aiming at one page of rules, was somewhere in the back of my memory I remembered reading on anther blog where they had written their rules in a "zine" format. If you are wondering what is a "zine" format? Simple ones are one sheet of paper folded into a mini-booklet. A Google search of "zine format" soon provide me with the necessary instructions.
The idea must have stuck in my memory, and now with these WW2 rules it seemed a good time to try and produce them in a "zine" booklet format.
(After a bit of searching I found the blog and post
here.)
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| The rules written up, printed and folded ready to make the booklet |
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| Ready for use |
The booklet is nice and convenient and don't take up as much room as a flat sheet of paper on the tabletop. I do put a couple of staples in the centre fold to hold the booklet together.
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| A game in progress |
Anyway here are some more close up photos of the rules themselves. As you can see my proof-reading is a bit suspect. (I always did get "tries hard, could do better" in my school reports.)
The smallest font I used was 14pt to make reading easier.
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| Front and back page |
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| Pages 2 and 3 |
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| Pages 4 and 5 |
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| Pages 6 and 7 |
Peter- What a very clever idea! Marvelous. I'm with you - I certainly like and favor 'one-page Rules'...I have not the patience anymore to wade through a book of rules (which seems the go for all recent modern published rules)...I like to keep it simple and straight forward when writing my rules...having said that: my Fantasy Rules has one main page to refer to- with two other pages tacked on that includes special rules -all very easy to read and refer to whilst the Battle continues. Your 'ZINE' looks great- good work! Cheers. KEV.
ReplyDeleteHi KEV - The booklet was a fun thing to do and by its size does force simple rules and rules writing. Not sure I will do this to my other rules, but I will certainly consider the same approach for the next set. It also adds some creativity to the rule writing process. Peter
DeleteVery clever, idea! My rule of thumb is to have all QRS' on no more than one, double-sided sheet. Preferably, that QRS is no larger than 5" x 7" in size.
ReplyDeleteI am glad I remembered the idea. It added a dash of creativity to the generation of these rules.
DeleteI love this sort of stuff. Good post.
ReplyDeleteThanks. I am wondering if I can do the same for my Siege rules which will get a run soon in the French Indian War campaign.
DeleteHello Peter
ReplyDeleteFunnily enough, I did exactly this for my Ancient rules only a few months ago. But I found I needed to use tables to really make it shine and Word or PowerPoint did not allow rotation of tables within test boxes :-) I could have then made the tables but rotated text but all getting very hard. Thought on using Visio or something but decided I am going down apath I did not want to go! So I simply went with spacing it out a lot more and not have them on an A4 folded in half.
But for your rules it looks fantastic and agree it is a great idea. I showed my 11 yo daughter who is quite creative the 8 page book and got the "whatever" look but obviously we beg to differ! I have not given up and am looking to see if my WW2 rules can get the same treatment but alas, the QRS for that is better with tables too :-(
I really enjoyed the booklet approach. Today I used a glue stick for those pages with no fold, which has firmed up the pages nicely. When writing I used the apple equivalent to PowerPoint. Once the pages were written I grouped them before rotating and positioning them. Some of my rules have tables so I just tried out tables. Once grouped with another item I rotated them successfully.
DeleteTa, I will give that a go. I didn't some googling but it was mostly on Word so will give PowerPoint another go.
DeleteHi Peter,
ReplyDeleteBrilliant, reminds me of the format for Zombies in my Pocket, WW2 rules in my pocket perhaps!
Looking forward to having a go with these.
All the best
Jay
Thanks. They took a while to format the first time, but it should be quicker with the next set now I have a format.
DeleteClever and well executed!
ReplyDeleteYou can also look for PocketMod or re:PocketMod for tools for this type of approach.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the tip.
Delete