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      Wind in the Flowers: Re-inventing a Game

    Editing, Development, and Production

*R. Sean Borgstrom*

March 27, 2002

*Rated an A+ by 24 RPGnet readers!*

Rate this column!

The manuscript left my hands after two months of intensive writing and

entered the similarly five-fingered hands of one Bruce Baugh, editor.

The first major change to come out of this was a structural reorganization.

The Pharos edition was, roughly speaking, written in the published

order. I worked on the character creation section first, because I had

to know what the characters could do before I knew what kind of world

they lived in. At the end of that section, I had established a

significant amount of information on the world, which I tidied up to

create a description of the setting. Afterwards, I felt a need to round

this out by describing the major NPC types in the setting. Then followed

a chapter on resolving conflicts, an example of play, and advice on

running the game. Finally, I stuck an introduction in front.

If this sounds somewhat primitive, it was. *Nobilis* was essentially my

first work in gaming, and I had a long way to go before I would polish

any of my craft. And perhaps it is obvious that this needed some

rearrangement. But I hesitated to fiddle with that kind of thing too

much in my own editing, because my job was theoretically cleaning up the

book and adding a few small sections.

(If you're wondering how I got from 'cleaning up the book and adding a

few small sections' to 'writing 130,000 new words for it in two months',

so am I. Please tell me if you ever find out. But when I had written

them, James Wallis told me he wanted them all, so it's cool.)

Bruce, accordingly, shuffled the setting and introductory material to

the front and pushed various rules stuff more cleanly into the rules

chapter. This broke some structural dependencies; that is, it created a

few extra references to concepts not yet explained. He worked on fixing

that too. Then, of course, came long stretches of regularizing

capitalization, cleaving grammar knots, and suchlike. I'm sure he

probably killed great numbers of my semicolons, as I overuse them, and

left the commas and periods bewailing the slain. Editors are

underappreciated; it's finicky, important work.

From there, I think, I shall step to overall product design. Section

header quotes are both frequent and long in *Nobilis*. Many of them are

literal excerpts from game world events, recorded from the thoughts or

copied from the diaries of characters within the setting. A number of

others represent fictional works from the game world that, in some

fashion or other, set the tone for the appropriate section. I'm not

going to go into why they're there; mostly, to keep the reader "in the

world".

In any event, in the Pharos edition, the quotes served as the primary

source of art. The italicized sections, each a word-picture, broke up

the flow of plain black text. The attribution visually set them off.

This was good, because we didn't have much other art to put in.

The original book was also a peculiar, small size, due to limitations of

the print on demand process used. It had no margins, pretty much. James

or Bruce had come up with the idea of the new edition (a) having

margins, and (b) shifting the section-header quotes there. This in

theory would provide some content to the margin, so it wasn't wasted

space and wasted money, and also give some visual variety. Actual art

and the section headers themselves would be used to break up the flow of

black text.

James wanted a visually distinctive book, and, after playing around with

the concept, he developed the idea for an 11x11 book with a photo art

nouveau cover. This would allow two solid columns, room for quotes in

the margin, and a book that would look beautiful sitting on a table or a

shelf. The resemblance to a coffee-table book isn't entirely accidental;

we wanted to make something the reader would be glad to own.

James had originally planned to purchase and reprint *Nobilis*, more or

less, not develop a brand new edition. But by this point---long before,

really---it was clear that this was a new product. This led, naturally,

to a new, longer production schedule, which in turn gave us time to

start a round of serious playtesting. This was a nice thing, all in all,

and led to many changes in the text. The design principle was fairly

straightforward: things that they found that were broken, I fixed. This

is why playtesters get an acknowledgment at the front of the book; and

I'll throw in another one here. Thank you!

Not that much in the way of complexity came up during the layout itself.

James chose a slightly different format for Ianthe's sections (see a

previous column <wind13mar02.html>) and made various game abbreviations

small-capped. The single-column format used for the Ianthe section

appears to me to better mimic the style of a person speaking or writing

a letter. The small caps . . . hm. James told me that it looks better.

If I were pondering this decision myself, I would say that abbreviations

are one of those things that puts the reader very much into "gaming

mode", and by making them crouch in on themselves, he minimized this

impact. We wobbled back and forth on how to do the Example of Play,

which had very few headings and therefore large sections of blank

margin. There are pieces of fiction interwoven with the Example of Play,

showing the perspective of some minor NPCs; at first, these were moved

to the margins. That filled the margins completely and told the story

out of order. Ultimately, we solved this the obvious way: James made me

write more quotes for the margin.

Then came lots and lots of proofreading. And more proofreading. James

proofread many times. I proofread once. (I've been busy.) I think Bruce

proofread. I think there were also some volunteer or professional

proofreaders he sent things to; if volunteers, thank you!

That brings us up to the time of this writing. The printers have

returned proofs and James is looking at them. By the time you actually

see this column, *Nobilis* should be at most a week or two away!

R. Sean

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 Topics 	Author  	Date 	Latest Reply

 James and the Small Caps

<http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=81&t=81> (2) new 	Kibo 

08-20-2002 16:29  	02-10-2003 01:23 new

 Art <http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=77&t=77> (1) new 	Lxndr 

04-26-2002 07:36  	04-26-2002 07:36 new

 The Original Nobilis Club

<http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=76&t=76> (3) new 	Bret Gillan 

04-17-2002 11:28  	03-17-2003 17:48 new

 Questions & Thoughts

<http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=64&t=64> (3) new 	Pyske 

03-20-2002 18:31  	05-01-2003 13:03 new

 Noble Buddhism?

<http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=61&t=61> (9) new 	Tlaloc 

03-20-2002 12:17  	12-10-2004 01:20 new

 Noble Suicide <http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=58&t=58> (9) new

Eric Christian Berg  	03-20-2002 07:43  	01-18-2005 16:27 new

 Art Notes <http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=54&t=54> (4) new 	R.

Sean Borgstrom  	03-14-2002 16:31  	03-21-2002 03:44 new

 Ack...you just lost my sale

<http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=45&t=45> (10) new 	SteveD 

03-14-2002 04:06  	03-15-2002 06:29 new

 Onomastikon working URL

<http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=36&t=36> (4) new 	Jorge

Hernández  	03-06-2002 12:51  	08-20-2002 16:10 new

 Why do angels change names ?

<http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=33&t=33> (10) new 	philippe

tromeur  	03-06-2002 10:13  	12-10-2004 01:34 new

 R. Sean, some examples?

<http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=32&t=32> (3) new 	Arref 

03-05-2002 08:17  	03-13-2002 20:28 new

 Sounds great, BUT...

<http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=28&t=28> (2) new 	Kane 

02-27-2002 16:43  	02-27-2002 17:30 new

 Sort of backwards?

<http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=21&t=21> (8) new 	Eric Finley 

02-20-2002 14:25  	02-28-2002 09:35 new

 Programmer nature slips out!

<http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=20&t=20> (2) new 	Sean

McCarthy  	02-20-2002 13:18  	02-21-2002 10:30 new

 Object Lesson Damage

<http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=15&t=15> (1) new 	Darren

Miguez  	02-13-2002 12:45  	02-13-2002 12:45 new

 How about this?

<http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=12&t=12> (2) new 	Kristian

Lund  	02-13-2002 11:30  	02-14-2002 01:17 new

 Now, this was strange!

<http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=9&t=9> (7) new 	access.denied 

02-13-2002 07:44  	02-16-2002 21:44 new

 Briefs on the other two?

<http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=5&t=5> (5) new 	Eric Finley 

01-31-2002 18:39  	02-13-2002 10:36 new

 Forum now works <http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=4&t=4> (1) new

Sandy Antunes  	01-31-2002 17:36  	01-31-2002 17:36 new

 limited series <http://www.rpg.net/pf/read.php?f=88&i=1&t=1> (2) new

Sandy Antunes  	01-21-2002 17:41  	01-31-2002 17:36 new

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------------------------------------------------------------------------

    * Editing, Development, and Production

      </news+reviews/columns/wind27mar02.html>

      March 27, 2002

    * Affiliations </news+reviews/columns/wind20mar02.html>

      March 20, 2002

    * How to be a Hollyhock God </news+reviews/columns/wind13mar02.html>

      March 13, 2002

    * Naming Conventions </news+reviews/columns/wind06mar02.html>

      March 6, 2002

    * Art Notes </news+reviews/columns/wind27feb02.html>

      February 27, 2002

    * Dynamic Nobilis </news+reviews/columns/wind20feb02.html>

      February 20, 2002

    * Systems Change </news+reviews/columns/wind13feb02.html>

      February 13, 2002

    * Treachery </news+reviews/columns/wind06feb02.html>

      February 6, 2002

    * The Emperor to Come </news+reviews/columns/wind31jan02.html>

      January 31, 2002

    * The Changing of the Guard </news+reviews/columns/wind21jan02.html>

      January 21, 2002 

      Other columns </news+reviews/columns.html> at RPGnet

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