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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
+
+
+ What do you think? <http://www.rpg.net/pf/list.php?f=88>
+
+Go to forum! <http://www.rpg.net/pf/list.php?f=88>
+ Go to Top <http://www.rpg.net/pf/list.php?f=88> | New Topic
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+<http://www.rpg.net/pf/search.php?f=88>
+
+ 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
+
+ Go to Top <http://www.rpg.net/pf/list.php?f=88> | New Topic
+<http://www.rpg.net/pf/post.php?f=88> | View Threads
+<http://www.rpg.net/pf/list.php?f=88&collapse=0> | Search
+<http://www.rpg.net/pf/search.php?f=88>
+
+ Newer Messages
+<http://www.rpg.net/pf/list.php?f=88&t=81&a=1&> | Older Messages
+<http://www.rpg.net/pf/list.php?f=88&t=1&a=2&>
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+ * 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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