It took me five years of writing, editing, and wrangling to get there. With a setting I'd ran for 25 years. 3 years writing, a year editing, and a year wrangling with publishing and formatting. I made sure to schedule time to work on it and grind away. Four hour blocks helped a ton. - ThreadSky

seething-ginger.bsky.social • 78 days ago

It took me five years of writing, editing, and wrangling to get there. With a setting I'd ran for 25 years. 3 years writing, a year editing, and a year wrangling with publishing and formatting. I made sure to schedule time to work on it and grind away. Four hour blocks helped a ton.

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jmpickering.bsky.social•78 days ago

I think, honestly, formatting is my biggest obstacle, right now. I am utterly clueless about how to format these setting books in a way that's mine, but conforms to a business formula and doesn't copy someone else's.

Writing and editing are in the bag. Formatting, though...

seething-ginger.bsky.social•78 days ago

When it comes to headings, subheadings, fonts, colors etc, I got no advice, though. I'm terrible at it.

jmpickering.bsky.social•78 days ago

I can handle that stuff. My biggest issue is where to put what. Do I do the legal stuff on the credit page, followed by the table of contents, then the intro story, then ???, then profit?

What's the acceptable order of inclusion for all the setting information? Or is there one particular formula?

seething-ginger.bsky.social•78 days ago

My belief is that you put the information in the order that a player or game master would access it,leading to the most common information towards the front of the book, and the rarest or least necessary in the back. Make it read organically - however is needed for your setting, and it's correct.

jmpickering.bsky.social•78 days ago

You make it sound like such simple good sense, yet I never even considered that approach. Once I'm done mentally kicking my cerebellum, I think I'm going to write up a short list of the different book sections and see which order feels smoothest. Thank you!

seething-ginger.bsky.social•78 days ago

I am glad I can help! It was not something that came easy to me, either. I had to see it in the GMGTR to have it click!

seething-ginger.bsky.social•78 days ago

Absolutely. I really liked how DND's guild masters guide to ravnica laid everything out in a way that a player would use it. Each chapter clustered the same information together, then broke it down per-faction so players and GM's alike can narrow down what they are learning and using.

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