Every RPG fan knows that formatting is everything.

Formatting is something folks don't consider often. Mostly because good formatting doesn't draw attention to itself, but to the content. Bad formatting either places itself ahead of the content, or organizes things so poorly as to make something simple needlessly complex.

I'll draw an example of the first type of bad formatting from a game I love: the Secret of Zir'an, a game published by Arthaus, an imprint of White Wolf. It's a neat mashup of fantasy and pulp elements - imagine Eberron with a much stronger 1940's feel and a little more gonzo, and you're coming close. The games system was only okay (I can barely remember what kind of dice it uses, honestly), but it's setting was fantastic. Unfortunately, the setting chapter was a mess - the pages of the book were black text over a patterned background, usually a stone tablet or something similarly atmospheric. That wasn't so bad when the text on the tablet (in the made up fantasy language, of course) was light gray and didn't detract from reading the rules. In the setting chapter, though, the text on the tablets became dark black, which turned that chapter into an unreadable mess. It looked cool - they symbols were well designed and you could even translate them, if you flipped to the GM chapter - but it made reading the setting chapter a chore, and whole paragraphs of it remained illegible.

The second type of bad formatting is more prosaic in nature - poorly organized rules and setting information are a hallmark of another game I love: Rifts. Written in an idiosyncratic style that hasn't changed since the 1980's, Rifts uses numbered lists to outline character class features (for no apparent reason - there is no reason they wouldn't just use paragraphs), places the rules on combat in the midst of the skills chapter (and then doesn't explain how to use missiles - an important factor in most fights!) until the vehicles chapter. The end result is either a lot of improvising by the GM or constant page-flipping. The setting books are even worse - while they positively drip with flavor and cool stuff for PC's to do, they often do annoying things like stick a very usable PC class in the middle of a write-up on part of the setting that is secret to most player characters - for example, in Rifts Underseas, the Salvage Operator O.C.C (basically, somebody who can fight, use a boat really well, and knows some engineering/demolitions) is placed right next to a page describing the evil and ultra-secretive Naut'yll civilization, who eat hapless sailors investigating shipwrecks. A combination of spoilers and, well - I wouldn't be very encouraged about playing a salvage operator after reading that.

But all that is mostly meandering on my part. What I really mean to talk about in this post is the format I'm planning on following in talking about games here. I'd like to focus on a single line per post - sometimes I'll zoom in on a specific book, or even go through a line more or less book by book. I'm not planning on these being proper reviews - really, it's more me gushing about stuff I like - but I'm going to follow a review-like format, maybe listing out what I own for that given line. I'm going to be pretty honest too - some of the games I love, I love in spite of themselves.  Don't expect numbered review scores or a thumbs up/thumbs down - do expect me to tell you what's awesome about any particular game, along with the little (and sometimes the big) bits that stick in my craw.