Now that I’ve made the major design decisions for my steampunk ttrpg system, I have started to write the first draft in earnest.
I know how I want the major parts of the system to work, and as such I know what attributes, characteristics and values I want players to be able record on their ‘adventurer log sheet‘.
As a (visual) design exercise, I sketched this out, with the aim of having it all fit on one letter-sized sheet of paper. I’m trying to use one of my past hats as a UX designer to get the ‘information architecture’ right, before committing any design elements to it.
As I continue to write out the ‘creating an adventurer’ section of my ruleset, I’ll keep this nearby, making any necessary tweaks as I go. Once I’m happy that all the building blocks are in the right place, I’ll transfer this to Affinity Publisher and start adding design elements to it – cogs and pipes and pistons and that kind of thing.
Doing this now though has achieved two main things.
First, it’s helping me to visualise the ‘order’ of things – in other words what needs to be front and centre, and what can be relegated to less frequently-accessed ‘scratch pad’ areas.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, it’s making it all seem real …
… and that’s exciting.