 August 22, 2007 - 7:58pm | After working on several projects for a while now, I've discovered several things that helps lubricate the project and improve presentation. 1) Creating the primary sections before doing anything on the project. This gives a place to parse information. You'll always know where to put something, because the section already exists. 2) Using all caps for primary sections helps distinguish the sections from their subsections in the printable version. 3) In rule books and campain books, I use some variation of the following section headings that works well (put them in any order you like): INTRODUCTION 4) For modules, though later Star Frontiers modules dumped it, early Star Frontiers modules utilized the greek alphabet in identifying their sections. Following is a complete list of the greek alphabet, if you would like to use them. ALPHA 5) The first section of a module is for preparative information. The last section of a module is often given for campaign ideas. Each one inbetween is for a different scenario contributing to the story. 6) Glossaries are good for keeping track of new terms 7) No matter what the project, a Bibliography is appropriate for keeping track of your sources and properly crediting those sources, whether you quote them directly, or use rewritten information gleened from those sources. 8) Plagiarism is a crime, so it is important that you clearly identify the source of all quotes or fully rewrite statements in your own words. There is plenty of information about plagiarism on the internet. Get familiar with that information if you would like to avoid any unpleasantness from someone discovering their material or their company's material in your document. 9) Put subsections in their own pages subordinate to the primary section. 10) Put departmentalized information, such as skill or race descriptions in their own pages subordinate to the subsection. (Note: Simple glossary definitions and subdivisions do not need to be given their own pages.) That concludes these tips. Maybe they'll help you in your projects. |
 August 22, 2007 - 8:24pm | Some more tips: If you develop your project documents yourself (in Word, for example) and try to copy & paste them directly, some of the formatting gets screwy. There is an icon that looks like a clipboard with a "W" on it. If you click on this, it will open a special filter box where you can paste your Word info. When the filter box is closed it will be properly adapted to the editor's format. When formatting seems hopeless, there is a button you can click in the editor (it looks like a small white eraser with a shadow, though I think I'll try to improve that icon or perhaps replace it with text). If you select text and click this button, it strips all formatting from the text so you can start again. It helps sometimes. Documents shouldn't be nested too deep. It gets confusing and doesn't format nicely on the screen. The outline utility can handle nestings up to 10 deep, but some other portions can only handle nesting 5-6 deep. Generally, try to keep nesting only up to 5 levels deep. 3. We wear sungoggles during the day. Not because the sun affects our
vision, but when you're cool like us the sun shines all the time. |
August 22, 2007 - 8:38pm | Speaking of nesting, I recommend no more than 3 deep. If you go further, it should only be because of a significant amount of divisible information. A bunch of small pages covering only bits of information makes navigation a pain. |
August 22, 2007 - 8:42pm | Speaking of nesting, I recommend no more than 3 deep. If you go further, it should only be because of a significant amount of divisible information. A bunch of small pages covering only bits of information makes navigation a pain. True. In the StarFrontiersman project, I plan on having several smaller handbooks. For example: the Equipment Repository is one. A second book will probably be a collection of PC races. Perhaps another may end up being a collection of the detailed star systems... etc. Because I plan on having several handbooks, I can see getting 3-5 deep. In a single handbook, nesting more than 3 seems unnecessary.3. We wear sungoggles during the day. Not because the sun affects our
vision, but when you're cool like us the sun shines all the time. |
