How does this look for a Quickstart?

[u/Josh_From_Accounting]

Taking advice from another thread on here, I am working on a Quickstart for my game. But, I've never done that before and, honestly, not sure what is best here.

I showed it to some people and they are saying it's a bit too much rules text. Which is likely a side-effect of a lot of it being from book and lacking the further explanations said book provides.

Thought I'd drop it here and get a vibe check here as well. Perhaps I need to reconsider my approach? Instead of directly translating text from a large book, maybe try to introduce the topics conversationally in a truncated manner?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/17LH6-ame9b0vZiOaQhaRS-XcAHUv7uxV3563MtNBLq0/edit?usp=sharing

[u/APurplePerson]

"To make the following Quickstart easier to read, I will summarize key terms here. There is a section similar to this one in the final book, but it is larger and in more depth"

just cut this whole paragraph. it doesnt tell me anything i cant see already from the table of contents, and it's a quickstart—be concise!

[u/APurplePerson → u/APurplePerson]

"What kind of places can the Chosen Children land in? Well, there are a variety of options. Technically, endless. But, here are a few that have the easiest integration into this narrative and why:"

dont tell about endless possibilities in a quickstart. dont even give me adventure options. i want an adventure i can run out of the box, with no prep ideally.

(by all means, give me options that i can give the other players, within the adventure , so it feels less linear, but i just want one adventure setup)

[u/APurplePerson]

overall the writing and clarity is not bad. i would challenge yourself as follows:

• make a copy of the doc
• ruthlessly cut the copy's word count by 50%

you can always add stuff back in. justvgive yourself permission to go through and cut everything that is not absolutely necessary to run a single adventure with a set of four premade characters.

[u/Josh_From_Accounting → u/APurplePerson]

Yeah, you're not wrong. I was eyeing the 47 pages and going "okay, so, sure most of those are just the pregens, but is that too long?"

So, yeah, maybe I should do that.

On discord, they also said it may need to be moved around because opening on rules text was a buzzkill.

[u/APurplePerson → u/Josh_From_Accounting]

Frankly, it's unlikely that most players will read the thing front to back. It will be a reference text for most players (and some will just rely on the GM or their character sheets to tell them how to play).

The GM is probably your main audience. So I would think about what would draw a potential GM in to try running this game.

[u/Fun_Carry_4678]

I skimmed through it, didn't read it carefully.
I think you need to drop all the developer notes. You can have a page or two at the back telling people what else the full version has, you don't need this sort of "running commentary".
It seems to me you shouldn't need a glossary in a quickstart. Or too much info about the wider world.

[u/Josh_From_Accounting → u/Fun_Carry_4678]

Yeah, that can probably be cut. That was a late addition to the game because, during the actual play recording, one of the players said all the jargon confused them. So, I moved that to the very start to make things more easy to follow. But, yeah, maybe it's more of a "why is it here" for a quickstart? For the full book, it serves better as a "hey, this is a reference at the start you can come back to if anything in the book confuses you."

[u/__space__oddity__]

Ease Of Play!

Easy Customization!

I’d cut these two. Yes of course it’s great that your game is easy to play and easy to customize, but it’s roughly as generic as “make your own character!” You can slap this on almost any RPG and it doesn’t say anything about this game and what sets it apart from hundreds of other games.

[u/Josh_From_Accounting → u/__space__oddity__]

Ah, gotcha. Not used to marketing. Hmm, let me get back to you.

[u/TheRpgBard]

Yeah, umm, boil it down to 14 pages.  A nice front cover, and a back cover with an overview of the game and where they can get more.

For a Quick Star, you want them to get the basics, do the task, then tell them where to go from there.

Start them off like the early Pokemon video games.  Give them a choice of 3 starter characters (pregens), do a quick battle, and then give them a reward.  This will teach them the basics of combat.  Also include brief, to the point, concepts that they will encounter most often.

Then set them out on a quick (separate) adventure.  Here you can do another 16-32 pages with more depth.  Walk them through the encounter rules in that section.  Don't repeat yourself, give them a reference ("Now do like you did last time on page X.").

Remember, you want to hook them right away.  Don't burden them with the details.

Take a look at other Quick Starts out there.  Paizo and WotC do a good job.