Decisions

I have been plugging away at my Star Wars rules compendium and I have revised my expectations for it—or at least for the Sourcebook part of it. Where before I was trying to limit the materials on species and planets and ships and droids, I have now made the decision that I am going to try to include as much as possible in these sections—with the main guideline being: if we saw it in the movies, it should be in the sourcebook. To this, I am including bits and pieces of expanded-universe stuff that I like (or at least tolerate).

Of course, this has vastly increased the scope of the sourcebook section, but I think that in the end, it will feel more complete this way—and will actually be something that has never been done before for the D6 system—a single document that includes stats on and information about just about everything we saw in the movies—not broken up into Imperial Sourcebook, Rebel Sourcebook, Droid Sourcebook, etc., etc..

My only concern with this (beside the fact that it is a lot of work), is the format I am putting it in. One of my biggest pet peeves with the various sourcebooks is the layout of information from a 'reference' standpoint. As beautifully designed as I feel the 2nd Edition, Revised/Expanded rulebook is, It irks me somewhat that information on one subject (ship, alien race, etc.) is often broken up, either between columns or sometimes between pages (requiring you to flip back and forth to reference things). While I understand that from a reading viewpoint (and efficient use of space), this is a standard and even 'good' thing, from a gaming perspective, it is sometimes frustrating. Therefore, I have erred in favor of the functional. Every 8.5 x 11 page is going to have two columns, and for most things (races, vehicles, droids), only one item will be detailed per column, in its entirety. Therefore, a GM or player can flip to the page, find the item and get all the relevant details on it without going back and forth between pages or columns.

The drawback to this is the fact that with such a huge sourcebook, the similar formatting is going to be somewhat repetitious. It is a tradeoff, I realize—and one I've given a lot of thought to. In the end, however, I think this is for the best.

This type of formatting is going to require a limitation on the amount of information for each entry, but from a gaming perspective, I don't really have a problem with offering just the most important and relevant information about something. If a player or GM wants more 'depth', they can simply look for it on the Internet—because expanded as this sourcebook section has become, it is still going to be a 'snapshot' of the Galaxy, not an in depth exploration of every aspect. Of course, this may be a bit confusing when players find Web information a little different from my personal 'take' on something, but.. meh. People tweak and change things to their tastes anyway. They can do so with this.