While I applaud many aspects of 5e thus far, the formatting and layout is not one of them. If the Basic ruleset and the previews of the PHB/Starter Set are anything to go on, it seems that the overall direction of these has been pretty much straight-up 2e/3e with a serif font and looooong blocks of undifferentiated text. In my humble opinion, the best thing about 4e was precisely the layout/formatting, especially of powers. I also know this proved to be somewhat of a straight-jacket for design, but it didn't need to be. You could've had somewhat more expansive 'effect' entries for example and with bounded accuracy, it would be easier to save on space and anticipate squishier effects than it would have been in 4e, where the math demanded everything have a a very exacting rule and use very gamist terminology.
I hope at least the MM will take a cue from 4e, which, later on, around the time MM3 came out, was fairly excellent in this regard. As it is right now though, I find it very difficult to reference material in a timely manner at the table. The power entries of 4e allowed me to very easily do this, as did many of the class features, etc. Does anyone else feel this way? I know it's too late for the PHB, since it's aleady at the printer, but maybe they could take this into account moving forward? Just to be clear, I don't require a 4e rip-off, just something that would make it more referenceable. Alternating back-shading would be a start, discreet, color-coded headers would also be good. Better use of italics, bolding, etc. anything, just please, don't take me back to the days of 3e where I sifted endlessly through undifferentiated text to find out what my abilities/spells/features did. Otherwise, great job.
I find 5e's design and layout more appealing than 4e's, but then I'm a graphic designer and we're all suckers for pretty aesthetically pleasing things, so I'm probably biased. 
I'll admit that I applauded 4e's use of white space when it first came out. Unfortunately, the novelty of the color coding wore out pretty quickly for me. Long blocks of text are part of what makes D&D what it is for me. At least 5e does actually use headings and subheadings and the like. Looking for a specific rule in a 1e book is like looking for a needle in a haystack at times.
pukunui wrote:
I can appreciate 4e's more visual design on its own merits. I just don't find that it says "D&D" to me, whereas densely packed text and no graphic symbols in the statblocks does. Maybe it's just a matter of tradition for me, since that's how 1e through 3e were laid out.
Personally, I loved to flip through 3.5 handbooks, as they resembled ancient tomes of knowledge. That was awesome. However, the contents were very poorly organized: In the monster manual, you often had a monster's name right next to the art of the previous/following monster; the monster's special abilities were not part of its "stat block", but they were below the monster's lore. In addition, feats and special abilities the creature possessed were only named, and you always had to check their meaning in the final chapters of the book.
4th edition did a great job in making everything easily readable and/or searchable. The only drawback to this was that 4E's handbooks looked exactly to be what they were: gaming books. Part of the immersion was lost.
5E, from what I've seen up to now, could be a meeting point of the two styles: clear stat blocks, more immersive color tones and graphics, and (partially) complete feat and special actions descriptions.
However, I have to also mention Pathfinder's Bestiaries: each critter has ONE or TWO or THREE pages, no monster shares a page with another one unless they are part of the same category. For instance, a Dracolich takes two pages, a Goblin takes one, and the Elementals take about eight pages, two for each element (fire, water, air, earth). This made confusion between which art represents which creature almost impossible.
pukunui wrote:
OskarOisinson wrote:
OskarOisinson wrote:
I rather like the layout because it's free of visual garbage.
Rastapopoulos wrote:
Amazing thread. Such an important thing to complain about. Certainly not scraping the bottom of the barrel here. Keep these unparalleled observations and criticisms coming.
I could not dissagree with OP more. The visual layout is clean, neat, and tidy. Also it's not on that god awful white background, the art is sparse but well placed (that's a good thing). I love it.
dmgorgon wrote:
dmgorgon wrote:
Yeah, I'm gonna have to disagree here. I like the formatting and layout. It's not perfect, but I prefer it over what I've seen of the 4e manuals—those were too busy and distracting, visually, to read through. Maybe they were great for referencing, but otherwise I don't see the appeal. The current look reads fine (I prefer san-serif fonts, but whatever), and it's not distracting.
dmgorgon wrote:
Speaking in terms of the printer friendly version of the Basic Rules, the only thing I would've done differently in terms of layout would be to swap the design of the headings, so that the major headings have a line under them but the sub-headings do not.
Mentor was a nicer font than the one they're using now, which doesn't scale down nicely on a tablet. Other than that, can't complain.
pukunui wrote:
pukunui wrote:
DaleMcCoy wrote:
pukunui wrote:
Papyrus is awesome. And there are several very respectable webcomics that use Comic Sans.
I can't remember ever feeling formatting to be overwhelming.
ChrisTheS wrote:
I really like the 5E style. 4E was eye grabarge. It took up way to much space, and I felt like WotC used that as a reason to skimp on a lot of important flavor text.
I don't have a problem with the formating of 5e. That might change when I get the starter set and have to find or read sections of the adventure. I really don't think it's a big issue, D&D Basic rules are a PDF, we may see alterations to format in the pdf over the next few months.
Not a formatting issue, but an index in the basic pdf would be nice, as would being able to cut and paste from the non-print version. I think that the explanation of spell slots should preceed the character class descriptions, just to make the spell slots vs prepared spells a little clearer.
I started playing D&D in 2005. You know why I didn't start in 2001? Because in 2001, I was leafing through a library copy of the 2ed books, and could not get past the pages crammed with words. I was an English and History Major in University, back in the era where you read dry academic books to get quotes for your essays, and I could not handle the 2ed PHB.
So put me down for readability of words, over quantity of words. The basic rules seem fine to me.
i like the format just fine
R_Dragoner wrote:
Internally....I feel both 4e and 5e are actually quite easy to follow and shoot to areas of splat you need, I actually found 4e internal coding very easy and fast for both reading and visually being able to access important things for combat.
Also I will say the map designs from 4e and 5e have grown on me, I naturally miss the uber detailed cut away stuff that DSIII did but that is out of our hands, the color maps today however with adding bling detail certainly helps more for a dm describing things vs seeing normal squares and having to constantly read areas to know what each area contains, we still have to do some of that but with color detaild maps ( especially stuff like on the dm screen for mibg and lotcs ) it adds alot of visual atmosphere for both dm's and player's.
If there was one thing 1e and 2e were bad for it, then it was looking certain things up in a timely easy access manner, visually the designs were good not as good as 4e with the streamlining though.
Cover designs however are outright pathetic with no real thought and outright redundant things which I find jarring as both an artists and designer.
dmgorgon wrote:
Lathrin wrote:
h347h50 wrote:
pukunui wrote:
R_Dragoner wrote:
pukunui wrote:
pukunui wrote:
Qmark wrote:
pukunui wrote:
I am a print designer. Perhaps we are a more snobbish lot than web designers?
Grifford wrote:
Sling617 wrote:
pukunui wrote:
LOL. Yep. That sounds like us. Widows and orphans are a print designer's worst nightmares (well, them and comic sans).
EDIT:
I sometimes screw with kerning ever so slightly, just to see who slowly goes insane.
Qmark wrote:
Formating of class information doesn't bother me in the least.
I've already made "power cards" from spells (up to 4th level for the moment) and class features (especially those with recharging options) from the basic rules for quick reference during my games.
Qmark wrote:
Azzy1974 wrote:
pukunui wrote:
Emanuele_Galletto wrote:
pukunui wrote:
pukunui wrote:
Emanuele_Galletto wrote:
So, from a developmental perspective on this conversation - and just watching what disagreement I am reading - I am seeing two camps of readers:
- Readers who like flowing prose that does not send "text bites" at them, like a news cast or billboard.
- Readers who like text to be broken into "text bites" (similar to "Sound bites"), because it is the large portion of what we read in media today and they are accustomed to it.
We see the same difference between traditional table top gamers and mmorpg gamers - ask a warlock on World of Warcraft what Soul Drain does. You'll get a very different answer from what you would expect to find in the World of Warcraft RPG book.
As for what the new edition of D&D has done, I see it as a return to the table top, "traditional nerd" style book read. It isn't as word-walled as Pathfinder or GURPS (oh lord god my eyes), but it isn't the "text bite" style of the 4th Edition. The word usage is still moderately professional, with some tilt to personal communication with contractions ("An NPC won't ..." for example.) As a scholar, when I open a book/magazine/journal/website I understand the situation of the material based on the words used. If there are contractions, it isn't from the musicology community. If there are – en dash then it isn't from the psychology community. If it has two columns, it isn't from the mathematics community (except in very recent journals). So, when I open the new Starter Set, I see the following things:
- Much Larger, Capital Letter, Type Face Color Separation, Bold Headings
- Columned Text
- .75" margins on the left, right, and bottom, and .5" margins at the top.
- clear Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3 (underlined) and heading 4 reserved for very specific types of information
- Little golden "tip" blocks that separate info bites for quick information
- Barred Boxed Descriptions that separate horizontally rather than vertically
- Specific use of bold, italics, and bold italics.
When I get to the monsters, I see a separate font for the name from the stat block to the description below.
Insofar as the transfer of information, it reads clearly in a journalistic style of the scholarly world but with a personal feel due to the language. There are not too many passive verbs and the active verbs are not overwhelmingly direct.
When I get to the basic PDF, I see much of the same style of information display. Tables have colored bars to show clarity. The verbs in the spell descriptions are all active ("You create a bolt of lighning" instead of "a bolt of lightning is created by your finger"). It's very clear. The information fits the style of a scholarly journal or magazine, once again, rather than an Entertainment Weekly with "info bites" being thrown around everywhere.
If I look at a 4th Edition styled handbook, I see "info bites" everywhere. It might be because of the field I work in, or because I just really enjoy prose over "info bites," but I really enjoy the 5th edition system of information display. I will not go so far as to say "only people born after 1990 will enjoy the 4th edition more," because age does not always create your reading style preference. More often than not, what you do in your profession or the majority of your reading activities determines your preference in reading format.
Either way, I don't think the discussion is critical to the game in any way except the marketability of the product to new players. With the present format, you will bring more gamers who do not want "immediate gratification" (correlation between gratification delay and amount of average reading compared to gratification delay and video game playtime). 4e definitely played into the Immediate Gratification crowd. I think 5e will also be easier to pick up, insofar as content and being "rules light" for the player, so we won't lose too many new players who came in 4e.
Well done, Wizzies. Well done.
pukunui wrote:
Grifford wrote:
ivstin wrote:
Now that I actually have the Starter Set and have been working my way through it, I find that I am mostly happy with the formatting. The only thing that irks me -- and this is probably only because I am a print designer -- is the narrower column on page 26. If I had been working on it, I would've found some other way to incorporate that spider image without having to squash a whole column.
pukunui wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
ivstin wrote:
ivstin wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
Grifford wrote: