Crafting Quick-Start Rules
I’ve written/developed a number of quick-start rules over the years. And during all of that time, it’s almost always a case of taking a many hundreds-page rulebook and condensing it into 24 or 32 pages.
While Shadowrun was rather complex, due to all of the sub-rules sets, BattleTech and Leviathans were relatively straight forward, as huge swaths of the rules could be trimmed out without an issue.
As I announced yesterday, Catalyst Game Labs is participating in the Free RPG Day and in addition to A Time of War: The BattleTech RPG and Shadowrun QSRs, we’re creating a Cosmic Patrol QSR.
However, I’m running into an interesting situation where the rules of CP are so light to begin with, it’s far more difficult than I imagined to shave text. In place of cutting off whole sections and pages, the trimming comes in short paragraphs, sentences and even sometimes snipping out words to try and shave it down enough to fit in a printed QSR.
I am enjoying the work, both for the different skill set it’s flexing, but also as it highlights how tight and sweet the Cosmic Patrol rules really are.
Till next episode!
Randall
