The introduction needs to be more attention grabbing. Possibly something along this line:
The Immortal Strings that takes place over a large scale of time. Using decks from four different ages, the game includes resources for up to twenty people to play and allows new players to join an existing game. The game begins with the Western Age follows with the 1970s and continues past the Modern Age into the Anarchy Age.
Now on to the decks, you cover the parts of the deck but for them, now is the time for detail. Don’t just toss the character part divisions into parentheses, give each part or sub-part its own paragraph, explain what would be found in the Area part, etc. Possibly even give a few examples of cards that will be in each part. You somewhat address this in the part on “Type of Cards” At this point there is no need to state that all part of the deck get shuffled, save that for the section on how to play a game.
The explanation of ages doesn’t really explain the ages. Start off with an explanation of what the ages mean. Don’t say the boss characters are part of a timeless war; the game is about a timeless war. Once that’s clarified, then explain how different cards are affected by changes in the ages, (you replace buildings, etc). Make sure to explain ages and what effect their change has as two sections.
Really the explanation of the decks and the ages could be switched although either way seems fine.
At this point I’d hold off on doing gameplay set-up unless you think it makes the other information make more sense. You should, however, keep the explanation on how to play, forgetting the exceptions for now.
Start off with the day and night turn information and focus into explaining what can be done on one turn. Again forget the exceptions, they will be explained by the respective card and you can do a section later in the document expressing that there are exceptions to some rules.
The combat section looks pretty good. I’ll note here, when I say don’t worry about exceptions, if it effects a whole group such as criminals keeping their victim, I’d go ahead and mention in the rule section. If it is just one card, I’d leave it out until the section on that card.
As for the three sides, it seems to be more endgame conditions and should be labeled that. Of course if there is more than one way to play, you may have different conditions. I’d put this in the gameplay set-up section.
The four ages does a much better job explaining the ages in prose. It’d put it in the front in the current explanation of ages section and bold or otherwise set apart the age headings.
Special actions and rules is good; although, offering more than one way to reference them might be helpful sort of a FAQ type thing.
I would definitely put up a header for the boss cards and bold or otherwise note when a new boss card is listed.
Put examples in a text box if possible or use italics, etc.
You may want to make a master list of rule exceptions for reference during play. Actually you may want to make a “DM screen” for lack of better words so each player has a quick and dirty rule explanation right in front of them.
Review
The introduction needs to be more attention grabbing. Possibly something along this line:
The Immortal Strings that takes place over a large scale of time. Using decks from four different ages, the game includes resources for up to twenty people to play and allows new players to join an existing game. The game begins with the Western Age follows with the 1970s and continues past the Modern Age into the Anarchy Age.
Now on to the decks, you cover the parts of the deck but for them, now is the time for detail. Don’t just toss the character part divisions into parentheses, give each part or sub-part its own paragraph, explain what would be found in the Area part, etc. Possibly even give a few examples of cards that will be in each part. You somewhat address this in the part on “Type of Cards” At this point there is no need to state that all part of the deck get shuffled, save that for the section on how to play a game.
The explanation of ages doesn’t really explain the ages. Start off with an explanation of what the ages mean. Don’t say the boss characters are part of a timeless war; the game is about a timeless war. Once that’s clarified, then explain how different cards are affected by changes in the ages, (you replace buildings, etc). Make sure to explain ages and what effect their change has as two sections.
Really the explanation of the decks and the ages could be switched although either way seems fine.
At this point I’d hold off on doing gameplay set-up unless you think it makes the other information make more sense. You should, however, keep the explanation on how to play, forgetting the exceptions for now.
Start off with the day and night turn information and focus into explaining what can be done on one turn. Again forget the exceptions, they will be explained by the respective card and you can do a section later in the document expressing that there are exceptions to some rules.
The combat section looks pretty good. I’ll note here, when I say don’t worry about exceptions, if it effects a whole group such as criminals keeping their victim, I’d go ahead and mention in the rule section. If it is just one card, I’d leave it out until the section on that card.
As for the three sides, it seems to be more endgame conditions and should be labeled that. Of course if there is more than one way to play, you may have different conditions. I’d put this in the gameplay set-up section.
The four ages does a much better job explaining the ages in prose. It’d put it in the front in the current explanation of ages section and bold or otherwise set apart the age headings.
Special actions and rules is good; although, offering more than one way to reference them might be helpful sort of a FAQ type thing.
I would definitely put up a header for the boss cards and bold or otherwise note when a new boss card is listed.
Put examples in a text box if possible or use italics, etc.
You may want to make a master list of rule exceptions for reference during play. Actually you may want to make a “DM screen” for lack of better words so each player has a quick and dirty rule explanation right in front of them.