However, I managed to finish something that was stable, functional, and most importantly fun, back in November of 2023.

I found that there were three main challenges I needed to solve when making the booklet:

The layout, the art style, and the cover. In the background, I'd also be refining the character sheet as well. While I did work on all of these simultaneously, I’ll go through the process of each problem one by one, starting with the layout.

Worldweaver’s layout started with google docs, which I began using roughly a year ago, because it was easy to quickly make changes to the document and share it with others. I also had set up a solid foundation with the hierarchy I created, so I figured that the process of transferring it to Indesign would be pretty straight forward.

The other major problem that comes up with TTRPGs is how rules text is intertwined with descriptive, fluffy text. 

The text on the right, highlighted in blue, is the actual rules of how the ability works. The rest is just description, and the purple text describes caveats and additional context for the rule. The text on the far left, "Learning from Experience", is all descriptive! There are no rules in there, it’s only giving you context.

So for my design, I needed to find a way to split those. I did so by just making the type a lighter color, and by making sure that if I had a section of purely descriptive text, I could just shove that in a different box.

While I was getting the layout sorted, I started working on the cover. I wanted a style that had bold colors and flat shapes, something that would be easier for me to create on a technical level, but still looked pleasing. I also was really drawn to these massive environmental shots, they felt very open and expansive, containing a similar vibe despite representing completely different environments.​​​​​​​

Although I had a general collage-style poster in mind after making some mood boards, it took some time experimenting with different ideas before going back to this more abstract one. 

As that was going on, the mood boards and color palette for the cover incidentally helped me decide on my last important challenge, the art style.

Art Style
Making an art style was probably the most difficult task of this booklet. Another problem with TTRPGs is that illustrations and art only give context and serve as “descriptive”, they rarely teach you how to play the game. So, not only did I want to include pretty illustrations to give context, but I wanted them to also serve as an extension of showing how the rules work.

The mood boards I had gathered for my cover were a great starting place, but I kept getting stuck with silhouettes, and although I tried some various other styles, nothing was sticking.

Eventually though, one of my peers suggested that I try and make the art style evoke the cover I was going with: Geometric, with flat colors. Admittedly, I didn’t necessarily think the idea would work, but I decided to give it a shot. And to my surprise, it was working quite well! So I kept going with it.

On the backburner, while I was working on the booklet, I also had to refine my character sheet. I knew that I needed to be careful; many TTRPGs can suffer from overly dense sheets that are hard to navigate, but I also didn’t want a sheet that was too sparse, leading to wasted space.

The prototype sheet I had been using now needed to match the overall style I was going for, and there were quite a few improvements yet to make.

This is also where separating information came in handy; 

Other TTRPG systems put all of a player's characteristics for gameplay into an overly complicated single single page spread. In order to simplify this and make the game as easy to follow for new users as possible, I decided to break up the information needed for gameplay into two different categories; roleplaying and combat.

When you’re just roleplaying, you’re doing a lot of social interaction, maybe rolling a few dice, but are otherwise improv acting with your friends, and there’s much more freedom with rules. In combat however, that’s where rules begin to become more concrete and nuanced, and the player has more numbers to keep track of; different types, different resources, etc.

Originally, I separated these two modes with them on the same side of the sheet, just on two opposite ends. Eventually though, I swapped them for the back and front, so that when you flip the page, your brain is queued to recognize you’re in a different mode of play. 

As a small aside, during playtesting, it was requested that some of the basic rules that you keep coming back to were put on the sheet, as small reminders. Because as much as you can go back into the book or write it down, because these things are extremely common and come up a lot, it’s handy to always have them when you need to check back. And, it’s handy for someone like me who can be pretty forgetful!

Worldweaver is far from over. If you'd like to get more updates on the project, feel free to follow me @perashasart on instagram!