Here’s part of the design document for the Nu Fantasy Game. I know some folks are interested in my process. And I promised I’d try to post as much of the material as possible. Feel free to drop thoughts in the comments.
Format
I’m shooting for 100,000 words. Amaranthine clocked in at 140,000 IIRC. I want this to be shorter, but with more setting content. Significantly so. Whereas Amaranthine was a huge toolkit for telling varied urban fantasy stories and building your own game world, this book will focus heavily on setting material.
Amaranthine was 212 pages, 8.5” x 11”, full-color. Maschine Zeit was 7” x 10”, 120 pages B&W, but only 60,000 words. Maschine Zeit was also super minimal in a number of regards. The middle ground I want to attain here is:
100,000 words. 200 pages. 8.5” x 11”, B&W. Fewer net words per page than Amaranthine, with a heavy eye toward presentation, like Maschine Zeit.
System will be more robust than Maschine Zeit, but nowhere near as detailed as Amaranthine. The important distinction is, I’m going to challenge myself to blend some of the system information into the setting information.
The System
The system will be based around the Scientific Method. We’re not as concerned with direct pass/fail mechanics here. The importance of our system is about exploration, and finding solutions. I figure, the characters in my ideal fantasy story can succeed when they have the solution, but finding that solution is the struggle. This means that, if you’re going to do traditional monster hunting dungeon crawling shit, you’re going to want to research. You’re going to want to approach a situation from an informed perspective. Dragons (if they exist,) will fuck you up. If you expect to beat one, the path to that fight will be the real story. Finding weaknesses, finding smart strategies and defenses, and finding ideal approaches will take some time and effort.
I have more stuff in my head about this. But basically, it’ll go like this:
1) Make your thesis. Tell me what your expected outcome is.
2) Give me some supporting precedent and your established knowledge. (uses previous rolls and prep rolls to get this info)
3) Experiment a bit. Try to find kinks in your plan. (rolls here, results kept from player)
4) Determine the risk of a full attempt. (perhaps rolls here)
5) Withdraw or proceed. Find out if your experimentation and exploration was enough, the hard way.
6) Publish data. Use this as precedent for further experiments.
Basic Outline
Here’s about how I’ll break down the book:
Introduction and Setting Primer- 5k
Cast Creation – 5k
Basic Rules – 5k
Region 1, and Character Options for Science – 12k
Region 2, and Character Options for Espionage – 12k
Region 3, and Character Options for Politics – 12k
Region 4, and Character Options for Artistry – 12k
Region 5, and Character Options for Warfare – 12k
Region X, and Character Options for Magery – 12k
Director Stuff, Stories, Seeds, Monsters – 13k
I wholly expect these to be soft numbers. I doubt the setting primer and intro will really take 5k, for instance. But, that’ll give me room to pad other sections. I figure the Direction section will need more space, and the basic rules might require less.
Setting Presentation
I’ll keep stated setting, canon, to a minimum. Give a lot of opinions and perspectives. This is important, since it’ll leave the Director the room to surprise players that may have read the whole book. For example, if there was a battle in a village a century ago, nobody currently alive was there. If the characters are researching it, they’ll read eyewitness accounts, they might head bardic songs, they might use divination magic, they might dig up the remains of participants. Either way, they’re putting together a story that’s not necessarily complete. We know the battle happened. We know who fought. We have good ideas of why they fought. But uncovering all the nitty gritty is up to the players. We’ll give the Director plenty of ideas, options, and jumping off points, along with a smattering of story seeds. But we don’t give those tiny details as any sort of fact or gospel.

If you want to participate in the discussion on this, check it out on G+. https://plus.google.com/118365124365067663191/posts/ip2u56mUrrC If you haven’t, consider adding me there. I talk a lot about the process there.