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RE: Does Dungeons and Dragons Make Technical Writers?
Subject:RE: Does Dungeons and Dragons Make Technical Writers? From:Christa Ptatschek <Christa -at- inscriber -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 16 Jan 2002 12:38:49 -0500
David Mandrake's comments about the quality of manuals in the gaming
community caught my eye, because I've actually been looking at these docs
from a design perspective. And I'm finding that a number of the design
features are representative of some excellent technical writing!
(A couple of gamers that I know have vast collections of gaming manuals, and
they seem to collect the docs for the sheer joy of possessing them, rather
than necessarily needing them for gaming. Great historical resource! And
yes, I'm a gamer too. In fact, three out of seven people in my gaming group
are tech writers!)
The structure for the doc I'm currently designing is turning out to be very
similar to the structure of most gaming docs, and also reflects a trend I've
noticed towards developing personas or profiles for docs. I'm creating a
small overview section that's written in a style reflective of the magazine
articles for the industry I'm in, and then following that section with a
very detailed, number-and-chart-intensive section that allows customers to
recreate the scenario described in the first section. Interspersed
infrequently in the second section are half-page descriptions in the
magazine article style that expand on an aspect of the scenario or outline
alternate possibilities. This structure is really common in recent gaming
manuals, and they use some really nifty techniques to chunk and separate
information.
I've also seen some really interesting placements of page numbers, like in
the centre of the left or right margins. That's actually a great place for
the page number, because it's where your thumb seems to end up when you're
holding a book to flip through it.
Anyone else culling design ideas from sources that aren't traditionally
considered technical writing?
Christa.
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