I've been working on this (http://burgeonbattle.pbworks.com/w/page/25960308/Welcome) wargame in the form of a wiki, specifically to allow development by others as much or as little as they want. It's great for fast rules reference while you play, provided you have a laptop or phone with internet access on you at the time. The problem is a lot of players won't, and since it's in wiki format, you can't really just print the rule book.
Any ideas as to how to solve this dilemma?
I'm considering creating a rule book from the forum content and having it available for download on the site, but it would need to be updated a lot. Part of why I created this project was so that players wouldn't have to get a new book every other year or wait to see an update they felt should be in place. I've yet to find a work-around.
Hi BR,
Maybe you should consider updating the PDF on intervals that work better for you? For example, you can simply update the PDF every 6 months or even once a year.
A nice possible side benefit of this is that if the game is being continuously developed, by having the PDF take in changes at a slower rate, it can focus on being more stable as some rules/ideas will probably be rejected as they're stress tested through play.
In this way, your game would be taking advantage of methods used in open source software- for example, Linux distributions often have a "stable" version that is updated slowly and more experimental versions that are updated regularly, but, naturally, are being worked out through use.
Chris
Hm, the software analogy seems very apt...
I'll probably be looking at an annual update, but I don't want people to have to print out a large rulebook every year.
Maybe something more like a software patch? Print the book and place it in a binder, then replace a few pages annually?