April 10, 2011

About section numbering

For Gaia Gamma I decided to use a peculiar way of numbering rules sections not seen very often these days:
  • Sections are numbered numerically and with increasing levels (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 3.1, 3.2, 3.2.1).
  • All numbers are surrounded by square brackets (e.q.g [1] or [3.2]).
  • Section references use a combined format with the section number and the page number to be as useful as possible. Syntactically for section number S and page number P the reference would read "[[S] > P]".
The brackets are used for two special reasons both related two my attempts of simulating the old school of doing rules:
  1. Conflict simulations (CoSims, war games) use that format quite often to indicate rules sections and allowing for precise quotes. As RPGs were birthed from a wargaming origin this seems to be an appropriate nod to the way of doing things that came before.
  2. DragonQuest used the square bracket format and that always felt very old school to me. I love the look and thus Gaia Gamma had to have this.
What do you think?

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