Bailey

Yeah; I did some of that, but also had to send some questions to the game author because some of it needed to be clarified in the text.

But it's finished! (maybe) And I definitely caught some actual mistakes, not just things that could be clearer.

I think I'm now at the point where I've read the rules for this game too many times because I'm no longer sure I know how to calculate things that seemed straightforward before.

I don't think I've created a new word doc since 2008. Certainly, I've done everything I can to avoid it. The only reason I use it at all is for editing purposes (but I edit on other platforms, too).

I have heard of people using spreadsheets for timelines, but not other parts of a style sheet.

I'm a former academic and current editor of academic and creative manuscripts. In case you'd like to know what biases I may have.

Above their paygrade? That's an extremely weird characterisation of the author's place in the publishing system. There's literally nothing to publish without them.

For every error that eludes an editor, hundreds don't. And in publishing houses, several people see a manuscript AFTER the copy editor.

What do you use to create your style sheets? I have been using Google Docs, but I think I'm going to move to something where I can actually use Markdown.... My time in the software world has left me annoyed with word processor interfaces for document creation.

I can definitely see how this would come up a lot with all of the world-building that happens in TTRPGs—it's a lot to keep track of!

Working on that book at times felt like I was trying to reverse-engineer that kind of rulebook, based on things that happened in the story.

a dream job, to be honest!

I love weird things and made-up rules; possibly the only thing I would enjoy more is editing experimental fiction.

Oh! I edited a sci-fi book earlier this year where they author had made up a whole new telecomm technology, then used like 17 different terms for different things approximating phone calls, streaming, and zoom calls. I made a list of all of them to show because they had not realised.

Yeah, you might be the only one I know who would.

I am editing some tabletop game rules right now and needing to decide things like whether *this* instance of a word needs to be all caps, bold, or just normal text based on things like whether it refers to the concept, the player attribute, or an individual player's score for that attribute.

I also get angry at this! (It doesn't come up much in the things I read, but it seems like Every. Single. TV show. does this.)