Question about how the rules are presented
All of the RPGs I've played have been PC ones, like The Elder Scrolls series, and Diablo, so the closest I've been to contact with rules as rules is when I played Magic: the Gathering. My question is, will rules information about items and creatures be on the creature card, like MtG, or all in the rule book, like D&D?. I guess, in the Vassal engine, information about anything is probably just a click away, so where rules text is isn't as important as in dead-tree form. Anyway, on a related point, playing MtG and reading the "Oracle" wording, which is the absolute, unambiguous phrasing used for official rulings, has given me a head for phrasing things similarly. If you want, I can help with phrasing some time. A few years ago, I made some cards in Magic Workstation, for use in friendly games (obviously not tournament-legal), and everyone I asked said the wording was pretty close to Oracle wording. I was, however, working with rules I knew well, and mimicking a style I was reading nearly every day. The advantage to Magic's Oracle wording is it leaves little room for misinterpretation, and is concise enough to keep it at a legible size in a small amount of space. Some of the cards with more elaborate rules get pretty small text, but they're few and far between, and still legible.

My question is, will rules information about items and creatures be on the creature card, like MtG, or all in the rule book, like D&D?. I guess, in the Vassal engine, information about anything is probably just a click away, so where rules text is isn't as important as in dead-tree form. The nice thing about the Vassal engine is that you can attach a multitude of commands to a game piece (counter, card, etc.). So there's really no limit as to the behaviors you can attach to a single piece. I don't know if you've dropped by the Game Features & Screenshots page on the main site or not but you'll see an example of the Player Token. It has an enormous amount of controls attached to them. With that in mind, to answer you question, the rules are just the game rules. Anything that has anything to do with the cards, counters, etc. are attached to the piece. Descriptions and rules to a specific piece are just a click away. I didn't bother to write the descriptions of thing on the card face itself as we would run into the problem of being able to read them. But if you click the small shield in the upper left corner of the card, a property sheet opens up with a list of traits and a complete description. Quite often these property sheets will have trackers and other information that can be manually noted that will sometimes display on the face of the item. For example, if you find a gem, you determine it's base value and enter it on the Property Sheet. This value will now be displayed directly on the front of the gem so everyone can see how much it's worth. Body armor is another example in that its weight is based on a percentage of the character's weight. Once that information is entered, the armors actual weight is displayed on the front of the card. Everything in the game that has a property sheet attached to it has a click point on it and right-clicking the piece will generally give you a menu of other commands attached to that piece ...stuff like clone, rotate, discard, etc. Anyway, on a related point, playing MtG and reading the "Oracle" wording, which is the absolute, unambiguous phrasing used for official rulings, has given me a head for phrasing things similarly. If you want, I can help with phrasing some time. That would be great. I'm not bad at writing rule books but then I'm the only one that has expressed an opinion about my rule books :wink: Since no one else has really brought it up, I took that as a good sign. But any suggestions for improvements, or ever re-writes in certain areas, would be welcome ...anything to make things easier ...the game is complex enough. I wish I could send you copy right now for you to take a look at but everything is sort of in flux at the moment. This memory graphics problem really threw a wrench in my plans. I'd send you just the rulebook but without the game to interact with, while you're going through the book, would make it rather difficult.

That's alright, I didn't expect a rulebook straight away :P. I'm just thinking of other ways I can contribute :)