I just received the last of the edited Roman Seas rules from my
editor last night. I now have to go through all the section
references in the rules to make sure they actually point to the
correct rules sections/tables since a few sections got moved around,
eliminated, renumbered and even split into separate sections.

My editor pointed out that there are no references to table
modifiers. What he would liked to have seen is an explanation of
each modifier found on the game tables, which is something I forgot
to do, so I may quickly do this.

What I forgot to include are explanations of how certain tables work.
The roster cards are explained in detail, but certain gaming tables
are not. This may cause confusion, so I will have to put together a
few explanations. I am reluctant to actually put these in the rules.
I did this for a game I created, Gold Town, back in 2005. In this
game, I created sections which explain how each table works, and gave
many examples of play. I received a large number of complaints and
bad reviews just because of this. It appears people misinterpret
examples of play as "Game Rules" and at first glance through the
rules saw the game as being overly highly complex, where in reality,
the people who actually took the time to play Gold Town found it to
be very simple. It just looked complex because of all the examples
of play. The few players who actually read through the examples
found this to be very helpful and as a result, I have rarely been
asked a rules questions. I was asked once last year. I used to work
for a game publisher and can say that at least 2 hours of each day
was spent explaining rules to customers, either online or by
telephone, and since most used the 1-800 phone number to call in, the
cost was actually quite high when you are paying for each call made
on the line.

I want to avoid this for Roman Seas. I was to keep rules examples in
a separate section in a separate book/PDF. Once you know how things
work, you rarely need to look at the examples of play again.


E.H.