Does anyone know how to make a handbook?

[Fero]

I am interested in drafting a 3.5 handbook but don't know how one goes about posting a handbook. I heard that there used to be a handbook handbook but I cannot seem to find a link. Does anyone have any advice and or a link to said guide? Thank you.

[eggynack]

Do you mean like how best to write it or how best to put the thing on the internet?

[Fero]

Both but mostly the best way/place to post one.

[Endarire]

Here!

http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=399.0

[Troacctid]

If you're not sure, just look at other handbooks that you think are good, and use them as models.

[radthemad4]

I prefer the forum thread format, but a google doc is probably easiest for the writer

[Kurald Galain]

Does anyone have any advice and or a link to said guide?

Most guides use a simple color scheme like red for poor feats/items/spells and blue for great ones (or variants like red - orange - black - green - blue). Doing this well really helps your legibility.

[Silly Name]

Things that should help in making a good handbook:

As Kurald Galain said, color coding really helps with quickly filtering out options.

Cite sources! Not everybody knows all book by name, so if you list a feat/item/spell but don't tell me in what book it's found, it gets harder to peruse the guide. Look up a list of accepted abbreviations for the various book and include it somewhere in your list, so that people can understand that "DotU" stands for "Drow of the Underdark".

Normal formatting suggestions apply - use spacing and paragraph breaks to help with legibitily, include a index at the start, all that jazz.

[Malphegor]

The only thing I’d say with colour coding is please try to consider people with colour blindness if you can (maybe tag each category with a word?). There’s some handbooks I’ve seen that use purple and a very similar looking shade of blue to my eyes that mean something that is very good and something that is very bad respectively and my eyes are like ‘I have no idea how to read this unless I squint and really concentrate on the minute differences I’m percieving here that are clear to normal visioned people’. Use the rainbow if you can- red/orangeshifted is bad options for a class/thing, blue/indigo/violet shifted is good for it. Yellow/green is neutralish.

[DivineOnTheMind]

For me, the biggest question was "Who is this for?"

Like if you read The Logic Ninja's Guide (http://web.archive.org/web/20071205174302/http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18500), you get something very different from Dictum Mortuum's Fighter Handbook (http://web.archive.org/web/20130102230846/http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19870606/The_Fighters_Handbook_--_2007).

I think both are great guides.

One is a detailed beginner-friendly exploration about how to play a class, what's good, and why it's good. The other is a consolidated index of stuff to try to make sense of the hundreds of books, modules and articles that make up 3e. Just reading TLN's guide is very useful for bringing a new player from being kinda-sorta-aware of metagame dynamics, and showing them big-picture optimization concepts. DM's guide on the other hand is a super-useful reference for people who play a lot, and just can't *quite* remember which feats should be on their radar for their new shield build.

For me, there are two ways I'll read most 3e handbooks: either as a skim to see what some metagame element I'm not familiar with is all about (The Dragonmark (http://web.archive.org/web/20140916171219/http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=1072) and 1-level-Cleric-Dip (http://web.archive.org/web/20140504015716/http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=2773) handbooks come to mind.) or as a repeat-reading to focus on the important materials when building a character (Dictum Mortuum's guides generally, but also "List" resources like Lists of Stuff (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?454553-Lists-of-Stuff-(saved-from-Wizards-Community-Forums)), X Stat/Y Bonus (http://web.archive.org/web/20140916162009/http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=4369), etc.).

I wrote a few 3e handbooks back when I was blowing off school assignments, because I had a lot of fun finding a perspective to structure book-diving, and I had a lot of fun exploring materials that seemed to grow beyond their face value. The guides I was happiest with were for the Assassin PrC (http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=8273.0) and Shaman (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?248262-Shaman-Handbook-Oriental-Adventures) class. Neither got nearly the traction of the summon compilation (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?255219-The-Summoner-s-Desk-Reference-D-amp-D-3-5) did, but I had a lot more fun working on them.

Those were both informed by the way I find value in handbooks: I don't find a ton in materials that rank lists which are already short, unless they're doing a bunch of splatbook diving for me. But I do find a lot of value in guides that take a vector where I'm sure there's a lot of material, but have never done the legwork on, and show me the picture of what it looks like as a whole. My Assassin guide tried to do that - I see every splatbook adding a spell or two, or a magic item with Poison or Death Attack in its description, and so on, but I had no clear picture whether it added up to anything when all put together. It still wasn't busted or anything, but it was nice to have a clear picture. That was also where I had fun with the Shaman guide, where a few of the abilities the class touches on have either open-ended lists (e.g. the Spirit Ally spell) or common additions (e.g. SNA spells and Animal Companion lists). I thought I could add something by doing the research to find how deep those wells go. (Unfortunately, when the forum switched hosts, all the sortable tables that made the lists useful all fell apart.)

So I guess the answer I'm getting at is: 1. Identify the purpose of the guide. 2. Identify the content you're interested in. 3. Research wide, present what's interesting. 4. Address the foreseeable areas where your subject will make people want to go deep.

[Akal Saris]

Just to add some advice, I think it's always helpful to have several character build stubs in a guide to show how things can tie together for a class or PrC. Way too many guides skip this last step so you end up with 20 pages of options without a cohesive idea how they can all fit together.

Most guides spend far too much time on racial and feat choices and not nearly enough time on the actual gameplay decisions. It's great if you can present some sample tactics, or (even better, but usually a wishlist item) some reports from actual play sessions. If the class includes a spell list, take the time to go through the spell options as well.

It's a good idea to link to other related guides that have come before. It's great to open a cleric guide because I want to take a 1 level dip in cleric, and then find a link to a guide for that exact thing.

DivineOnTheMind (the previous poster) writes excellent guides - they are clear, well organized, and fill a specific niche. I would keep one or two of his guides open as a reference for how to structure your own work.

Lastly, don't be disappointed if your guide gets relatively little traction, especially for a niche topic. You'll never know if somebody out there will find it useful or interesting one day, and hopefully the exercise of writing a guide and building your mastery in a specific niche of the game will be its own reward as well.

[RexDart]

The only thing I’d say with colour coding is please try to consider people with colour blindness if you can (maybe tag each category with a word?). There’s some handbooks I’ve seen that use purple and a very similar looking shade of blue to my eyes that mean something that is very good and something that is very bad respectively and my eyes are like ‘I have no idea how to read this unless I squint and really concentrate on the minute differences I’m percieving here that are clear to normal visioned people’. Use the rainbow if you can- red/orangeshifted is bad options for a class/thing, blue/indigo/violet shifted is good for it. Yellow/green is neutralish.

An excellent point. A good general principle when using color for web accessibility is to never make color the ONLY means of perceiving categorization.

For example, this Star Wars character ranking:

Darth Vader
Han Solo
Admiral Ackbar
Jar-Jar Binks


could be improved with this visualization:

Darth Vader ****
Han Solo ***
Admiral Ackbar **
Jar-Jar Binks *

(And explain up top what the color/star tiers mean.)

[loky1109]

For example, this Star Wars character ranking:

Darth Vader
Han Solo
Admiral Ackbar
Jar-Jar Binks

I think you make mistake.
Darth Jar-Jar
Darth Vader
Han Solo
Admiral Ackbar

[Saintheart]

I think you make mistake.
Darth Jar-Jar
Darth Vader
Han Solo
Admiral Ackbar

Ackbar is always a trap option.



I'll see myself out.

[Kurald Galain]

The other is a consolidated index of stuff to try to make sense of the hundreds of books, modules and articles that make up 3e.

That's another good point: don't try to make a list of everything.

Most players are better served by a list of goals (e.g. "if you want to improve your defense, consider these ten feats"; "if you want to heal people, consider these ten spells"), and not by an alphabetical list of 500 feats or spells. And the latter is much more work for you, in addition to being harder to use for players.

[Akal Saris]

Yeah, I see that 'alphabetical list' approach come up in a lot of 5E guides because there's so few options in the first place, and it's just like...list the top 10 and skip the middle and bottom 100, please.

[DivineOnTheMind]

DivineOnTheMind (the previous poster) writes excellent guides - they are clear, well organized, and fill a specific niche. I would keep one or two of his guides open as a reference for how to structure your own work.
That means a lot -- I was debating calling out TLN's guide or your Poison Handbook as a great example of a play-guide handbook, but figured TLN's guide was better known.


Most players are better served by a list of goals (e.g. "if you want to improve your defense, consider these ten feats"; "if you want to heal people, consider these ten spells"), and not by an alphabetical list of 500 feats or spells. And the latter is much more work for you, in addition to being harder to use for players.Yeah, I feel like I skipped that part, but a map has to be smaller than the territory. TLN's guide is brief, but basically only covers Core+Complete Arcane+Spell Compendium. DM's Fighter guide is fairly extensive, but has clear sections that focus on specific areas. Pick your target, and streamline the user's approach to understand it.

[Endarire]

I'm fond of my Hood Guide (http://bg-archive.minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=7200.0) as an example of spiffy D&D 3.x handbook content and formatting.