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I was poking around in the scenario archives at Apolyton when I came across an article that touched on my experience with some recent, and some not so recent, scenarios.
The article is "Advanced Scenario Design" by Leon Marrick, assisted by Harlan Thompson and others. The section that rang a bell with me was "How to tell a bad scenario: The Seven Signs". What follows is a direct quote except that, for brevity, I have taken the liberty of removing the authors' descriptions of points that have no bearing on the present topic:
"How to tell a bad scenario: The Seven Signs
Bad scenarios are two-a-penny; they seem to breed wherever not rigorously controlled. The following tip-offs seem like no-brainers, but how ubiquitous they are!
1. An unfunctional scenario.
2. A garbled readme or scenario briefing. Nobody has any excuse for not spell-checking his work, or for not making certain his audience knows what the scenario is. Those writing documents in a second language had better make QUITE certain they are comprehensible.
3. A map mostly consisting of grassland.
4. By-guess-and-by-God terrain alterations
5. Misspelled city names. Some people use an atlas in their native tongue when naming cities. This is good, especially in scenarios with protagonists speaking that language (There is a Catalan scenario that benefits greatly from this.). Others, whose own language may not be English, use English to attract a wider audience. This, too, is good, although extreme care is required. Some people can't seem to decide which language they are using. This is pathetic. Check out an atlas, and get a dictionary.
6. No or inappropriate scenario limitations
7. Cities that riot, starve, sell off structures, etc. during the first turn."
I would like to add another point to this list:
8. Misspellings or bad grammar in any window or pop-up that a player will see during the course of the game.
It does not take much reading of the threads at this site to realize how much time and effort designers spend to get the unit names, unit icons and unit placements absolutely right; to obtain and edit the appropriate map; struggle with the limitations of events and rules files to get the AI to correctly move units; and then fix the inevitable bugs that show up during play testing. The effort put in to get a professional result is immense. As a player, I truly admire and appreciate your work.
What I find difficult to understand is why, after you have spent hundreds of hours on your project, the hour or two needed to thoroughly spell check events, game, labels and rules files are sometimes so difficult to come by. It really is jarring to start a superbly crafted scenario and within ten minutes see spelling errors that would embarrass a sixth grader. In a few instances, where a particular pop-up appeared frequently, I've gone in and fixed it just so I would not have to look at the same mistake hundreds of times.
I realize that some designers may not have an English language spell check available on their word processing software. However, in view of the incredibly high degree of cooperation that exists among the participants at this site, it should not be difficult to find someone who can do it for you. Heck, if you're really stuck, give me a shout.
The article is "Advanced Scenario Design" by Leon Marrick, assisted by Harlan Thompson and others. The section that rang a bell with me was "How to tell a bad scenario: The Seven Signs". What follows is a direct quote except that, for brevity, I have taken the liberty of removing the authors' descriptions of points that have no bearing on the present topic:
"How to tell a bad scenario: The Seven Signs
Bad scenarios are two-a-penny; they seem to breed wherever not rigorously controlled. The following tip-offs seem like no-brainers, but how ubiquitous they are!
1. An unfunctional scenario.
2. A garbled readme or scenario briefing. Nobody has any excuse for not spell-checking his work, or for not making certain his audience knows what the scenario is. Those writing documents in a second language had better make QUITE certain they are comprehensible.
3. A map mostly consisting of grassland.
4. By-guess-and-by-God terrain alterations
5. Misspelled city names. Some people use an atlas in their native tongue when naming cities. This is good, especially in scenarios with protagonists speaking that language (There is a Catalan scenario that benefits greatly from this.). Others, whose own language may not be English, use English to attract a wider audience. This, too, is good, although extreme care is required. Some people can't seem to decide which language they are using. This is pathetic. Check out an atlas, and get a dictionary.
6. No or inappropriate scenario limitations
7. Cities that riot, starve, sell off structures, etc. during the first turn."
I would like to add another point to this list:
8. Misspellings or bad grammar in any window or pop-up that a player will see during the course of the game.
It does not take much reading of the threads at this site to realize how much time and effort designers spend to get the unit names, unit icons and unit placements absolutely right; to obtain and edit the appropriate map; struggle with the limitations of events and rules files to get the AI to correctly move units; and then fix the inevitable bugs that show up during play testing. The effort put in to get a professional result is immense. As a player, I truly admire and appreciate your work.
What I find difficult to understand is why, after you have spent hundreds of hours on your project, the hour or two needed to thoroughly spell check events, game, labels and rules files are sometimes so difficult to come by. It really is jarring to start a superbly crafted scenario and within ten minutes see spelling errors that would embarrass a sixth grader. In a few instances, where a particular pop-up appeared frequently, I've gone in and fixed it just so I would not have to look at the same mistake hundreds of times.
I realize that some designers may not have an English language spell check available on their word processing software. However, in view of the incredibly high degree of cooperation that exists among the participants at this site, it should not be difficult to find someone who can do it for you. Heck, if you're really stuck, give me a shout.
That document should be required reading for any self-respecting scenario maker anyway, even if some of it is outdated by now.
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