Thoughtful Thursday #10

When I moved downtown, I would visit a local comic shop looking to see if they had any RPG books. It was futile, they had a few,  but they were not in the business of keeping it up-to-date. Still, they had a game that eventually caught my eye. Teenge Mutant Ninja Turtles and other strangeness. At that point, I had only read one comic book. It was an Iron Man that made no sense to me (it was mid-story arc, with lots of callbacks to previous books I had no access to). When I got TMNT , I didn't even realize it was Based on a comic book. But it did have ninja in the title, so I was intrigued. This was another game that blew my mind. 1st level characters were amazingly capable and the list of powers and abilities let you make almost any character without creating a needlessly crunchy system. The horrible layout of the rules challenge player mastery all on its own. I played an entire adventure before I realized that there were special one-off rules for each ability in the description of that ability in the glossary.
Since then, when I am designing my own games, I have worked to make sure that the relevant rules are either presented together in the same section or inform you to refer to other relevant sections.