The Tone of Omnia

Omnia is a personal project meant to appeal to myself and those who share my preferences in a role-playing system, and as such, its tone is direct, informative, and, I hope, instructive. I have no intention of adopting the corporate tone typical of most commercial projects. There will be no "hype." There will be no negative advertising. There will be no fill-in-the-blank press releases. There will be no attempts to appeal to the lowest common denominator. There will be no assumption that readers are gullible. I shall assume that those who play Omnia and read Omnia Pro Omnibus are intelligent, imaginative, and discerning. I wish to write what I prefer to read: honest communication between parties with a shared interest. Life is too short and too precious to be wasted on business speak.

Omnia Guidelines of Visual Presentation

The most salient complaint I have about most role-playing games is their visual presentation. If I cannot get past the visual barriers, I cannot even begin to address the rules, concepts, or even the quality of the writing itself—at least, not without difficulty and a certain amount of resentment. More than once I have had my enthusiasm for a game extinguished by those responsible for its layout and typography. With this in my mind, I have made this list of guidelines for the visual presentation of Omnia and all supplemental material. I intend to adhere to these principles, and I encourage anyone who contributes original Omnia material to do so as well.

Typefaces and Type Sizes (Fonts)

Above all, the typeface ought to be as legible as possible and of a size that can be read effortlessly by most readers. For printed Omnia material, I intend to use Atkinson Hyperlegible, which was created to maximize readability (especially for those with impaired vision and/or dyslexia). For material presented on sites such as this that do not offer Atkinson Hyperlegible, I am using Arial. In both cases, I shall be using a standard size of 12.

(I learned about Atkinson Hyperlegible from Accessible Gaming Quarterly, which will be using it in future issues.)

Color and Contrast

The text and background ought to contrast as strongly as possible without being uncomfortable to the eye. In most cases, the text will be black and the background will be white to promote readability.

Layout

Layout ought to follow a logical flow. It ought to be uncluttered and simple to follow.

In printed material and PDFs, chunks of information will be confined to a single page or a single spread as much as possible. This makes it easier to use at the gaming table.