01-31-2023, 02:30 PM | #1 |
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Hmm, looks like Earth, circa CE 2020+
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Why are GURPS directions better than Real Life?
Which directions are more important? Those for a role-playing game, or for a smoke detector that could save your life?
GURPS supplement: author's first draft, editor's review, author's second draft, editor's review, author's revisions, playtest/team review, author's revisions, editor's edits, final version. Smoke detector: I learned, after questioning the company, that the activation directions on a smoke detector I bought don't actually work. What does GURPS describe better than directions for "real-life" things?
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Kerry Thornley: Dwarf Planet Eris, Discordianism, and The John F. Kennedy Assassination Without Thornley, there would never have been the Steve Jackson Games edition of Principia Discordia Top 12 Clues You're a Role-Playing Old-Timer My humorous (I hope) article that also promotes SJGames/GURPS GURPS Fantasy Folk: Elves My first GURPS supplement |
01-31-2023, 02:33 PM | #2 |
Join Date: Sep 2004
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Re: Why are GURPS directions better than Real Life?
Not much of a mystery. For most products directions are an afterthought. For GURPS, directions are the product.
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01-31-2023, 02:39 PM | #3 |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Why are GURPS directions better than Real Life?
Product directions are generally there for avoiding legal liability, or are an afterthought, as naloth notes. In a GURPS product, the directions are the product.
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GURPS Overhaul |
01-31-2023, 04:35 PM | #4 | |
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Hmm, looks like Earth, circa CE 2020+
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Re: Why are GURPS directions better than Real Life?
Quote:
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Kerry Thornley: Dwarf Planet Eris, Discordianism, and The John F. Kennedy Assassination Without Thornley, there would never have been the Steve Jackson Games edition of Principia Discordia Top 12 Clues You're a Role-Playing Old-Timer My humorous (I hope) article that also promotes SJGames/GURPS GURPS Fantasy Folk: Elves My first GURPS supplement |
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01-31-2023, 07:06 PM | #5 |
Join Date: Jan 2017
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Re: Why are GURPS directions better than Real Life?
I've helped write instructions before. It was a small part of a previous job. We didn't have a dedicated writer or editor. GURPS does. It helps immensely when you have people specifically devoted to the roles of writing and editing.
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01-31-2023, 07:13 PM | #6 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Why are GURPS directions better than Real Life?
A long time back, when I studied technical writing, our instructor told us about one of her students, a firefighter, who wrote instructions on how to put on an oxygen mask. He tried his first draft out on a co-worker. The co-worker put on the mask and started to suffocate—because the student hadn't put in "turn on the oxygen" as an earlier step!
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
01-31-2023, 08:08 PM | #7 |
Join Date: Apr 2005
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Re: Why are GURPS directions better than Real Life?
Tech manuals don't have playtesters. These days they barely have editors and proofreaders.
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02-01-2023, 05:11 AM | #8 |
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
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Re: Why are GURPS directions better than Real Life?
Just have a ChatBot write the instructions.
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“When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love ...” Marcus Aurelius |
02-01-2023, 07:26 AM | #9 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Pioneer Valley
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Re: Why are GURPS directions better than Real Life?
Beyond that, far too many product directions are written in the countries where they're made, and haphazardly "translated" into English.
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My gaming blog: Apotheosis of the Invisible City "Call me old-fashioned, but after you're dead, I don't think you should be entitled to a Dodge any more." - my wife It's not that I don't understand what you're saying. It's that I disagree with what you're saying. |
02-01-2023, 10:58 AM | #10 |
Join Date: Dec 2012
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Re: Why are GURPS directions better than Real Life?
Which (with the rise of computer translation) occasionally creates the problem of the 'instructions' just saying things like 'Could not connect to translation server.'
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Warning, I have the Distractible and Imaginative quirks in real life. "The more corrupt a government, the more it legislates." -- Tacitus Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted. |
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directions, instructions, real life, real life technology, smoke |
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