The CF Instruction Manual Project (tm) is off to a good start. I'm not sure how long it'll take me to get it to a semi-complete functional state, but it's at 30 pages without any class descriptions at the moment. I'm reusing helpfiles where I can, but due to a variety of reasons, I'm having to summarize or completely rewrite some to be more readable or flow with the document. Other times, I'm going freeform under the assumption that this is intended to pique someone's interest. If they want more than a two-line summary of "feral growl", they can look it up in the help files.

What I really should do is roll up a newbie and go through the MUD academy, and base the manual on that layout. That way, a newbie who has skimmed the manual might at least find familiar tutorial structure in the academy.

Why bother? I'm doing this because I thought: how would I get my gamer friends interested in CF? Telling them to "Go to carrionfields.com and browse helpfiles" doesn't really cut it...but if I could email them a pdf that they could flip through to "learn" the game...maybe. Especially if there's a familiar RPG structure that they can connect with.

So it has to be a combination of instruction (for the rules lawyer bunch) and marketing (for the guys who don't know what CF even is). We'll see if it goes anywhere.