Let sleeping Antediluvians lie (Vampire the Masquerade: 5th Edition review)

I am loving some things I read about V5 but this article does nail one concern of mine and that is the layout. The White Wolf team have produced an incredibly beautiful piece of work and it gets maximum points from me for that but I really found myself somewhat alarmed when it comes to the issue of readability. My professional background happens to be in design, specifically relating to the presentation of text and graphics in terms of both readability and aesthetic quality, so I would like to think I know what I'm talking about in this regard.

The three column layout does not in my opinion lend itself well to a document intended to provide lots of information, it is a very good format for fashion or lifestyle magazines (which I strongly sense was the inspiration here) but those are intended for light reading. Quickly moving your eyes around the page is not going to be so distracting in those examples as it would be if you were trying to absorb information about tabletop game rules and mechanics.

One may respond to that by pointing out how newspapers use tight columns to display lots of information and they would be right but it also brings me to my next point, the amount of wasted space on almost every page in the preview PDF is simply frightening. White space in itself is not a bad thing and used sensibly it makes a document look a lot clearer as well as being more relaxing on the eye, but in combination with a three column layout the result is a truly claustrophobic nightmare that almost seems like a conscious attempt to make the book thick as possible.

I'm going to stop there as I could go on for hours, I have a geeky passion and sensitivity for this stuff and given how beautiful other WoD/CoD books have been in the past I never thought I'd find myself nerd raging about one.

/r/WhiteWolfRPG Thread Link - gamingtrend.com