I’ll essay an on-track post here: One thing that could be pretty useful with these sorts of guides is some cross-referencing. In a lot of cases, there is overlap between skills. Let’s say you wanted a guide to smithing*. Some weapons and armor can be produced with the Blacksmithing skill, while others require specialized skills. Sometimes the obstacle is different. There are also skills from other stocks with slightly different coverage, like War Art. It would actually be useful (in a smithing-centric game) just to go through the book and cross-reference all of the skills/obstacles to make a knife, for instance. (Off the top of my head, you can do it with Blacksmith, Black Metal Artifice, Smithcraft, Weaponsmith, or War Art)
I have occasional moments where I look at a task and ask myself “Uh, what skill is that anyway?” In some domains (smithing, or even more so healing) the answer is “any of these, take your pick” but in other cases (stealth being the most obvious example: an intent might be achievable with Stealthy or Inconspicuous either one, but any given task will fall only into one skill or the other) the domain has strictly-delineated skills that do not overlap.
This is maybe a slightly different kind of guide: whereas we’re all familiar with the broad outlines of fictional dungeoneering, I only know a tiny bit about actual smithing and it’s still probably more than many gamers. So in the one case we’re working from a general task (move through a dungeon) to specific ones (dig out from a collapse). In the other case, it’s maybe useful to have something to take a specific task (fix the boat) and help us say “No, Mending isn’t quite right, you need Boatwright for that.” Personally, I’m kind of obsessive and I get at least a tickle at the back of my brain (“there’s a skill for that!”) but it’s easy to forget what has specific skills and what doesn’t. Quick: what skills can make a crossbow? (Attiliator and War Art, but not Weaponsmith or Bowyer/Bowcraft).
Actually, tell you what: I’ll take a crack at an Artisan Guide. I know we got some outdoorsy folks around here who could probably knock that right out of the woods, any takers?
If BW were a game about forging what you believe in*, this would be a pretty important domain. It’s certainly an area with lots of partially-overlapping skills, varying obstacles, and so forth. But I don’t think I’ve ever been in a game with actual overlapping smith skills among the PCs, so while it’s a good example I don’t think it’s actually a particularly important guide to actually write.
**I mostly believe in axes, why do you ask?
