Has anyone else even seen this (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/144651/Exemplars--Eidolons)?
This is awesome. It's like someone rewrote OD&D to run Exalted with it... in 48 pages. Because fuck you Onyx Path.
As someone who's endlessly fascinated with the permutations of classic D&D, I love it. I might even give it a try one of these days.
The amazing thing about this product is, it's not only a game, but a "how to layout your own game" with free files and art.
He's got a module that does the same thing for the TSR-style module layout.
Oh yeah, both of these are free, too.
Sine Nomine is a treasure of a resource.
I hope he gets around to a tune-up for SWN eventually.
I love reading his promo blurbs.
Your right this is as epic as Exalted and Scion. Common enemies and horrible monsters are going to get cut down pretty quick.
It's basically his fantasy system (from Spears of the Dawn) coupled with the rules from his solo adventuring books, so it's not straight out of nowhere, but an evolution of his stuff, but yeah, it's pretty nifty.
OTOH, I think his ambition of teaching people how to make old school modules in InDesign is a bit misguided. I don't think the vast majority of people trying that will even make half of what it costs to buy (or rent) InDesign.
You can turn out products almost as good with OpenOffice. Look at Mad Monks of Kwantoom (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/5072/Kabuki-Kaiser), an Asian rules/solo play supplement for Labyrinth Lord (on sale for $3.50 right now, so you should really buy it), it's got nearly an identical layout.
And while it's plainer, Basic Fantasy Roleplaying was all done in OpenOffice (or LibreOffice, or something free office)
Quote from: JeremyR;818794OTOH, I think his ambition of teaching people how to make old school modules in InDesign is a bit misguided. I don't think the vast majority of people trying that will even make half of what it costs to buy (or rent) InDesign.
You can turn out products almost as good with OpenOffice. Look at Mad Monks of Kwantoom (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/5072/Kabuki-Kaiser), an Asian rules/solo play supplement for Labyrinth Lord (on sale for $3.50 right now, so you should really buy it), it's got nearly an identical layout.
An InDesign sub a la carte costs $20 a month with a year's commitment. The full deal of just about everything Adobe makes, plus access to all their Typekit fonts, runs for $40 a month, or $30 if you've got an .edu email for the academic discount. If you're stone broke you can go with Scribus for free and just use the .IDML markup file to import things. But you really, really should not use Open Office. Laying out a book properly requires actual layout software, or things don't work so good. I'm really impressed at how well
Mad Monks of Kwantoom came out, and it clearly comes from someone who knows how to use their software, but the internal paragraph spacing alone shows why you don't want to use a word processor.
First, take a look at the paragraph at the top of page 6 in the full-size excerpt file at DTRPG. See how the spacing is all over the place inside the paragraph? It's because hyphenation seems to be turned off for the style, which forces the program to balance the words on each line to avoid breaks. You can see it in all the other paragraphs up to that point, too- gaps and rivers inside the paragraphs because the program had to make sure that no words ever broke over a line.
Word processors are not good at making these decisions, whereas InDesign has a paragraph composer that copes much more perfectly. For an example of that same paragraph rendered in InDesign, take a look here (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4qCWY8UnLrcdkRsNy1wTVFHRms/view?usp=sharing).
I can also make life easier for the composer by individually setting glyph size wobbles for each paragraph style. For that one, I told it to allow each letter to be from 97% to 103% of its standard point size, which helps the composer keep things smooth. Word processors do not generally allow this kind of fine-grained typesetting. By setting up these styles beforehand in the source files I hand out with my examples, the end user doesn't need to know about these little tricks- they just use my styles and things work out.
But really, the most crucial parts of these examples aren't even the source files themselves, they're the commentary that explains why the choices were made and the underlying typographic principles behind putting together your game product. Nobody's ever going to confuse my layout designs with those of Jez Gordon or John Harper or Zak Smith, but my layouts are very strong on "respectable pro-am competence", and that's a very attainable goal for even those of us with limited artistic gifts. Whether you use InDesign or Scribus or even, alas, OpenOffice, knowing how to block out a spread, how to use indents versus paragraph spacing, how to choose margins, how to position heads, and other basic Typesetting 101 stuff is all very useful to amateurs who want their products to look as professional as possible.
Nabbed. Definitely has a good look to it, both layout and system-wise! Now to have a better read through.
Oh, yeah.
Right up my alley. Was using 5e for high-level Zelazny-style play (epic boons, 21+ ability scores, etc.), but now might just ditch that in favor of this game.
Awesome work, Sine Nomine. I can haz supplementz?
Quote from: SineNomine;818801An InDesign sub a la carte costs $20 a month with a year's commitment. The full deal of just about everything Adobe makes, plus access to all their Typekit fonts, runs for $40 a month, or $30 if you've got an .edu email for the academic discount. If you're stone broke you can go with Scribus for free and just use the .IDML markup file to import things. But you really, really should not use Open Office. Laying out a book properly requires actual layout software, or things don't work so good. I'm really impressed at how well Mad Monks of Kwantoom came out, and it clearly comes from someone who knows how to use their software, but the internal paragraph spacing alone shows why you don't want to use a word processor.
First, take a look at the paragraph at the top of page 6 in the full-size excerpt file at DTRPG. See how the spacing is all over the place inside the paragraph? It's because hyphenation seems to be turned off for the style, which forces the program to balance the words on each line to avoid breaks. You can see it in all the other paragraphs up to that point, too- gaps and rivers inside the paragraphs because the program had to make sure that no words ever broke over a line.
Word processors are not good at making these decisions, whereas InDesign has a paragraph composer that copes much more perfectly. For an example of that same paragraph rendered in InDesign, take a look here (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4qCWY8UnLrcdkRsNy1wTVFHRms/view?usp=sharing).
I can also make life easier for the composer by individually setting glyph size wobbles for each paragraph style. For that one, I told it to allow each letter to be from 97% to 103% of its standard point size, which helps the composer keep things smooth. Word processors do not generally allow this kind of fine-grained typesetting. By setting up these styles beforehand in the source files I hand out with my examples, the end user doesn't need to know about these little tricks- they just use my styles and things work out.
But really, the most crucial parts of these examples aren't even the source files themselves, they're the commentary that explains why the choices were made and the underlying typographic principles behind putting together your game product. Nobody's ever going to confuse my layout designs with those of Jez Gordon or John Harper or Zak Smith, but my layouts are very strong on "respectable pro-am competence", and that's a very attainable goal for even those of us with limited artistic gifts. Whether you use InDesign or Scribus or even, alas, OpenOffice, knowing how to block out a spread, how to use indents versus paragraph spacing, how to choose margins, how to position heads, and other basic Typesetting 101 stuff is all very useful to amateurs who want their products to look as professional as possible.
Aside from Google, or InDesign training books do you have any recommendations on books for Typesetting 101 stuff?
Quote from: CRKrueger;818840Aside from Google, or InDesign training books do you have any recommendations on books for Typesetting 101 stuff?
That's a hard one, because what we do with RPG books is so niche. RPG books combine many of the same use cases as a reference book, a textbook, an artbook, and a fiction volume. The traditions that fit one genre don't play so well with the rest, so often it's a matter of synthesizing some sort of good practice out of the raw basics and a healthy dose of personal creativity.
The Elements of Typographic Style (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0881792063/) is as close as you're going to get to a basic bible of the process, though it goes very heavily into typefaces in a way that's not always useful for an RPG book designer. I've heard that The
Complete Manual of Typography (http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Manual-Typography-Setting-Perfect/dp/0321773268/) is more approachable, but I haven't read that one myself.
A lot of the things that are crucially important to good RPG page composition, like holding topical elements together on a spread, are a lot less important when you're typesetting a novel or doing a series of discrete magazine articles. And you also edge into graphic design with much of what we do, which isn't really a strict matter of typography and its canons. Still, understanding the basic concepts like spacing, leading, tracking, runts and orphans, appropriate margin balances, and the like can make a huge difference even if you have to wing it with other parts of the page.
I keep thinking of putting together a short document covering Typography 101-level basics for RPG page designers, but I'm perpetually short on time, and I want to sharpen my skills a little more before I put significant effort into something like that.
Quote from: Ladybird;818761I love reading his promo blurbs.
His marketing is a major step up from the rest of the DriveThru / PDF community, but what keeps me coming back is the extreme high quality of his work. Even if I don't use it RAW, his books are a treasure trove of goodies.
Quote from: JeremyR;818794OTOH, I think his ambition of teaching people how to make old school modules in InDesign is a bit misguided. I don't think the vast majority of people trying that will even make half of what it costs to buy (or rent) InDesign.
I have an old copy of Indesign (CS5, I think) I got as part of a package deal a few years back, but I've never been able to use it. As far as I can tell, it works like Pagemaker -- and I don't think like that. I need something that works more like the old Ventura Publisher -- which works much more like I think. Therefore, Microlite74/78/81 have all been done in MS Word. Word is not really suited for layout, but at least I can make it work.
QuoteYou can turn out products almost as good with OpenOffice. Look at Mad Monks of Kwantoom (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/5072/Kabuki-Kaiser), an Asian rules/solo play supplement for Labyrinth Lord (on sale for $3.50 right now, so you should really buy it), it's got nearly an identical layout.
Thanks for mentioning Mad Monks of Kwantoom is on sale. I've been wanting to look at that and I'm willing to pay $3.50 to do so. Yes, I'm cheap when it comes to things I just want to see and know I'll likely never play.
I'm going t o have to look at this.
I used to use InDesign CS2. That's what I used for a couple projects I did on Dragonsfoot. I don't have it installed on the new computer, though. I did install Scribus, but I haven't really tried it out yet.
What I'm using right now is LaTeX. Not completely; I start out with writing stuff in Markdown format, convert it to LaTeX with Pandoc, then do some table stuff and other formatting by hand in LaTeX. That's what I used for the Subhex Wilderness PDF I put up for free this past week. I didn't do everything I should typographically; I set narrow margins because that works better for screen-only formats, but I didn't adjust paper or font size to guarantee 65 to 72 characters per line. I figure I'll do that next, because I'm using my projects as a learning lab.
For me the issue with InDesign isn't the out-of-pocket cost; it's the time investment involved in learning how to use it. I find it an extremely user-unfriendly piece of software. I think Kevin has made a really good and honourable effort to show how things can be done...But still opening InDesign and getting to work on something remains a prospect that fills me with dread.
Quote from: CRKrueger;818745The amazing thing about this product is, it's not only a game, but a "how to layout your own game" with free files and art.
The
really amazing thing about it is that it's a free "how to lay out your own game" guide, which also happens to also be a playable game on the side.
Quote from: Spinachcat;818852His marketing is a major step up from the rest of the DriveThru / PDF community, but what keeps me coming back is the extreme high quality of his work. Even if I don't use it RAW, his books are a treasure trove of goodies.
So much this. He's one of the
extremely few publishers (probably the only one, actually) whose kickstarters I will give money to first, and then go back and read the description to find out what it is. Everything he's done is consistently of such high quality and so usable outside of its primary focus that I have no doubt that I'll get more than my money's worth even if it were to nominally be about something of no interest to me.
Quote from: noisms;818894For me the issue with InDesign isn't the out-of-pocket cost; it's the time investment involved in learning how to use it. I find it an extremely user-unfriendly piece of software. I think Kevin has made a really good and honourable effort to show how things can be done...But still opening InDesign and getting to work on something remains a prospect that fills me with dread.
I'm glad I'm not the only person who feels that way. Indesign looks like a great tool for people who do pro layout work every day. I need an Indesign Lite with clear instructions on how to use it to do RPG-rules like things. Even there its Pagemaker-style of operation would likely make working with it a big struggle for me.
I think InDesign can be very intimidating at first because it has so many knobs and dials on it. It allows ridiculous levels of customization and tweaking- but when you're shooting for a bog-simple LBB-type pamphlet, it's honestly a perfectly simple process.
You create a new document. You set the page dimensions and margins. It uses points and picas in the size blanks, but it understands inches- you can type "0.5 in" in the top margin blank, and it'll understand you just fine. It makes one page to start with, but you can go to the Pages tab, right-click on a page, and just insert however many more you need.
With the page made, you go over to the text tool and draw a box on the page, which defaults to a normal text object. You click in the box and paste in your text or type it in and it's there.
You highlight the text, click over on the Paragraph sidebar, and pick the paragraph style you want it to be. If such a style doesn't exist, you click the little "New Style" icon at the bottom and set it the way you want it- font, size, justification for the basics, down to a hundred delicate little tweaks if you want them. Maybe you're tired of setting things for each text box, so you go up to the Objects menu, pick your default text box, and set it so it always defaults to your preferred paragraph style.
If the text is longer than the box, a little red "plus" sign appears in the corner of the box. Click it and you get a second box stuck to your cursor. Drop it down on a new page and it continues the text from the first box.
And that's basically it. You want a head? Click on the line and change the paragraph style to a head style. You want an illustration? Draw a new box and drop the image into it. Right-click on the box, pick "Fitting", and decide how you want it to fit- proportionally, or scaled to the box, or the box scales to it. Drag it around the page until it's where you want it to be, and click the toggle to make other boxes' text wrap around it. Need a table? You can just insert it inline with the text, or if you want more control, make a new box and put the table in there, dragging it around like it was an illustration.
Combined with an existing template where someone else has already set up the paragraph styles and text object styles, that's basically all you need to know to set up an LBB-style pamphlet. Once you get comfortable with the basics like that, you can start branching out into all the tools that InDesign offers to streamline the production process and fine-tune your pages to your exact specifications.
It's true, though, that the really critical part of good typography for a project is the understanding of what should be there. If you don't have that, it doesn't matter what tool you use- you're gonna have a bad time. If you do have it, then the tool might fight you every inch of the way, but you'll at least know what you're supposed to make it do.
@SineNomine
How did you acquire Indesign? I am curious how the subscription service is working out if that what you went with.
I've got an academic affiliation, so I can get the full CC package of pretty much everything Adobe makes for $30/month, with a year's commitment. Without it, I'd be paying $50/month with that same commitment, which may be more than a casual publisher wants to drop.
For them, I'd recommend the single-app option. just taking InDesign, which comes with their TypeKit font selection. It'll run $20/month for a yearly commitment, or $30/month if you want to be able to drop it early. I'd suggest a month or so on the per-month plan if the publisher's hesitant or just doing a casual one-off, but if you want to do serious sustained production, this is the tool you need.
I'm not completely familiar with Scribus, but from what little I looked at (to confirm I'd installed it and it was working,) I might recommend that over InDesign for people just trying to sell a couple RPG products. Unless you are working for a large publisher and hired to do the design, you don't want to fork over even $20 or $30/month ($240 or $360 for a year.) Go with free.
The main thing you want from InDesign that you can't get from a word processor is the way it flows text into connected frames around graphics and tables. You can get that with Scribus. You can get some of the other features of either, like better typograhical output, precise/easier positioning, not screwing up or bloating the PDF, and just avoiding the annoyances built into word processors, with plenty of tools. But only a dedicated honest-to-god layout program like InDesign or Scribus seems to do the flowing text into linked frames.
Is MS Publisher (which I have) still considered laughably bad, or merely sub-optimal these days?
Quote from: Baron Opal;819115Is MS Publisher (which I have) still considered laughably bad, or merely sub-optimal these days?
It's better than trying to use a word processor for layout, and I don't know that I'd bother grabbing Scribus if you already have it.
If cash is a concern for people, Scribus is a real alternative. It's not going to be as friendly as InDesign, but the real crux of the matter is having the typographic knowledge, rather than having a really good layout tool. The latter won't help you if you don't have the former, which is why it's so important to master the very basic stuff: composing spreads, identifying elements and keeping them together, spacing heads correctly, using paragraph following spaces and indents correctly (i.e., not at the same time), and all the other things that you could theoretically do even with Microsoft Word if you had to, if only you knew that you had to do it.
Also, separate your content from your structure and layout, people. If you write your main text first and *then* do your section headers, import tables and graphics and move them where they make sense, and make other format decisions after all the creative work is done, you'll make a better product, even with MS Word.
Quote from: SineNomine;819119but the real crux of the matter is having the typographic knowledge, rather than having a really good layout tool. The latter won't help you if you don't have the former,
I agree with this 100%. Once you've got some typography under your belt, inDesign makes a lot of sense. So much so that I now find traditional word processors frustratingly unintuitive and clunky.
I was fortunate to get the Adobe suite cheap before they went to the subscriptions. If the current version is too expensive, I wonder if it's possible to purchase an earlier second-hand version of inDesign.
Quote from: talysman;819114But only a dedicated honest-to-god layout program like InDesign or Scribus seems to do the flowing text into linked frames.
Word 2010 lets me link two text boxes so that text flows from one to the next. I was very happy when I discovered that. Most of the other things described remain difficult or impossible to do; I usually resort to Visual Basic to position things the way I want them. (My documents remain ugly but that's [STRIKE]probably[/STRIKE] because of me and not the software.)
Quote from: SineNomine;818908I think InDesign can be very intimidating at first because it has so many knobs and dials on it. It allows ridiculous levels of customization and tweaking- but when you're shooting for a bog-simple LBB-type pamphlet, it's honestly a perfectly simple process.
You create a new document. You set the page dimensions and margins. It uses points and picas in the size blanks, but it understands inches- you can type "0.5 in" in the top margin blank, and it'll understand you just fine. It makes one page to start with, but you can go to the Pages tab, right-click on a page, and just insert however many more you need.
With the page made, you go over to the text tool and draw a box on the page, which defaults to a normal text object. You click in the box and paste in your text or type it in and it's there.
You highlight the text, click over on the Paragraph sidebar, and pick the paragraph style you want it to be. If such a style doesn't exist, you click the little "New Style" icon at the bottom and set it the way you want it- font, size, justification for the basics, down to a hundred delicate little tweaks if you want them. Maybe you're tired of setting things for each text box, so you go up to the Objects menu, pick your default text box, and set it so it always defaults to your preferred paragraph style.
If the text is longer than the box, a little red "plus" sign appears in the corner of the box. Click it and you get a second box stuck to your cursor. Drop it down on a new page and it continues the text from the first box.
And that's basically it. You want a head? Click on the line and change the paragraph style to a head style. You want an illustration? Draw a new box and drop the image into it. Right-click on the box, pick "Fitting", and decide how you want it to fit- proportionally, or scaled to the box, or the box scales to it. Drag it around the page until it's where you want it to be, and click the toggle to make other boxes' text wrap around it. Need a table? You can just insert it inline with the text, or if you want more control, make a new box and put the table in there, dragging it around like it was an illustration.
Combined with an existing template where someone else has already set up the paragraph styles and text object styles, that's basically all you need to know to set up an LBB-style pamphlet. Once you get comfortable with the basics like that, you can start branching out into all the tools that InDesign offers to streamline the production process and fine-tune your pages to your exact specifications.
It's true, though, that the really critical part of good typography for a project is the understanding of what should be there. If you don't have that, it doesn't matter what tool you use- you're gonna have a bad time. If you do have it, then the tool might fight you every inch of the way, but you'll at least know what you're supposed to make it do.
Thanks for doing this sort of project. Good Works like this will surely get you an upgraded afterlife.
Arise thread from the ancient past! Arise!
So...two years ago I downloaded Exemplars and Eidolons and for whatever reason, it sat unread on my old hard drive. I was cleaning up my DriveThruRPG downloads on my new computer and came upon E&E.
Oh
My
Gawd
This is a great game. Not kinda good. Not good cuz its free. Straight up badass fantasy.
I backed the Godbound KS and its superb. E&E is a precursor project, obviously born from Sine Nomine's Scarlet Heroes and you can see SWN influence too.
But...its badass AS IS.
It's easily the best OSR chargen I've seen.
It's an amazing combo of Old School and New Design. Not "new school", but fresh ideas which mesh perfectly with traditional RPG concepts.
Here's the crux of my review: its 1am now, I read it twice 6 hours ago, I want to stay up to dawn cranking Slayer and prep an E&E campaign.
Also, I think E&E would really rock for Mage Knight.
BTW, the PDF is still free.
http://www.rpgnow.com/product/144651/Exemplars--Eidolons
Thank you Kevin!
BTW, are there any 3PP publishers creating stuff for Sine Nomine's games?
This violates the moratorium on ALLITERATION & AMPERSANDS in RPG names.
Yeah, I've never run a full campaign of E&E but it's become one of my favorite games for quick one-shots or when I need to put together a handful of sessions. Characters come together quickly and are really badass when they hit the ground. The mortal heroes of Godbound give it some competition for that sort of thing, but the simplicity and portability of E&E give that game a slight edge in the not-quite-demigod department.
Looking through this has me thinking of Zothique...
Then again, I've had Zothique on the brain lately.
Quote from: noisms;818894For me the issue with InDesign isn't the out-of-pocket cost; it's the time investment involved in learning how to use it. I find it an extremely user-unfriendly piece of software. I think Kevin has made a really good and honourable effort to show how things can be done...But still opening InDesign and getting to work on something remains a prospect that fills me with dread.
I used to work in magazine and newspaper publishing, both Pagemaker, Quark and Indesign.
InDesign is not that hard, I use to give half hour tutorials to people. Like Photoshop it is a deep software but the basics are not that hard to grasp.
I do think the move to Cloud Subscriptions is BS, my old work bought a load of licenses just before it kicked in.
Use to be that you could get InDesign and Photoshop at a significant educational discount, I see that still exists but it's not the deal it use to be as a single edition of InDesign could last you a couple of years at least.
Quote from: Spinachcat;980982Arise thread from the ancient past! Arise!
...
Oh
My
Gawd
This is a great game. Not kinda good. Not good cuz its free. Straight up badass fantasy.
I downloaded this but read it for the layout commentary. Will go back now and read the actual ruleset.
As someone who worked in layout, what are your thoughts on Kevin's commentary?
BTW, I didn't see the OGL attached to E&E. I checked my Godbound and Silent Legions PDFs and maybe I keep missing it, but I didn't it see it there either.
Does Sine Nomine not use the OGL?
Quote from: Spinachcat;981306Does Sine Nomine not use the OGL?
I don't use it, no, outside of mandatory employment on Red Tide because it was an LL-compatible book. It doesn't offer me anything I need, and I have a strict policy of not signing anything superfluous to my requirements. If someone else wants to lift mechanics from it, well, they can do that with or without an OGL, and I'd have the specific proper-noun IP under product identity anyway.
Quote from: Spinachcat;981254As someone who worked in layout, what are your thoughts on Kevin's commentary?
It's good. He covers the basics in terms of kerning, leading, fonts, spacing, columns, headings. I found it interesting to read on the idiosyncratic use of fonts and headers, I had never looked at the old modules with that kind of eye. I think he identifies well what was good in the original layouts but also encourages people to follow better practices in their own layout for clarity instead of just slavishly imitating every element of the old design.
I was never talented at layout the way a graphic artist can be but I was good about the details that matter for legibility, clarity and printing. The best layout people have both the creativity and the meticulous attention to detail.
Quote from: SineNomine;981378I don't use it, no, outside of mandatory employment on Red Tide because it was an LL-compatible book. It doesn't offer me anything I need, and I have a strict policy of not signing anything superfluous to my requirements. If someone else wants to lift mechanics from it, well, they can do that with or without an OGL, and I'd have the specific proper-noun IP under product identity anyway.
Agreed. Palladium showed up long before the OGL.
Do you have a 3PP license for people to publish stuff for your games?
Or is that best left to blogs / fan sites?