D&D 3E/3.5 Formatting/Page Appearance Suggestions and Tips For Publishing

[_Michael_]

So, I'm thinking of publishing on DTRPG, but I want to make my stuff splashy. I have access to CorelDraw, so I can do some stuff, but it would have to be graphics that I'd then import into another program. I'd like to have page decor and other decorative elements, but my skill list with descriptions I was thinking of publishing is 119 pages long at 12 point font in 2-column format using Cagliostro, with artwork centered on the page.

I don't have any preference for word processing programs, but I'm on a Macbook, and am poor af. I miss the program PageMaker by Adobe because it was perfect for this kind of stuff, but if anyone has any suggestions for good programs that can handle images and graphics for layering pages to look like actual 3.5e books, I'm all ears.

Also, what's a good font size? The Player's Handbook seems to use 8 point font in a times roman-esque font. I prefer fonts like Artifex, which has a little panache without being over the top. Font size suggesitons, font family suggestions, different sizes for titles, etc. I'm open to it all.

Thanks in advance!

 

[aco175]

I use 11 font Calibri in anything I put on DMsGuild. I'm finding 10pt is getting a little small for my eyes and think for many others as well. My other suggestion is to stick with black letters on white or a tan parchment background. I still recall the old Dragon magazine articles with black background and red letters and having a terrible time with them 20 years ago.

Think about function over form for the reader, otherwise I/they will give up and not read your thing.

 

[_Michael_]

I use 11 font Calibri in anything I put on DMsGuild. I'm finding 10pt is getting a little small for my eyes and think for many others as well. My other suggestion is to stick with black letters on white or a tan parchment background. I still recall the old Dragon magazine articles with black background and red letters and having a terrible time with them 20 years ago.

Think about function over form for the reader, otherwise I/they will give up and not read your thing.

Absolutely.

I think 11 might do to compress it a bit, and I feel the same about the tan parchment color. I wanted to do some kind of page border or flourish, too.

Artifex is great for a bit of an archaic look similar to times family but a touch of whimsy without being difficult to read. I’m using border boxes around highlighted text when needed, but I could do a darker parchment shade to highlight text, too.

 

[MoonSong]

Have you tried Scribus? It is an open source alternative to pagemaker/in Design and it runsin Mac. As for fonts, I'm fond of Century Gothic. It has good legibility and even at 10 it is good on the eyes.

For composition, you can't go wring with the classic two-thirds box off-border by two ninths.

 

[_Michael_]

For composition, you can't go wring with the classic two-thirds box off-border by two ninths.

Can you give me an example of this?

Definitely going to try Scribus. Can't believe someone else remembers PageMaker! Such a great program that needs a re-release without any addition of bells and whistles.

Century Gothic is another good one. I do like to vary between two to three fonts (one for the body, one for the titles, and another for any art or other flair). I would think a sans serif font like Arial would be preferred over others for things like tables of contents and indices for easier readability. Some books take it too far, though, and choose a font that's distracting.

 

[MoonSong]

Can you give me an example of this?

Divide the page on a 9x9 grid. Make a 6x6 box on the lower-outer corner. Move the box two little rectangles up and two little rectangles towards the spine.
The box is the space for your text and art.

 

[Simon Miles]

We are a (very) small non-professional publisher based in the UK. The initial draft of all our products has been done in Word using two columns of 11point, 14 for subtitles and such. Our favoured font is Footlight MT Light, but this is a personal preference as it looks a little bit more Olde Worlde and unusual than Times New Roman. We use Word so we can insert contents and index very easily. We put the art in roughly as well, mainly as place-holders for the final art. The whole thing is then exported in PDF and then imported to Affinity Publisher 2. This part of the process is a bit clumsy but once in Affinity you have a lot more flexibility that Word in terms of layout and text wrapping, although adding extra text is a pain and removing stuff also causes problems. Likewise Bullet-points are the bane of my life.
We publish through DriveThru, which is pretty easy for the pdf only versions, but if you want Print on Demand there are a few loops you need to jump through, hence the extra step of going through Affinity. Drivethru do offer excellent, friendly support for this process. They produce templates that you can load straight into Affinity and then insert your text into that. Getting the page sizes the same is the key to it but you will always need to tweak the result afterwards, although I find this process quite good fun.
We very deliberately went for a "Classic TSR" format, despite being OSR that is compatible with AD&D 1st and 2nd editions as we like that look and feel (we are Grognards at heart, I suspect) and we are continually pleased with the final results. You can see more on the page samples we have on Drivethru - go through here: www.dunrominuniversitypress.co.uk

 

[Gus L]

A) If you want to make something with a layout - Affinity is around $50 or far less on sale.

B) I would find 100% free fonts rather then paid fonts or fonts with "for personal use" conditions - or buy fonts, that is also a thing you could do.

C) Consider using a 11 or 12 point font with at least 14 point baseline. This is especially true I think for tables - though tables mess up baseline a fair bit.

D) Think about you page size - what works on A4 might not work so well on A5.

 

[Ath'kethin]

Can you give me an example of this?

Definitely going to try Scribus. Can't believe someone else remembers PageMaker! Such a great program that needs a re-release without any addition of bells and whistles.

Century Gothic is another good one. I do like to vary between two to three fonts (one for the body, one for the titles, and another for any art or other flair). I would think a sans serif font like Arial would be preferred over others for things like tables of contents and indices for easier readability. Some books take it too far, though, and choose a font that's distracting.

I wouldn't use Scribus. I believe that DMSGuild, and probably Ingram/Lightning Source in general, no longer accepts PDFs made using Scribus for PoD projects. And for my part I had an absolutely awful time using the program to put a book together back when it WAS allowed.

If you don't have access to programs like Indesign, I strongly ecommend Affinity as mentioned above. It's inexpensive, robust, and relatively easy to use.

 

[MoonSong]

I wouldn't use Scribus. I believe that DMSGuild, and probably Ingram/Lightning Source in general, no longer accepts PDFs made using Scribus for PoD projects. And for my part I had an absolutely awful time using the program to put a book together back when it WAS allowed.

If you don't have access to programs like Indesign, I strongly ecommend Affinity as mentioned above. It's inexpensive, robust, and relatively easy to use.

OP didn't mention PoD being a factor, and they mentioned money being a problem. That's why I mentioned Scribus instead of Affinity.

Why did DMsGuild stopped accepting pdfs made with Scribus?