I need advice with the software I use to write with

[BluWolf]

Like most folks, I am sure, I use MS Word, excel and PDF primarily in writing my homebrew and player's guides for my game. Over the last 20 years of working on stuff all of my notes, different versions of world and player's guides have become unwieldy. I seem to spend more time now a days searching, reformatting, editing than creating.

I am looking for recommendations or directions to some best practices guides in sort of, what I will call, a "home hobbiest publisher". I don't ever really plan on publishing my material. I would just like to bring a more professional production level to my game material for my group.

All advice in close or afar of the question as asked is extremely welcome.

 

[fba827]

If I were able to spent time on my game world, I would have the EXACT problem you're having. So while I can not offer proven solutions, I can offer sympathy and a thought or two for concepts to consider...


1) Without extending much past the resources you've already mentioned, I can only think of templates --- find a formatting/design style that you like, make a template for it (and do a rough of one section to see if you want to shift stuff around) and then take that template and use it like an iron fist

2) Online or offline html documents -- Make stuff a html doc that way you can hyperlink between sections and pages

3) online / offline modularized html -- make each section/paragraph it's own seperate html page. Then make your master copy an html file and all you need to do is use include statements that pull the info from the modularized files. This saves on typing since all you need to do is worry about formatting and shifting the include statements where ever you want them

4) (if you have online capable space) make it a wiki if you want the players to do some of the work too

 

[BluWolf]

1) Without extending much past the resources you've already mentioned, I can only think of templates --- find a formatting/design style that you like, make a template for it (and do a rough of one section to see if you want to shift stuff around) and then take that template and use it like an iron fist

Do you know of anywhere that gives a good primer on learning how to work with and/or creating templates?

4) (if you have online capable space) make it a wiki if you want the players to do some of the work too

I have started that effort (see my sig block) but the players I had did not participate and I am currently between groups. I do really like the concept of a wiki but the thing I have learned is you REALLY need to do a lot of preplanning in order for it not to become a sprawling mess. The biggest limitation I see in wikis is that you have to have a solid understanding of all the root elements otherwise you do alot of back tracking.

Know of any good "structuring" guides for Wikis??

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

A Tiddlywiki is easier than a server based one like Mediawiki, and far more portable.

Templates are another big one. You'll be doing the same type of note repeatedly so once you have a format you like make a template for it. That way you can just fill in the pertinent info.

Also work on your filing and naming system. That's the most important part of keeping track of things. Break up your material into manageable groups and make sure files are named with something identifiable and a date for version control.

 

[MarauderX]

I have learned to use links to other documents in Word & excel. It's easy to write up something, tag a link to the page with the BBEG's stats, and pull it up like a web page.

Or you could use a local wikispace on your machine, and post up what you want the players to have on something public like mine: www.correl.wikispaces.com.

 

[Thanee]

In general, texts are written first (simple layout) and layouted afterwards.

LaTeX is great for templating, but the learning curve is pretty huge, when you are used to Word.

Bye
Thanee