Once Again: Publishing Program

[WastedTime]

I am very sorry to have to post this question concerning publishing programs as I know a very similar one was posted not too long ago. However, I can not seem to find the post and I am not allowed to search the forum for some odd reason. Anyway on to the question:

My personal campaign is very low magic and high roleplay. Therefore, many of the core rules have been changed, deleted, or been replaced. To this effect, I have started on a players handbook to the campaign. I was wondering what program I could use to help layout/publish the pages. Currently I am just using Word, but as I include a good number of pictures (painted miniature pictures, session pictures, etc.), Word does not seem to fullfil my needs. Of course, InDesign at $700 seems a good waste of money since the publishing program is soley for inhouse/entertainment use.

(Finally the question) So, is there any suggestions for a publishing/page layout program suited not so much for commerical publication, but for general inhouse publications? If not, I am sure I can get by on Word, just wanted to see if I was missing anything out there.

Thanks all.

 

[HellHound]

For in-house work, I really have no idea.

I used to use Corel WordPerfect for all my in house material - not much different (in end result at least) than using MSWord. In fact, when I first tried my hand at publishing, I pulbished Librum Equitis volume 1 to PDF using nothing but Corel WordPerfect 9. (which also explains why I am removing Librum Equitis volume 1 from the virtual storefront in January - it's not too pretty).

 

[jaerdaph]

I swear by Microsoft Publisher for non professional layout - it's more flexible than Word for what you can do, and works better with Adobe Acrobat when creating PDFs as well.

 

[Brudewollen]

I've used various iterations of Word and Word Perfect just fine for my in-house stuff. My homebrew set of printed rules and world info for my old 2nd Edition campaign stretched to close to 200 pages of material with very small print. I did that book with Word Perfect 4.1 for the Amiga which didn't even let you effectively do tables. (I had to format everything by hand using ascii characters! Needless to say, that old version of WP wasn't WYSIWYG). The artwork by my players, diagrams and maps were simply pasted to the sheets, then photocopied. It didn't look great, but it was pleanty good for in-house. Now, with a scanner I could do a much better job, but that was far too fancy and expensive an option in that day and age.

For 3rd Edition I've been using Word 98 and it's been fine, though I've consciously been trying to keep my rules and world stuff to a minimum (though my new section on Religions and Gods will be massive when I finally get around to converting and expanding it). At present I have may 45 pages of new rules, including a big section of new spells, domains and a list of spells I've banned from my game, as well as a number of new skills, feats and a lot of world specific stuff about races and some new classes. When I finally do my new section on the Gods, I'm hoping to keep this thing under 100 pages.

I'm not sure what you are doing with your house rules that's so complex, but if inserting photos, maps, etc. into a Word doc using text boxes, wrapping text and a scanner isn't enough, then maybe you do need one of the big programs.

I've played around with InDesign a bit (I want to know what I'm getting into before I purchase it for the publication I plan to make in the near future) and it's not nearly so simple to use as your standard word processor. It has to be pretty open ended to accomodate a virtually limitless array of publishing options someone might need. It's mightily impressive, but a bit complex. That being said, it's not so complex that after an hour or two fiddling with it I wasn't already experimenting with certain design elements. Just expect a certain learning curve.

*snip*--Edited the illegal stuff out. Dinkeldog