OSR OSR Layout and Design Thread

Whizbang Dustyboots · Apr 16, 2026

Scribe said:
A tiny option will be created for this, my day has been so naughty word, I think it's time to hide in some hobby work.

Yeah, I think my idea I'm going to turn out is going to be a nice escape from all the serious stuff in life. It might be used in a serious business style of RPG, but the table(s) themselves will be silly and fun.

Whizbang Dustyboots · May 3, 2026

God, the wrestling with Affinity Publisher is the longest part of getting anything out the door for me.

Empty out page, create text into, copy existing table from one page, go to the blank page to copy it and edit into being a new table, paste it and ... nothing's there.

And all the online tutorials basically say "dur, ctl-c, ctrl-v," which isn't exactly helpful.

Fenris-77 · May 3, 2026

Whizbang Dustyboots said:
God, the wrestling with Affinity Publisher is the longest part of getting anything out the door for me.

Empty out page, create text into, copy existing table from one page, go to the blank page to copy it and edit into being a new table, paste it and ... nothing's there.

And all the online tutorials basically say "dur, ctl-c, ctrl-v," which isn't exactly helpful.

I often use alt and drag to copy instead of copy and paste. The paste function can be finicky.

Whizbang Dustyboots · May 3, 2026

Fenris-77 said:
I often use alt and drag to copy instead of copy and paste. The paste function can be finicky.

There's some more basic Affinity thing I'm just not getting, I think, and the online help is very much experienced pros talking to experienced pros, rather than "hey, here's the basic step you need to do first, before any of the other stuff will work."

dbolack · May 3, 2026

Sacrosanct said:
I tend to write in Word. It's just easier when writing a book than typing directly into InDesign. so tables are written quickly by using tabs between columns. When in InDesign, you just select the text and go to "convert text to table". Super easy peasy. Affinity doesn't have that option. You have to create the tables manually. And formatting them is not nearly as easy as InDesign either. For a book with lots of tables, InDesign is the way to go. Saves so much time.

Significantly better than the PageMaker days, where I had to use a different Adobe app, export, then import the table as an art file (eps, IIRC. )

dbolack · May 3, 2026

I'm gonna be an opinionated cuss for a second. I do most of my work in Homebrewery these days, which is part of why I contribute to it. It has some wrinkles and flaws, to be certain - and the publication workflow is... a work in progress, but it works mostly like I decided I started to want to work in that overlap period between Pagemaker 7.0 and InDesign 1.0.

Whizbang Dustyboots · May 3, 2026

dbolack said:
I'm gonna be an opinionated cuss for a second. I do most of my work in Homebrewery these days, which is part of why I contribute to it. It has some wrinkles and flaws, to be certain - and the publication workflow is... a work in progress, but it works mostly like I decided I started to want to work in that overlap period between Pagemaker 7.0 and InDesign 1.0.

Does Homebrewery have any outputs other than looking like early 5E design? I did one thing for one of those "learn to build your first D&D encounter" classes, and that was all I saw was available at that point, which I recall was mid-pandemic.

dbolack · May 3, 2026

Whizbang Dustyboots said:
Does Homebrewery have any outputs other than looking like early 5E design? I did one thing for one of those "learn to build your first D&D encounter" classes, and that was all I saw was available at that point, which I recall was mid-pandemic.

There has been a lot of work on alternate "themes" (not a fan of using that term, but it stuck before I got there ) for templating other books, including ways to share themes with other folks. There's been a lot of work in the last three years or so, after it had stagnated for a spell. That said, a small team and such.

It defaults to a 2014 emulation, as that's what it was designed for, but you can more easily roll your own or use other users' templates now.

We've seen things from Hero Kids to M&M, etc.