Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Nest
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Community
Meta - Forums About Forums
Archive-threads
SRD 3.5 Competition
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Conaill" data-source="post: 1044290" data-attributes="member: 1264"><p>Hi mythusmage, thanks for joining! We can always use another competitor.</p><p></p><p>Your pdf looks like a reasonable start. My main comment would be that it looks very "plain" for now. And I'm not just talking about adding some fancy graphics or dingbats! But even just simple things like making sure there's more distinction between the differnt headings, placing some separators between sections to help the eye, etc.</p><p></p><p>Look at the right hand column of your first page for example. You've got the "ABILITY SCORES" heading in a somewhat largish font, with "ABILITY MODIFIERS" as a subsection header right below it, but in an only barely smaller font!</p><p></p><p>Below that, you have "ABILITIES" "AND SPELLCASTER", needlessly split over two lines. It's not easy to see at first glance whether this is a subsection under ABILITY SCORES, or just a new section. (Yes, it <em>is</em> noticeable, but it's not instantly recognizeable as a subsection.) What makes it even worse is that "ABILITIES" seems in a slightly smaller font than "AND SPELLCASTERS" on the line below it. Just an optical illusion, because "abilities" has so many "I"'s in it, so it looks squashed, compared to the "AND".</p><p></p><p>Then below all <em>that</em>, you get "STRENGTH (STR)" which is yet <em>another</em> palatino B/W all-caps subheader, this time with a smaller fontsize. Further in the document you use yet another, larger, set of header font sizes (pg.6, under "DESCRIPTION"). And all spacing between sections, subsections and last sub-subsection is of equal size...</p><p></p><p>The whole looks first page looks like there is very little organization to it, with font sizes for the headers seemingly picked at random. True, much of the same can be said of the original RTF version of the SRD, but then again, that's why we're trying to improve on it. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></p><p></p><p></p><p>Some practical suggestions for improvement...</p><p></p><p>- Make at least the top-level sections stand out more. Have a look in the PHB for example, or compare you version with kreynolds version of the same section on page 2. Or Cergorach's version for that matter. Bothe have decided to stick with the blue, underlined, right aligned headers as in the books, which really helps the eye. </p><p></p><p>- Your table on pg 2 seems a little too roomy. Not sure you could squeeze it into a single column, but you could reduce the height of the rows somewhat. See Cergorach's version as an example of how small you can make those tables while still being perfectly legible. Hist "Sorceror spells known" table for example is about the same size as your "Ability Modifiers and Bonus Spells" table, but only take sup a fraction of the space. Make sure the numbers a centered on the white/grey bars (they seem a little too high now). </p><p></p><p>- I noticed you're using alternating left-right borders. That's great for printing double sided, but most people will probably print single-sided. Unless you're planning on making multiple versions for printing, I would stick with equal borders on both sides. Also make sure your borders are wide enough that a 3-hole punch won't take a bit out of your text (the thinner border is only *just* wide enough for my punch right now).</p><p></p><p>- I definitely do like the legibility of your version. Compared to kreynolds version of the same section, you manage to squeeze in more content per page with what seems like a significantly larger font.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Looking forward to see you next installment!</p><p></p><p></p><p>Edit: some smaller suggestions... you can easily shrink the starting age and agineffects tables a bit by leaving out "years" in all the entries. Or at least abbreviate to </p><p>"yrs". Likewise, you could abbreviate male and femal in the height and weight table to (m) and (f), or even use the male and female symbols (make sure to add a caption if you do the latter). These changes will allow you to fit each row on a single line, cutting the table size in half.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Conaill, post: 1044290, member: 1264"] Hi mythusmage, thanks for joining! We can always use another competitor. Your pdf looks like a reasonable start. My main comment would be that it looks very "plain" for now. And I'm not just talking about adding some fancy graphics or dingbats! But even just simple things like making sure there's more distinction between the differnt headings, placing some separators between sections to help the eye, etc. Look at the right hand column of your first page for example. You've got the "ABILITY SCORES" heading in a somewhat largish font, with "ABILITY MODIFIERS" as a subsection header right below it, but in an only barely smaller font! Below that, you have "ABILITIES" "AND SPELLCASTER", needlessly split over two lines. It's not easy to see at first glance whether this is a subsection under ABILITY SCORES, or just a new section. (Yes, it [i]is[/i] noticeable, but it's not instantly recognizeable as a subsection.) What makes it even worse is that "ABILITIES" seems in a slightly smaller font than "AND SPELLCASTERS" on the line below it. Just an optical illusion, because "abilities" has so many "I"'s in it, so it looks squashed, compared to the "AND". Then below all [i]that[/i], you get "STRENGTH (STR)" which is yet [i]another[/i] palatino B/W all-caps subheader, this time with a smaller fontsize. Further in the document you use yet another, larger, set of header font sizes (pg.6, under "DESCRIPTION"). And all spacing between sections, subsections and last sub-subsection is of equal size... The whole looks first page looks like there is very little organization to it, with font sizes for the headers seemingly picked at random. True, much of the same can be said of the original RTF version of the SRD, but then again, that's why we're trying to improve on it. ;) Some practical suggestions for improvement... - Make at least the top-level sections stand out more. Have a look in the PHB for example, or compare you version with kreynolds version of the same section on page 2. Or Cergorach's version for that matter. Bothe have decided to stick with the blue, underlined, right aligned headers as in the books, which really helps the eye. - Your table on pg 2 seems a little too roomy. Not sure you could squeeze it into a single column, but you could reduce the height of the rows somewhat. See Cergorach's version as an example of how small you can make those tables while still being perfectly legible. Hist "Sorceror spells known" table for example is about the same size as your "Ability Modifiers and Bonus Spells" table, but only take sup a fraction of the space. Make sure the numbers a centered on the white/grey bars (they seem a little too high now). - I noticed you're using alternating left-right borders. That's great for printing double sided, but most people will probably print single-sided. Unless you're planning on making multiple versions for printing, I would stick with equal borders on both sides. Also make sure your borders are wide enough that a 3-hole punch won't take a bit out of your text (the thinner border is only *just* wide enough for my punch right now). - I definitely do like the legibility of your version. Compared to kreynolds version of the same section, you manage to squeeze in more content per page with what seems like a significantly larger font. Looking forward to see you next installment! Edit: some smaller suggestions... you can easily shrink the starting age and agineffects tables a bit by leaving out "years" in all the entries. Or at least abbreviate to "yrs". Likewise, you could abbreviate male and femal in the height and weight table to (m) and (f), or even use the male and female symbols (make sure to add a caption if you do the latter). These changes will allow you to fit each row on a single line, cutting the table size in half. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
Meta - Forums About Forums
Archive-threads
SRD 3.5 Competition
Top