What's a good word processor/ software for writing adventures?

[penguoctopus]

I'm wondering if anyone knows a program besides word or open office processor that's good for writing adventures. Easy to make text boxes and section off rules and npc info and such. Dunno if something like it exists but if it does it would be nice if anyone could tell me.

 

[Thanee]

Adobe Acrobat (Pro) would be an obvious choice. Expensive and a steep learning curve, though.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Umbran]

Do you mean writing for publication, or writing for your own use?

Several folks seem to have had a lot of success with Microsoft OneNote for personal use. It does export to HTML, if I recall correctly, which could be kind of handy.

 

[Marius Delphus]

In addition to answering Umbran's question, can you explain a bit why Word and OpenOffice are off the list? Word is ubiquitous, and OpenOffice is free....

 

[penguoctopus]

As for your question, Umbran, it's for personal use, I just wanted something that I could easily identify and even something I could write for friends with. My apologies for not being more specific about my reasons. Word is simply something I don't have the money for and open office, although I do use it, is not as simple to use as word with the text boxing. I was looking for something simple and free (with simple, non tethered text boxing) but if there's nothing of the sort I still appreciate the advice you all have given me.

 

[Marius Delphus]

Well, without having used it I can't actually recommend it, but AbiWord is a free word processor that appears to be getting fairly good reviews.
AbiWord

I don't know what you mean by "non-tethered" with regard to boxed text (or a box of text). There are generally two ways to achieve boxed text: (1) by formatting one or more paragraphs in-line or (2) by making an actual text box "graphic."

Option (1) is by far the easiest to control, because the paragraph sits in your text stream and the software doesn't have to do anything with it but remember that it looks different.* Depending on your software and your preference, you might find a one-cell table, a paragraph fill, or a paragraph stroke meets your needs.

* When laying out War of the Burning Sky adventures in expensive, sophisticated page-layout software (Adobe InDesign), I have never yet bothered with (additional) "floating" text boxes of any kind to render "boxed text"... the "boxed text" is part of the text stream. (I use four Paragraph Styles to do this: one to begin, one to end, one in the middle, and one to stand alone. This doesn't literally result in a box, but of course I think it looks dandy in any event.) I find the result sufficiently pleasing to the eye and very easy to manage during production. So I definitely recommend the "in the stream" method as the way to go on this, especially if you just need "read-aloud" style boxes.

Option (2) is somewhat more flexible, because the box can be moved around the page and, depending on your software, will "bump" text out of the way and cause it to "flow" around the box. However, Word is notorious for "losing" graphics (here including text boxes) off the page and/or allowing them to "slip" around on the page, partly because the graphic remains "anchored" to a paragraph on the page (in the text stream) even though it occupies a different "layer."** I don't know how OpenOffice handles the same thing, but I can't imagine it's a huge improvement.

** This behavior and its implications are an important reason I'm very dismissive of Word as a layout tool. Though it can be wrestled into submission, I still feel the effort is seldom worth it. Any "advanced" layout is best handled with a tool that's better suited to the task than a word processor, IMO. Page-layout software like InDesign handles pretty much everything as a floating box, with one major difference: in general, the boxes are not "anchored" to anything on the page, but rather to a discrete location *on* the page. Text streams "through" the boxes to create the layout. This is how I handle sidebars in InDesign -- I create new boxes for them, removing them from the text stream. But InDesign handles this much better than a word processor does.

HTH.

 

[Tharian]

Another free tool to consider would be Scribus. I haven't used it in quite some time, but they've been making improvements along the way.

Oh, and LaTeX (or whatever front end for it you might prefer). I don't know if it does the text boxes the way you'd prefer, but it's pretty powerful and can export to lots of different formats.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

If you do get some scratch and go with the Microsoft route....look at Microsoft Publisher instead of Microsoft Word. It's 6000X easier to integrate graphics, text, and formatting than it is to do the same on Word.

I will attach a PDF dump of an unfinished 4e themed newsletter for our current campaign. I think its the kind of thing you have in mind.

DS

 

[Vicente]

Do you mean writing for publication, or writing for your own use?

Several folks seem to have had a lot of success with Microsoft OneNote for personal use. It does export to HTML, if I recall correctly, which could be kind of handy.

OneNote works great for personal use. And it can export to PDF too if needed (at least 2010 can, I don't remember earlier versions).

 

[penguoctopus]

If you do get some scratch and go with the Microsoft route....look at Microsoft Publisher instead of Microsoft Word. It's 6000X easier to integrate graphics, text, and formatting than it is to do the same on Word.

I will attach a PDF dump of an unfinished 4e themed newsletter for our current campaign. I think its the kind of thing you have in mind.

DS

My GOD this is exactly what I'm looking to make. I'm going to take a look at this software and see when I can get the money to buy it but I mean... this seems to be exactly what I need.