Wednesday, June 12, 2013

S&S Update: Graphics and typesetting coming along

I've been working on the Showdowns & Shootouts book for a few days (off and on). It's now my "after hours" project and I'm trying to get as much done as I can each evening after work, or during the day during downtime.

So far I've got the Table of Contents, Intro, and the the first adventure set up.

This little fella will be part of our page
treatment for the online resources in
the Showdowns & Shootouts book.
I know this doesn't sound like much, but the first adventure includes all the typesetting and design decisions that will be used throughout the rest of the book. So, from a technical viewpoint, this is pretty big.

Yesterday and today I finally settled on the icon and treatment we will use to reference the Online Components to the book -- that is, the PDF Maps Packs and character sheets that are on the Website. Although we'll include thumbnails of these in the book, we're not going to reprint them in the entirety because they would really be a waste of paper.

After all, each adventure includes all the character stats, weapons and info, so even if you didn't have access to the online character sheets you could fill out your own.

The Map and River Packs from the later adventures will be covered a bit more fully in the book, but we still won't be reprinting each and every tile (there are 9 tiles in Dion Duran's "I Hit a Vein!" adventure). There's just not enough value to be had by printing each of the tiles -- but of course, we'll print the one-page map overview.

Anyway, things are definitely picking up steam. Once I finish the page with the online references for Al's adventure, I'll move on to the next. And that one (and the subsequent adventures) will definitely go much faster than the first.

I'll keep you posted as we make progress!