Cool Tool: Booklet Creator

Sorry to delay the Arnica news, but I've been busy this weekend with my day job (Technical Writer for various Oil & Gas companies) and I needed a specific tool for a specific job that might actually have some use in game development.

Sometimes I need to create Saddle-Stitched Booklets for game props or prototypes. Now, a saddle-stitched book is basically a magazine. It's a set of pages stapled in the middle and folded like in this picture.

It's called a "Saddle Stitch" because it looks kind of like a saddle when you hold it up by the spine it bows out a saddle. It's nothing particularly special, but the pages need to be arranged in a specific order to get the booklet to print correctly. Here's how the pages normally look, one after the other:

In this case, I made the odd-numbered pages blue so they will stand out more in the next picture. As you can see above, this is nice, normal and orderly. The pages are perfect for when you're printing the pages to staple together in the upper-right corner, but not so great when you need a booklet. Booklets have a special page order so that they will print correctly. Take a look at what I mean below. 

Pages organized like this
are called SPREADS

To make an 8-page booklet, you need two sheets of paper. When folded in half, that yields 8 pages because there are two pages per side of paper (2 x 2 x 2). This is also why all magazines MUST have page counts that can be divided by 4. If you ever think you've found a saddle-stitched document that is not divisible by 4, then you've probably miscounted because you're letting the cover or a "blank" page throw you off. This is one of those laws of physical reality: Unless you have tipped in a page and are holding it in place with glue or some other odd technique, then you MUST have a page count based on the number 4.

 It all makes sense if you look at them spread out below -- when you do you can see that this is a little more complicated than just putting the pages out and hoping they will fall into the correct order.

The Right Tool for the Right Job

Reordering the pages and resizing them in something I can do easily if I'm printing from a hgh-end page design program like InDesign or QuarkXPress. Both of these are industry-leading tools and have those tools built right in. These are great time-savers when I use those programs to create my documents.

But what if I'm using Microsoft Word or PowerPoint? Most of the time I just fall back on the "Booklet Setting" built right into my printer. It's a great little feature in my Brother 4070-CDW color laser printer. BUT, it resizes the pages when it does it, usually by shrinking them. This is great for proofs, but not something I need to take to a print shot.

For this one task, I found a great little tool that I wanted to mention: Booklet Creator. This is a simple application that does one thing and one thing only: It does the following:

• It takes an existing PDF document
• Resizes the pages if needed
• Reorders the pages (definitely needed) 
• Outputs the finished spreads so you can print them at home or professionally

This program has only one screen as an interface. You pick your input file, make a few minor decisions like page range or or output page size (I left it on auto for my first job and it guessed correctly that I wanted to take my 5.5 x 8.5 inch pages and output them to a single sheet of 8.5 x 11 letter-size paper).

In other words, this program is a one-trick pony. It does one thing, but from what I've seen, it does it VERY well. If you read this review and are thinking that you can't picture when you would use this program, then you're right: You won't use it and you won't need it. But, if you're reading this and are thinking this sounds like something you might be interested in, then you're probably doing some print jobs where this will come in handy. If you're in the latter camp, I suggest getting this. It does what it says it does and at a very reasonable price.

This program is available for both Windows and Macs. I'm running it on Win7 64-bit. Get it for only $19.95 from the publisher: http://bookletcreator.com/  I downloaded the trial (which only does a 16-page sample document, but does not add any watermarks or text that I could see). I bought it and was e-mailed the registration/unlock code in less than 5 minutes.

By the way, if you're interested in how to saddle-stitch a booklet without a long-reach stapler, I wrote instructions about that for Mike's Workbench over at the Hawgleg Website: http://hawgleg.com/columns_detail.asp?CatID=2&ColID=67

See you back here on Thursday, amigos!

Gutshot Rules: Knocking the rifle off its throne

As I said last week, we solved one of our biggest problems in the first draft of Gutshot by arguing... er, discussing & debating outside Midnight Comics one night after a game. We invented the Retaliation Shot as a mechanism to solve one of the biggest problems we were having in the game: The fact that, because of our random initiative system, it was possible for you to die without ever firing s hot in self defense.

The Notorious Midnight Riders -- our first
long playtest that helped shape the game
into what it finally became.

Reaction to that rule has been mixed, with most of it being positive. There are a small, vocal group of people out there who don't like it at all. Of course, these are the same people who would prefer that everyone write down their actions and display them at the same time and then act them out simultaneously. In other words, these are old-schoolers from the "orders" style of gameplay used with armies and divisions. This is absolutely, 100% not the type of game we wanted to make. Gutshot is a skirmish game, and that sort of detailed order-giving has no place in the undisciplined, wild-n-woolly world of Western gaming.

Another group that dislikes this mechanic is people who have never actually played it. Although we've written and re-written it more than once, it just doesn't sound like it will work as well as it does when you just read the words. It seems a bit... odd, or different to them. When they play it, though, most of them join the the people who love the Retaliation Shot because it does a whiz-bang job of fixing the imbalance caused by our chaotic initiative system.

Taking the rifle down a notch or two

From Bushwhacked in Beaver Creek!

But back to the rifle. As I said Tuesday, with the way the first draft of rules was written, there was no reason on god's green earth not to choose the rifle as your primary weapon. It had damage, range, and held 15 rounds. By any reckoning, it was the weapon to beat.

So, we had to do some things to make it a more balanced weapon. The first thing we did was eliminate the "to hit" bonus at point blank range. The rationale behind this is sound, but most people don't like it: We figure that if you're bringing a rifle right up to a fella with intent to shoot 'em, they will grab the barrel and try to shove it away or dodge it in any way he can. It's a simple idea, but it helps a lot.

The next thing we did was more severe: we made it impossible to draw and fire a two-handed weapon in the same Action. This had a profound effect on the game. Suddenly rifles and shotguns -- still the most powerful death dealers in terms or range and damage, respectively -- were more unwieldy than the nimble Colt revolver or the sneaky Derringer.

This was an amazing change to the game balance, and the point at which we realized -- over the next four or five playtests with the Midnight Riders -- that we were really on to something great! Suddenly the combat was more balanced and players had a reason to think about their weapon choices. Now we could turn our attention onto other issues.