Playbook graphic design: how do you make it go?
I’m alright with doing layout on big blocks of text, but I have no idea how to begin to do playbooks right. It’s so graphical, involving so much stuff I don’t know. How do you make playbooks for playtests?
I suppose I could try to open the AW playbooks in Illustrator and fuck with what’s there, but so many people seem to be able to toss off beautiful (or even just competent) versions.
Are there, like, tutorials? What do you do?
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I’m definitely curious about more amateur (read: non-illustrator) methods.
I’ve dinked around with a 2-3 column landscape Google doc, and it works ok for quick thing 🙂
You could try using a spreadsheet too.
I would write the text a lot of headers, inline headers, and tables. Then when you do layout in InDEsign treat it all the way you would treat any character sheet. You’re basically looking at a lot of individual text boxes and well managed styles.
Robert Bohl are asking about the tools people use and how to, like, use them? If so, it’d help to know what tools you have access to. Mostly, though, that’s going to be best learned through general tutorials and dicking around. There’s all sorts of tutorials available for the big name tools, but frankly it’s a skill you have to practice.
Or are you asking about how you think through and decide on a layout? Graphic design is also a skill, but I’ve got some thoughts if that’s what you’re looking for.
I guess it’s hard to explain what I’m looking for. Like if I know how to lay out blocks of text in InDesign, but not much else, where do I need to bone up?
Or is it more an Illustrator thing (which I don’t know well).
I do all my character sheets in InDesign, but you can do it in Illustrator, which I do not like as much, personally.
I’ve used both Illustrator and InDesign to layout playbooks, and I like ID better.
Being able to lay out blocks of text in ID is a good start, but it’s hard to give specific advice without know what all’s on the playbook you want to lay out.
Have you tried sketching out a hand drawn mock up? That might help you decide what goes where and how the pieces all fit together.
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I started trying to fuck around with Scribus and now my stomach is in a knot because I can’t figure out how to apply a style, or get it to continue to exist when I close the app.
I use InDesign but the quickest way to get started and playtested is just to mock up a presentation slide. Pieces are easy to move around, and drop images in. Google slides is free too and gets the job done.
I’m toying around with InDesign, too.
Make boxes.
Figure out what information needs to be in each box (what does the player need at the table, how does that information change, are rules summary reference needed or do they just need a space to write something down, does the player pick a choice or enter something freeform, do certain types of characters need more or less space in a particular box, are some boxes only used by some characters and not others, etc).
Figure out how big each box needs to be based on what is in it.
Arrange boxes. It helps if the most used stuff is closer to the top left. It helps if related boxes are in proximity. The necessary size of the boxes may fuck with this ideal, and that’s OK.
Make boxes visually distinct and easy to identify. Especially if this is a new game, it is useful if people (particularly a GM) can say a short phrase that instructs people where to look on the sheet (“check the blue section”, “look in the Center box”).
If your sheet is double sided, arrange sections to minimize page flipping in play. (For example, if you need to use the attributes section and the weapons section in combat, keep them on the same side of the paper.)
Lester Ward – Thanks, that’s great.
Almost thirty years ago, before PDF even existed, I built a suite of character sheets for Shadowrun that became popular. With a crunchy, heavily niche-driven game like that, they idea was to provide a pool of choices, and a player would pick one sheet from a selection for the front and one from a different selction for the back, based on the needs of the character.
Your needs will likely not be this complicated, but the link below has the InDesign sources for these sheets. Bear in mind their age, though, and that new tech will give you better choices. (I don’t even remember if text styles were around back then, for example.)rpg.divnull.com – Wordman’s Shadowrun Sheets
For my current, first draft, incredibly rough playtest version I just used Libre Office with text boxes in landscape format. I made a list of elements the playbook would need for competent play using the three pbta games I’m using for inspiration as a sort of compass. It looks alright and will work for my initial needs.
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