I know it has been a while since I have blogged anything, but now that things on the game front are progressing, I really wanted to take some time to catch you up.
Decisions Decisions Decisions...MADE!
As many of my past blog posts have iterated, publishing a book requires a LOT of decisions and work. I went through the various blog entries and made a list of all the decisions and blocks to progress I have had over the years. It was only recently that many of them were overcome, and now that I have done so, final layout is progressing at a fanTAStic pace. Due to the large number of requests I have had recently for a status update, I wanted to take a blog entry to list and describe them here in the interest of full transparency so everyone can see exactly where I am in the process.
Prose, Organization, and Content
The prose themselves were finally finished in 2016. The biggest holdup was how determining the scope of each book and the number of books I wanted to create, and how I was going to organize the various books. I also wanted to include rule examples, little comments clarifying why I made some of the decisions I made, and small commentaries that reflect the spirit of the game alongside the concrete rules and could not figure out a clear and coherent way to do it. I finally overcame this hurdle with the idea of "Hujraad's Hacks", small colored boxes of text that provided all of these things in a single format.
With that figured out, the final content and organization came easily. There will be 2 game books required to play the game: The Player's Spielbuch and the Direktor's Guidebuch. The Spielbuch will have 3 chapters, one including a tutorial for learning to play a tabletop RPG, one for rules, and one for character creation. There will also be a glossary and an index containing all tables required in one spot for quick reference while playing. PDFs of the full ruleset will be offered for free to past players at various GenCons, however on RPGNow and Amazon, for $6.66 per chapter. I will also publish genre descriptions, a rules supplement, and game scenarios (including those from GenCon and Origins) at this same price point. I plan on printing books as well, with all three sections as an omnibus volume for whatever it costs to print them on demand in color on nice, shiny, clay-filled paper and a hardcover 8.5 x 11 format. I do not plan on making any money on this project; only to recoup costs of printing.
With that figured out, the final content and organization came easily. There will be 2 game books required to play the game: The Player's Spielbuch and the Direktor's Guidebuch. The Spielbuch will have 3 chapters, one including a tutorial for learning to play a tabletop RPG, one for rules, and one for character creation. There will also be a glossary and an index containing all tables required in one spot for quick reference while playing. PDFs of the full ruleset will be offered for free to past players at various GenCons, however on RPGNow and Amazon, for $6.66 per chapter. I will also publish genre descriptions, a rules supplement, and game scenarios (including those from GenCon and Origins) at this same price point. I plan on printing books as well, with all three sections as an omnibus volume for whatever it costs to print them on demand in color on nice, shiny, clay-filled paper and a hardcover 8.5 x 11 format. I do not plan on making any money on this project; only to recoup costs of printing.
Color Scheme
I chose the final color scheme for the game books in 2017. Originally I was just going to do black and white to cut down on costs, but instead decided I will use teals, light greens, blues and grays. The background will be in a lightly patterned teal and gray with accents in green, borders in dark teal and black and white pictures with one major color for accent, depending on the artist who is creating the art to determine what color will be added and where it will be added. I am still looking for banner art, but banners will be across the top and bottom. The top will have Chapter number on the left page and section number on the right side
Fonts Styles and Typography.
I finally squared this away in 2017 as well. Once I had the prose completed, I was able to determine all my fonts, styles, spacing, lead, and number of columns per page. I knew for the longest time I wanted a sans font for headings and a serif font for text. I have settled on size 10 EB Garamond for primary text, bold, and glossary terms and headings will be in Barlow Semi Condensed.
Tables and Charts
This has been the biggest holdup, and I can now saym in 2019, this has been resolved.
Desktop publishing software is in a horrible state! Forget you, Adobe!!!!!!!!!!!! It used to be, a hobbyist could create a professional level document, using Quark on Apple, Adobe Indesign on Apple and Windows, and everything else was a has been. Quark now costs over 900 dollars, and it hasn't been updated in years, no one uses it any more, and its lack of modern features and "bugginess" make it unavailable for hobbyists that want to create professional grade documents. The second option is now getting stuck with a g******n Adobe monthly fee for 20 buck a month. This is stupid for hobbyists. Thank you Adobe for moving to only professionals and discontinuing the one tool option for hobbyists: a version that charged for half of what Quark was charging one time. It simply is not feasible for a hobbyist to pay 20 bucks a month for something they only work on when they have time!
My original dream was to write HiBRiD using all open source tools and GNU/Linux. I have attempted to do this since 2001. While the art and word processing was easily done this way, unfortunately, the only open source tool out there is Scribus. I have spent almost 20 years learning Scribus and hoping, praying for a way to do tables.They failed. They never managed it. Such a simple basic function and all they managed was to have a student do a half baked nod to table functionality. It STILL doesn't work. They keep importing color profiles but can't work on the basic functions for making tables. Really?
Finally, an application called Affinity Publisher came along this year. It works a lot like Adobe so a lot of people love it, but it is missing some really good technical features that I really liked in Scribus and has an inconsistent user interface that is frustrating when you are learning the application, requiring stupid workarounds. I am going to make a Youtube video for you all to see outlining all of the things Affinity needs to do to be truly ready for prime time. In any case, te biggest problem was that it only runs on Windows and OSX.
As I am getting older now, I realize my life 5/8 over and I just need to get the books done. As a result, I have jumped off my idealistic high horse to get my work done. Since I now have a new PC running Win10, I have turned to this application (only costs less than 50 bucks. Again, Forget you Adobe!!!!! A5540735!! I have been going full speed ahead.
Character Sheet Designs
One of the biggest problems I have had with HiBRiD over the years was that I could not churn out character sheets for players as quickly as they needed or wanted. Most of the reasons revolved on the lack of resolution of the above issues. But now, with these issues resolved, especially table functionality, fonts and color scheme chosen, and the ability to now get real work done, I have been finally settled on the final design of a character sheet I can be proud of. I am offering it here for all of you to see and use if you wish. (If you want PDF versions, email me at hujraadjohaansen@gmail.com and I will hook you up!) You can see the fonts are different as the character sheets are specific to different Genres but the layout and color scheme reflect the game book colors I mentioned above:
Generic character sheet for the Spielbuch:
Character sheet for At Twilight, the Aspens Come...
This has been the biggest holdup, and I can now saym in 2019, this has been resolved.
Desktop publishing software is in a horrible state! Forget you, Adobe!!!!!!!!!!!! It used to be, a hobbyist could create a professional level document, using Quark on Apple, Adobe Indesign on Apple and Windows, and everything else was a has been. Quark now costs over 900 dollars, and it hasn't been updated in years, no one uses it any more, and its lack of modern features and "bugginess" make it unavailable for hobbyists that want to create professional grade documents. The second option is now getting stuck with a g******n Adobe monthly fee for 20 buck a month. This is stupid for hobbyists. Thank you Adobe for moving to only professionals and discontinuing the one tool option for hobbyists: a version that charged for half of what Quark was charging one time. It simply is not feasible for a hobbyist to pay 20 bucks a month for something they only work on when they have time!
My original dream was to write HiBRiD using all open source tools and GNU/Linux. I have attempted to do this since 2001. While the art and word processing was easily done this way, unfortunately, the only open source tool out there is Scribus. I have spent almost 20 years learning Scribus and hoping, praying for a way to do tables.They failed. They never managed it. Such a simple basic function and all they managed was to have a student do a half baked nod to table functionality. It STILL doesn't work. They keep importing color profiles but can't work on the basic functions for making tables. Really?
Finally, an application called Affinity Publisher came along this year. It works a lot like Adobe so a lot of people love it, but it is missing some really good technical features that I really liked in Scribus and has an inconsistent user interface that is frustrating when you are learning the application, requiring stupid workarounds. I am going to make a Youtube video for you all to see outlining all of the things Affinity needs to do to be truly ready for prime time. In any case, te biggest problem was that it only runs on Windows and OSX.
As I am getting older now, I realize my life 5/8 over and I just need to get the books done. As a result, I have jumped off my idealistic high horse to get my work done. Since I now have a new PC running Win10, I have turned to this application (only costs less than 50 bucks. Again, Forget you Adobe!!!!! A5540735!! I have been going full speed ahead.
Character Sheet Designs
One of the biggest problems I have had with HiBRiD over the years was that I could not churn out character sheets for players as quickly as they needed or wanted. Most of the reasons revolved on the lack of resolution of the above issues. But now, with these issues resolved, especially table functionality, fonts and color scheme chosen, and the ability to now get real work done, I have been finally settled on the final design of a character sheet I can be proud of. I am offering it here for all of you to see and use if you wish. (If you want PDF versions, email me at hujraadjohaansen@gmail.com and I will hook you up!) You can see the fonts are different as the character sheets are specific to different Genres but the layout and color scheme reflect the game book colors I mentioned above:
Generic character sheet for the Spielbuch:
Character sheet for At Twilight, the Aspens Come...
Character sheet for Big Showdown in Little Canyonside, the game I have been running at GenCon since 2001 and will now be running at Origins and smaller local cons for my gamer friends I have met over the years:
Remaining Stumbling Blocks:
Layout:
I have laid out the first of the three section of the player's Spielbuch, all 55 pages worth with tables and text boxes which has taken me about a month to complete. I just added the character creation section which also runs around 50 pages and when that is complete, will finally add the Introductory section which will also run about 50 pages. Given my current rate, I predict the book will be laid out by the end of January. Then I will just need....
Art
I currently have image boxes placed where I want art. Once the three chapters are laid out, I will be labeling each picture for a general ida of what I need, format and size of each picture and then begin hunting for artists.
I am looking for a certain style of art that is not too Anime-like and am unsure how much I will be able to pay for it. If anyone knows anyone interested in doing either digital, drawn, or hybridized highly stylistic pieces of art, that likes to draw settings and environments or action scenes, anthropomorphic lifeforms like plants, mosses, fungi or animals (but don't look like stupid furry sexual deviant garbage) doing cool heroic things, please have them reach out to me.
Until then, I will keep on working...
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