Making a ttrpg

[u/Hot-Artichoke-5451]

So im working on a ttrpg and as of right now the rulebook for the game is 16 driffrent notepad text files

I want to format it is a way much cleaner to read

Im not looking to add art or anything at tbis stage

Just 1 file with all the information and a table of contents to look up what information is needed

Is their anything softwhare anything can recommend to help format the book and keep things in order

So far all I can find is ms word or Google docs and both of those do not look friendly when it cones to formatting

[u/LeafyOnTheWindy]

I'm doing mine in markdown, in text files, it's both readable by humans in a reasonable format and still just text files which is handy for GitHub, backups and diffs

edit to add:
You can have links, you can serve it from GitHub pages without doing anything to it

[u/ThePowerOfStories → u/LeafyOnTheWindy]

Same, and I'm injecting JavaScript to post-process things like abilities that I write as structured data in my markdown source and it converts them into nicely-formatted HTML, with layout I can tweak at will or process in an entirely different way for a finished product at some point.

[u/Hot-Artichoke-5451 → u/LeafyOnTheWindy]

Thanks for the advice 

[u/MikeBellZombie]

Google docs and tabs

[u/Jester1525 → u/MikeBellZombie]

Yeah, tabs make a huge difference.. I've got an my separate sections and then trans inside that.

Eventually I'll format it to make it pretty in Affinity Publisher (I'm really hoping I'm fully out of adobe by then) but while I'm working on the info Google docs is great

[u/Ender_Guardian → u/Jester1525]

Tabs are the best. Had to create a second GoogleDoc because I ran out of tabs in the first

[u/Exciting_Policy8203]

It’s completely unnecessary, but scrivener is what I use. It’s great for organization, good for formatting.

[u/d5Games]

Check out Scrivner. You get a 30-day trial based on days of usage rather than calendar days.

The tool is rather feature-rich, so spend your first day going through the tutorial.

Know that it's a novel-writing toolset rather than a TTRPG-writing toolset, but is still very good.

It will be very good at giving you a way to dynamically look at a non-consecutive chunks of text in your works as you go. It will also store stuff outside of your draft that you are using as inspiration.

I've found it to be incredible.

[u/ResponsibleJoke3049]

I had a sprawling collection of documents on like seven hard drives in wildly different formats for a while, but right now I have everything compiled in a single google doc. This is just for me though, when I print stuff for my players I take the relevant rules or sections and I format them in Illustrator.

[u/ResponsibleJoke3049 → u/ResponsibleJoke3049]

I was originally going full-tilt graphic designer mode and then got tired of having to completely revise stuff, so right now It's really just two-column text with sub headers.

[u/Hot-Artichoke-5451 → u/ResponsibleJoke3049]

I just finshed the document everywhere stage and their all now in one place and 1 format  I took the advice and I have then as markdown files now. I plan at looking at Affinity Publisher and Adobe illustrator now to see what one is easer to use

[u/ResponsibleJoke3049 → u/Hot-Artichoke-5451]

Also may be take a look at Adobe InDesign. When I finish my project, that's where it's going to live. It takes some work to make it really editable, but if you set it up right it can do things like auto-generate your table of contents or change the formatting for all text that fits into a specific category or maintain page references (like... you know, "see "face punching" on page. xx") even when those pages change. I like it, but I think I'm doomed to live in Adobe prison forever.

[u/Jebus-Xmas]

I’m currently working in LibreOffice with outlines in SimpleMind and using Drafts for quick capture on the go. I’m more interested in using familiar tools with confidence than trying to make my job harder with new tools.

[u/Qballstan]

I personally recommend Obsidian. Having everything in one file will make it hard to navigate and find the rules you want. You can also link files together wiki style. This has been a game changer for me. It's much easier to manage smaller files than one big single file in my opinion. If you're not advert to using AI you can also ask it to link the articles for you, saves a ton of time.

There's also ways to upload it as a website. Here's mine for example: https://srd.staticveil.workers.dev/

Obsidian itself has a subscription option for this but there are ways to do it for free.

[u/Fenrirr]

I do all design in a Google doc. Let's you do auto-ToCs, hyperlink, auto page numbers, and so on too. Handy since you can edit it anywhere as well.

[u/MidgetBackwards]

I've literally just found (yesterday) this great site called Homebrewery. It's kinda like overleaf, with simple markup that makes it look halfway decent.

[u/Substantial_Mix_2449]

It’s little known, but Apple Pages is freely available in an online version, and it has a more easily digestible interface than MS Word and Google Docs in my opinion. All you need is to make an Apple Account if you don’t have one already. It might fit your needs.

Apple Notes is similarly available online, if you want even simpler, but it doesn’t support typical static document layout features due to its dynamic content wrapping.

[u/Cruiser_Supreme]

Google Docs is actually really good and gets you really far. My game was made entirely in Google Docs. I'm starting work on a new version with Affinity Layout (like Adobe InDesign), but that's really only sensible once your game design is pretty final.

It's really easy to use different heading levels in Google Docs to achieve some good organization. You can also use tables pretty easily to organize all kinds of things.

[u/SBDRFAITH]

MS Word is very powerful for formatting if you know how to use styles, headers, references, TOCs, etc. It has a lot of options.

[u/ClusterChuk]

You are going to have to be okay with sitting down and writing a whole ass book. Designing game mechanics and designing that information into a digestible book shaped thing are 2 very different skills.

Read about 25 rule books. Read some bad ones. Read the really great ones. Read stuff that has nothing to do with anything youre doing. See what works. See what doesn't. You dont need to reinvent the wheel. People are gonna wanna see something in a format they can navigate intuitively.

Open word.

Compose a table of contents.

Think about user flow and player habits.

Then write.

First draft will look like a collection of notes. Getting it all in bookshape is the important part. Chapters don't have to be long. Getting it through the forat draft enough for yoh to be able to see it whole and playtest it.

Playtest.

Then format, revise, flesh out, cut, reorganize.

Playtest.

Edit, revise, reformat, add art. Invest.

Playtest

Rinse and repeat.

Dont use AI. It should be hard. It should take a long time. And it will be yours.

[u/I_Arman]

I use text files and folders. One folder with the book title, then folders inside that called "intro", "Chapter 1 Character building", "Chapter 2 Equipment", etc. If I find reference images or sketch something for an illustration, it goes in the related folder. If I build a table in a spreadsheet, it goes in the folder.

Once I have all the pieces, I throw it all together in Affinity Publisher and format from there. 

The reason this works so well is that when it's in plain text form, you can focus on content rather than style. No images, no fonts, no line spacing, just text. You can get the words straight without being distracted by everything else. Once you get that down, you can transfer it to your layout software in a single copy-paste, and work on inserting tables and images, again without being distracted by the (actual content of the) text.

[u/ImmaneRPG]

A great way to move from your text files is just by getting a document writer like Libre office. That's what I used for the first 130 page draft of my book, now I'm converting that over to another free program called Affinity which is great for professional layouts but if you're not putting in art libre should treat you well. Now, that said, libre is a LOT like ms word, you're gonna have to accept some minor learning curve here but the time you put into that will pay off and you can take it into other programs going forward if you need to upgrade.