I'm here with a brief update for the month of June. Typesetting has been moving along great! I'm almost done with three out of five chapters of the book!
Typesetting?!
Yesterday, my partner asked me why I was talking about this book going through typesetting instead of calling it layout like with the rest of RV Games work. There is a reason for this: Advanced Rules is a text-only book (with the exception of two b&w example images), so it is being built in the tool ConTeXt. ConTeXt is a typesetting tool that uses tags to layout text for you: it handles formatting and numbering section headers, building the table of contents, building the index, hyphenation, page layout, etc. Instead of laying out the text in design software, it is being compiled by a typesetting tool. Using the command-line tool pandoc, I am able to automate conversion of the markdown that I've been writing and posting to the web version of Advanced Rules into ConTeXt. However, like all automation, it is not perfect, and I have to manually tweak parts of it in addition to developing the style guide and framework for the book. I'll post a much more extensive dive into this workflow in The Adventure Gaming Periodical once the book is fully complete. All of the markdown and ConTeXt code for Advanced Rules is also available on Github, in case people want to adopt a workflow like this for themselves.
Sample Spreads
With that said about typesetting, I'm going to share a couple screenshots from the already laid out pages to give a better example of how the book is shaping up.
Example Spread From Advanced Rules
In this spread, you see an example of what the start of each chapter looks like. Every chapter starts on right-hand page and features a table-of-contents for the chapter (in addition to the table of contents for the entire book). Placing chapter intros on the right side of the page can lead to blank pages, so instead of leaving them blank, I am including a notes page wherever there is extra space. This is a reference book being printed on uncoated paper, specifically to be marked up, highlighted, dog eared, and generally used at the table, so having space for notes just makes sense.
Example Spread from Advanced Rules
This spread shows more of the features of Advanced Rules. You can see that all sections and subsections are numbered for easy reference. All of chapters, sections, and subsections are also automatically included as PDF bookmarks (the PDFs are automatically tagged and made accessible as well). There are also cross-references to other parts of the text with page number references, and these cross-references also work as in-text hyperlinks within the PDF version. You can also see that there are additional design notes and references included as footnotes. These give some extra context and designer insights without clogging up the rules text, thank you to Roz for working out the balance of commentary and content with me!
Example Spread From Advanced Rules
This spread shows an in book tool. You can lay the book flat on the table (Advanced Rules is wire bound for this reason), and then use the zone map to assist you with tracking distances during encounters.
Example Spread From Advanced Rules
Finally, this is an example of all of the pieces above put together, there are notes to fill out a mostly blank page, an example of a table, number sections and subsections, and a footnote. The reference manual aesthetic is strong with this book, and I'm really thankful for making the conscious decision that this would be a took that uses a partially automated typesetting approach. It gives the vibes of an old GDW book like Striker or Traveller, but it has a lot of modern usability built-in despite its intentionally archaic style and format.
By next month, we hope to be moving into physical production, but at minimum, we will have a PDF for you to peruse and look for errors, building the index for the book with Roz might take some extra time, but we are still generally on schedule.
