Start with six paragraph styles, wind up with sixty

by ThomasNo Comments

When I first started doing layout for RPGs, I was given marked up text and I tended to use that early on. The copy would come from the editor or author and be full of what looked like HTML in brackets or angle-brackets: [em]this would be set in italics[/em], <dice>8</dice> would mean to put in an 8-sided die graphic, while [ih]this could be an inline header (and it took me forever to find out what “ih” meant). The work would consist of taking this plain, unstylized text, and doing several grep searches inside InDesign to replace the markup copy with stylized copy.

For projects like The Fate Codex, I had this pretty much down pat. It worked for that because that project was a series of documents, all using the same paragraph and character styles.

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Thomas at PAX Unplugged

by ThomasNo Comments

I’ve been looking forward to attending PAX Unplugged for a while. My major client, John Wick Presents, will be taking me to the convention to help sell 7th Sea games and related coolness. (I’ve got a two-minute demo down cold, which could expand to a five-minute demo with interest, and can talk about the game for as little or as long as interest remains.) While there are several things I want to see and do, I think this will be a rather laid-back event for me.

The show is in Philadelphia, and while it’s a bit lighter on the roleplaying side of things than say, Gen Con is, there are still a lot of people and colleagues I’d like to meet up with (and merchandise to check out). With the number of events scheduled, this feels like a larger RinCon, mainly by having a huge open gaming library (the no pre-registration for events is odd), and RinCon was only up to 800+ attendees. It appears PAX Unplugged is simply taking that small convention idea and upscaling it. Saturday tickets are sold out, but I really have no idea what number “sold out” translates to. Signups for tournaments and events are anywhere from 16 players to a few dozen. Smaller than PAX East? That’s the impression I’m getting.

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Going to PAX Unplugged?

by ThomasNo Comments

I’m heading to PAX Unplugged over in Philadelphia in just a few days! That’s a gaming convention that I feel is a whole bunch of companies going to a gaming convention to see what it’s all about, and that’s what it’s all about. From what I’ve gathered, it’s going to be like RinCon, but with a much bigger open gaming library.

So over on reddit, someone asked about what to expect at this, their first ever boardgaming convention. Specifically, should they rush to the expo hall to purchase new games and limited edition items at crazy steep discounts? I wrote a short answer that turned into a longer answer, which turned into something that’s would be it’s own blog post. Ta da!

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