Episode 31: Let's Get Laid (Laid Out, That Is) Part 2

Not a lot of words this week, but three big pictures. I’m crunching in as much editing/advice I can into the pages I’ve already written, and I don’t have a lot of time for you guys. However, I’ll give you what time I do have. That’s how much I love you.

However, before we begin, you should know that the illustrated borders (provided by the Gentleman Scholar Thomas Denmark) are what we call “placeholders”. That is, they aren’t the finished copies. They’re sketches Thomas sent me so I could lay the book out while he put on the finishing touches. The final borders arrive in the mail sometime this week.

Now, let’s go over exactly how I’ll be laying out the book.

I’m using a program called Quark Express. It’s the same program I learned back in high school when I was the editor-in-chief of the newspaper, the same program I used to layout homemade character sheets, and the same program AEG used when I came on board. In short, QE is the civilized layout program. Accept no imitations. Don’t listen to the siren song of Pagemaker. Quark is what you need.

Second, the fonts I’m using are Palatino (body font) and Lilith (header font). I chose Palatino because I like the way it looks and prints. It looks great in bold and italic. I picked Lilith because it looks like the amazing logo Mr. Joe Fulgham used on our webpage. Besides, Lilith is one of my favorite figures from mythology, so I had to give it a try.

I’ll be using 12 point Palatino with 11 point leading. For headers, I’ve employed 18 point Lilith. For chapter headers, she jumps up to 36 point. You can see the results below.

Thomas and I talked about it, and we wanted a book that looked like& well, a book. Most RPGs look like encyclopedias (as I mentioned before) and I didn’t want that. I don’t like two-column, I don’t like tiny fonts and I don’t like my book to look like it came out of a FAX machine box with the words “INSTRUCTIONS” written on the cover. You may like your books to read that way. Well, now you know what Orkworld looks like. Plan your spending schedule appropriately.

(Another reason I’m doing this whole thing. Now, absolutely no-one can write an on-line review that reads: “I bought Orkworld and it isn’t what I wanted.” If you’re posting on the internet, you know about the Gaming Outpost, you know about my column and you know what my book looks and reads like. If you don’t, and you put up that kind of crap, you’re a loser with a mean-streak and an agenda. By the way, is that your mother I hear in the background, asking you if you’ve made your bed?)

Lastly, you’ll find the final version of the cover. At least, today’s final version. This is damn close to what you’ll see in the bookstore (or in your mailbox, if you happen to order it through www.wizards-attic.com). After that nasty parenthetical comment, I thought you deserved a cookie.

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Gotta go. Chris Hepler and Jennifer Brandes are on their way over (see the footnote, below), and they’ve got a lot to tell me. They just got done reading the final text and they’ve got a boxfull of notes. Of course, one of them is that I forgot to include a Weapon Chart. Totally blew it on that one. But that’s what happens when you’ve been working on the same thing for ten months& you just lose perspective.

But we’ll talk about that next week, in a column entitled “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”. That’s a long one. ‘Till then, take care of yourselves, and go take a look at the way they layout a Time/Life book. It’s enlightening.

(And the footnote. Chris and Jennifer are two great folks who you may have heard of before. Shadowrun fans certainly have. They wrote The Second Book of the Shadowlands: Bearers of Jade for AEG as well as a whole bunch of articles for Shadis. They also wrote a few hundred books for FASA [an exaggeration, but only slightly] and are currently working on movie scripts. They’re also working on something called Covenant, which you should get a gander at. Their web page, www.tasteslikephoenix.com, is one helluva hoot. Go check it out. And I’ll see you there!)