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Useful resources for RPG design and layout

So this is off the back of last night’s Indiemeet, which was a very fun and productive meeting indeed. I talked a bit about several things related to design and layout, so I thought in the cold light of day I’d elaborate on those quickly.

Fonts: Google Fonts has a great selection of free fonts to use, BUT as Graham said don’t try to be clever. If in doubt stick to Garamond for most of your text, with a simple sans-serif font (maybe Arial or Century Gothic, for starters) for your page headings.

Digital Layout tools: You can download Scribus for free, but honestly, it’s not the best solution for DTP (desktop publishing). If you’re starting out, I’d stick with word (I know some of my favourite writers use word) or grab a free trial of Indesign and see how you go. At the end of the day, life’s too short, and you’ve got games to write.

Stock photos: I forgot to mention this Medium article yesterday, which pretty much gets to the point. There’s also thestocks.im which collects a lot of the aforementioned stock photography together in one site. Finally, the British Library Flickr collection is public domain, and frequently fantastic. (Bookmark this link, then in the URL bar change the search parameter from ‘town’ to whatever you need.)

Me! So I’m always available if you want to chat. You can email me (there’s a quick link at the bottom of the page) or message me on Google Plus. If you’d like to support my stuff (and get a cheeky insight into how I do things!) You can support me creating adventure PDFs on Patreon. I’d certainly be happy to run a workshop or similar in the future, times and everything else permitting – if you’re interested in organising that or collaborating, let me know.

Hope this all helps!

Joe