Terror in Tosasth

[Solomoriah]

Leon, I want to do a layout pass on this document. I think tearing out some of the sectional structure and simplifying it would help the flow immensely. Is it okay to do this now, or are you already working on an R15?

[leon]

Is the GM supposed to roll for these? If so, there should be text explaining the procedure.

Yes. I agree.

If so, there should be text explaining the procedure. Assuming that is the case, these paragraphs should probably be set as WMBody/WMEnd types since some at least need monster stats and checkboxes formatted. Similarly, there is no written procedure for using the Contents table, and I think I'd probably set them not as a table but as numbered paragraphs for consistency with the preceding section.

I was thinking about the consistency, too. I also wondered if these tables ought to have headers indicating the dice roll.

Leon, I want to do a layout pass on this document. I think tearing out some of the sectional structure and simplifying it would help the flow immensely. Is it okay to do this now, or are you already working on an R15?

Go for it! I can add explanatory text to Dacha's Crypt later.

[Solomoriah]

Okay, I've made it through stripping and rebuilding the section structure, and the flow is behaving much better. However, I notice two more things I'd like to fix right now.

First, I'm not sure the dots per inch and scaling of the artwork is correct for publication. If you can pass the original scans or images to me, I can generate final-form artwork for print pretty quickly; or, I can go over the settings for you and you can do it if you prefer.

Second, and related to first, are the maps. I'm afraid you have them inserted in the book way too small to read, at least for me. Also, I'm concerned they may have the same issues as the art scaling. Finally, I'd prefer to embed the title, compass rose, and probably the map scale in each map image for consistency with other current Basic Fantasy Project adventure materials. I'm happy to do this for you, but again I'd prefer to have original imagery.

I can set up a Dropbox location for you to use if that would be easier for you, or as I say, you can fix it yourself if you prefer. Scaling rules work like this:

- All images must be marked as 300 dpi, before doing any scaling, which is critical for getting the manuscript accepted by the printer; then,
-- Images that will fit inside a single column should be scaled to 3.27" wide, or 981 pixels, without altering the aspect ratio of course;
-- Images that will span the page, including maps, should be scaled to 6.75" wide, or 2,025 pixels wide, at most without altering the aspect ratio.
- Tall, narrow images of either sort (but most likely the latter) should not be more than 8.75" or 2,625 pixels in height. If scaling the width to the maximum allowed makes the height more than this, use the height as the limit rather than the width.

As I said, I'll be happy to take care of this for you. This is something that I do behind the scenes for most adventures, but most adventure authors aren't as involved in the production phase as you are. I understand fully if you prefer to handle it yourself.

[Solomoriah]

By the way, for maps: If you have several maps for an adventure, I recommend taking the largest map and scaling it first. Then, scale the other maps so the squares of the grid are about the same size as that largest map.

[Solomoriah]

Also, I still can't pronounce Tosasth. My mouth doesn't seem to understand how to pronounce -sth. I end up spitting instead...



Just uploaded a PDF of R15 to the first post. The ODT is too large. If you can handle Dropbox, leon, I'll add you to our Projects folder and you can pick it up from there.

[leon]

Also, I still can't pronounce Tosasth. My mouth doesn't seem to understand how to pronounce -sth. I end up spitting instead...

Only Elves can pronounce it elegantly. Polite humans will say "TOH-sawth". Everyone else says "toe sauce".

Just uploaded a PDF of R15 to the first post. The ODT is too large. If you can handle Dropbox, leon, I'll add you to our Projects folder and you can pick it up from there.

Looks good to me.

It will probably go easier if you can bash at the maps and illustrations. I did intend to make all the images 300 dpi, and in fact I took pains to make the 5' squares on all the maps the same size. This was based on the Elf tombs being the biggest. I think over time, I scaled images inside Writer but the source files are 300 dpi.

Anyway, I will share all of the images, both full sized and scaled. I've got them uploaded to Dropbox and can share them into your folder. I'll share my folder with you, too.

Regarding the illustrations, only maybe half of them are relevant to the text they are near. The rest are just filling in gaps. If you're going to go over them all, maybe we should rip them all out of the ODT and evaluate what goes back in. There are pieces I'm fond of but not enough to sacrifice usability of the printed product. If we end up with new gaps to fill, I can draw a few more things, too.

I appreciate your time working on it!

[Solomoriah]

Also, I still can't pronounce Tosasth. My mouth doesn't seem to understand how to pronounce -sth. I end up spitting instead...

Only Elves can pronounce it elegantly. Polite humans will say "TOH-sawth". Everyone else says "toe sauce".

This is seriously something you should include in the adventure. Flavor text should have some flavor, you know?

It will probably go easier if you can bash at the maps and illustrations. I did intend to make all the images 300 dpi, and in fact I took pains to make the 5' squares on all the maps the same size. This was based on the Elf tombs being the biggest. I think over time, I scaled images inside Writer but the source files are 300 dpi.

Anyway, I will share all of the images, both full sized and scaled. I've got them uploaded to Dropbox and can share them into your folder. I'll share my folder with you, too.

Share your folder with me, please. chris@gonnerman.org

I'll pull them all down to my working folder, check the coding and fix the scales. The main issue I found is that setting "original size" on most of your maps makes them 8.5" x 11", which is a clue that they are coded to be larger than the page. Not sure why though, and given how many images you have, pulling them out of the LibreOffice document would be prohibitive. They come out named with long, meaningless numbers in no particular order. So I am really looking forward to going over your originals.

Regarding the illustrations, only maybe half of them are relevant to the text they are near. The rest are just filling in gaps. If you're going to go over them all, maybe we should rip them all out of the ODT and evaluate what goes back in. There are pieces I'm fond of but not enough to sacrifice usability of the printed product. If we end up with new gaps to fill, I can draw a few more things, too.

I'd prefer to create "final" versions first that are locked down to our working sizes. I'm not clear on which images go with the text and which are filling space, so I'll need your help to nail that down after I get final images sorted. Most of this wouldn't matter if we weren't sending them off to Amazon and Lulu eventually.

I appreciate your time working on it!

Hey, this is what I do. I waited a while to let you solidify the text, but then I looked and saw the sectioning issues and decided it was time to step in. When I pass it back to you, it should be at least somewhat easier to edit.

[leon]

Only Elves can pronounce it elegantly. Polite humans will say "TOH-sawth". Everyone else says "toe sauce".

This is seriously something you should include in the adventure. Flavor text should have some flavor, you know?

Noted. I only thought of that at the moment of replying.

Share your folder with me, please. chris@gonnerman.org

Done.

[Solomoriah]

Ouch. Had no idea that folder was that large. Also had no idea Dropbox would count it against my quota.

I'll have to copy everything out of the folder and then unsubscribe it. When I'm ready to pass things back to you, I'll share our Projects folder with you and you can move everything out that you need.

[Solomoriah]

Okay, so I've looked over the files just a bit. The very first file I looked at was artalwel-300dpi.png. Gimp tells me that it is scaled at 96.012 pixels per inch. dacha-mine-300dpi.png is scaled at 2.8340 pixels per mm; changing the units to pixels per inch gives me 71.984.

Changing the setting to 300 pixels per inch (aka DPI) results in dacha-mine-300dpi being 5.407 inches square, a very good size for printing, and doing the same to artalwel-300dpi.png results in 4.943 x 5.52 inches, also a good size for printing. The only problem therefore is that your software isn't storing the scaling correctly.

The .mipui source files indicate you're using Mipui to draw maps. Never done that before myself. I'm not sure how you are exporting them, though; it looks like the site gives you a rather large image that you then scale down with a third party tool. There's no metadata to tell me what you're using for scaling, but whatever it is, it's not storing a correct DPI.

There are a few .xcf files in the folders, indicating you also use Gimp. The solution is to open your 300 dpi versions in Gimp, go to Image, Scale, change to 300 pixels per inch, and resave them.

So I have done this to the maps, and shared a folder in our Projects area for you to retrieve. It's a copy, not my working original, so feel free to move them from the Dropbox Projects folder to your own storage location.

Right now I'm not working on the document. If you want to swap out the maps, feel free; if you want to leave them for me, that's fine too, just let me know when you're ready for me to work on it. I'll hit the artwork next.

The protocol for the Projects folder is pretty simple: Do not delete anything you didn't put there, unless the person who put it there tells you to do so. This includes moving items from the Projects folder to any private area. Put files there for me or for another production team member, and let the recipient know you're passing it over; we'll do the same to send items back to you. And never store the main, primary, or only copy of a file in the Projects folder.