Huh, I never knew that. I guess I just almost never see it used in a complete sentence…
You can probably fix it by moving the second picture to the top of the page, rather than at the bottom.
About the textboxes:
I measured them by zooming all the way in and marking how it lined up against my cursor. They were mostly within the margin of error, with the following exceptions:
- Page 13: Too close.
- Page 14: Too close.
- Page 17: The textbox actually excludes the first line, so I can’t really match up sizes.
- Page 19: It actually works fine here, but the word “following:” being dropped down by its lonesome looks awkward. Can you try to get it up on the previous line?
Yep, you’re clear.
Okay. I haven’t seen it the opposite way, but I’ll trust your judgement.
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You can probably fix it by moving the second picture to the top of the page, rather than at the bottom.
Ok, that does work better.
Page 17: The textbox actually excludes the first line, so I can’t really match up sizes.
Oops! I changed it.
Page 19: It actually works fine here, but the word “following:” being dropped down by its lonesome looks awkward. Can you try to get it up on the previous line?
Instead I re-arranged the other sentences a bit for “the” to move down. Is that alright? Or should I just change the wording to keep it at two lines?
Change the wording to keep it at two lines.
Also, I missed something else on page 19: You say “[A], [t], [D], [T].” when it should say “[A], [T], [t], and [D].”
The reason for the different order (which will also need to be applied on page 17) is a matter of standard style, which stems from grouping with like. Even if you wish to list the major effects second, they would need to be swapped so that the positive effect comes first in both iterations.
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Change the wording to keep it at two lines.
Ok. I couldn’t think of a better/shorter wording, so I just removed “if they enter”. The GM can figure it out
Also, I missed something else on page 19: You say “[A], [t], [D], [T].” when it should say “[A], [T], [t], and [D].”
Ok. I changed it.
I think the “if they enter” clause should remain. It feels disjointed and presumptuous otherwise.
I did some experimenting, and I think the best solution might be to make it three lines, increasing the length of the paragraph rather than shortening it. The reason for this is that I saw a spot further down where we can shorten and make up the gap.
“The trail finally comes to an end at a large burrow, dug into the cavern wall. A ripe smell emanates from within, so strong it can almost be tasted.”
“The trail finally comes to an end at a large burrow. A ripe smell emanates from within, so strong it can almost be tasted.”
That takes off a whole line of the paragraph. It also suggests that you use “trail leads to” or “trail leads into” the tunnel for the introductory paragraph, rather than having the trail “end” twice, both times referencing “dug into the cavern’s wall/side,” but in different “rooms.”
So maybe:
The trail ends at a tunnel dug into one side |
of the cavern. Read the following:
The trail leads into a tunnel scraped out of |
one side of the cavern. If the party enters, |
read the following:
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I think the “if they enter” clause should remain. It feels disjointed and presumptuous otherwise.
I did some experimenting, and I think the best solution might be to make it three lines, increasing the length of the paragraph rather than shortening it. The reason for this is that I saw a spot further down where we can shorten and make up the gap.
Sounds good; I implemented the suggestions.
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Uh-oh, I noticed something: The margins between columns look inconsistent between pages. Can you check that? Best to make them consistent (though there may be differences between left/right pages).
*wince* This might mess up a lot of formatting.
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Right. So the columns themselves vary a bit in size depending on the page. Are the left and right margins to the end of the page what is most important or do we also need to make all (or most) of the columns also the exact same width?
I edited (and updated) pages 2 and 3 to have the same left / right margins, same size of text box, and it was hard to fit everything on the page.
We should try to keep the columns on the pages the same width as much as possible. What I usually see is that the center margin stays the same, and the left page is closer to the spine than the side, and same for the right, making them effectively just mirror-images.
Since there’s inconsistency throughout (gah, I wish I’d noticed it sooner! I’m really kicking myself over that), it’ll be hard to find a good balance. My general advice would be to not make anything smaller. Pick the biggest columns you can’t pare down without running out of space, then size up the other columns to match.
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Hmm… ok. I’ll see what I can do.
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Ok. I just updated it with uniform margins & columns wherever possible. On p. 14 this created a mid-sentence spillover as I had to reduce the size of the column, but I don’t think it caused any other glaring issues. It did undo many of the alignment tweaks we had done and I tried to recreate them as I saw them but please look over each page briefly and let me know if I missed any.
Thanks!
P.S. in most cases I ended up making the columns wider so space ended up not being an issue.
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I knew this was going to bring up a bunch of problems. >_<
Well, here goes nothing.
- Page 2: “Yet somewhere, within the ruins, lies…” The first comma can be removed, depending on meaning. Do you mean “lies somewhere” (in which case, no change) or “lies somewhere in the ruins” (in which case, drop the first comma)?
- “Half of the city” will close a gap and read at least as well.
- “…this planet is controlled by the Empire.” Alternative wording that might fit on the lines better.
- Page 5: “Darga’s throne room is opulent and repulsive” is telling rather than showing. Since you then proceed to show, I think this phrase can be removed entirely. Instead, simply make it “the air of Darga’s throne room,”
- Change: “The mighty Darga declares that there is a matter which requires immediate attention and you are to be…”
To: “The mighty Darga declares that there is a matter requiring immediate attention. You are to be…”
This should make it fit a bit better. - “What kind of food?” Consider changing “beverages” to “drinks.” Alternatively, try
“The neon-blue fruit is often used in exotic beverages.” It saves just a hair, but might be enough. Alternatively, consider bloviating a bit more to close the gap. - Page 6: “for
theirexpenses” would fit better, up to you whether you think the actual sentence is then better or worse. - “Could this be an attack?” Apparently, that should be a period and then an ellipsis.
- Bolded comma after the Advantage.
- Extra space between the period and “While she is present,” extraneous capitalization of “Add.”
(Hmm, wait. Is it actually two spaces? It looks that wide, but when I mouse over it it acts like a single space. Same with the space between “are” and “prone”) - Try “The merchants here” or something like “planet commonly overcharge” because that gap is extreme. Don’t sacrifice to much of the meaning, though, and you only need to save one character, it looks like.
- Second-to-last paragraph should be three paragraphs. Try to make the first sentence wordier so it doesn’t have a single word on the last line. The Advantage should be higher than the Threat, to fit with your usual style.
- Page 7: Textbox is properly positioned, but the text is not vertically centered. Is that something you can adjust?
- Page 9: “If they(/the party) attempt(/s) bribery, add [BOOST] for every 100 credits offered.”
- Page 11: “mistake) comma,” (that whole paragraph is a bit catawampus, but I don’t see any great way to fix it without sacrificing excellent wording).
- Change “all non-droid characters” to “all non-droid PCs.” It’ll fit better, and achieve the same or better meaning.
- Page 13: Change “characters” to “PCs” in the Narglatch encounter paragraph. This’ll fix the gap and hanging word.
- Page 15: (Apparently we’re just doing odd numbers now.) Change “players (…correctly identified)” to “characters” or “PCs.” Do this for both uses of “players.”
- Page 16: (Aw, I jinxed it.) The group hazard paragraph leaves a hanging word. I couldn’t think of a way to change it to fix that.
- “Following” hangs out all by itself. Consider swapping “players” to “PCs”
- Page 17: “Players” again in the “attackers” paragraph. We should probably spot-search for “players” and check if it shouldn’t be “characters” or “PCs.” As a matter of fact, we should perhaps spot-search for “characters” as well and see if a change to “PCs” would make sense.
- Page 18: Either unify the paragraph or split it up entirely.
- “Undetected semi-colon; upgrade”
- “Party’s first encounter with Narglatch”
- Strange double-space again, between “will” and “attempt”
- “After the battle,” “Once the battle ends,” something like that to close the gap.
- Page 19: “If the party enters” could be dropped onto its own line, fixing the problem of the lonely “following.”
- Page 20: “…they find assorted bones…” Same meaning, closes gaps. Should resolve the two lonely words, but it’s possible “trophy” is left high and dry.
- Page 21: Clues about the missing crew: There should either be a period after each line, or a semi-colon, and a period after the end of the last line.
Phew, one last thing: Consider formatting with Justify (I think we may have already talked about this?). It’ll make everything look smoother and more professional.
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- Page 2: “Yet somewhere, within the ruins, lies…” The first comma can be removed, depending on meaning. Do you mean “lies somewhere” (in which case, no change) or “lies somewhere in the ruins” (in which case, drop the first comma)?
The second one; I will remove the first comma.
- “What kind of food?” Consider changing “beverages” to “drinks.” Alternatively, try
“The neon-blue fruit is often used in exotic beverages.” It saves just a hair, but might be enough. Alternatively, consider bloviating a bit more to close the gap.
Drinks will fit!
- Page 6: “for
theirexpenses” would fit better, up to you whether you think the actual sentence is then better or worse.
This works.
- “Could this be an attack?” Apparently, that should be a period and then an ellipsis.
It does feel strange having the fourth dot =p. Added it.
- Extra space between the period and “While she is present,” extraneous capitalization of “Add.”(Hmm, wait. Is it actually two spaces? It looks that wide, but when I mouse over it it acts like a single space. Same with the space between “are” and “prone”)
Both of these were actually two spaces. Single spaces that look extra wide are usually immediately following symbols (advantage, threat…) due to incorrect font.
- Try “The merchants here” or something like “planet commonly overcharge” because that gap is extreme. Don’t sacrifice to much of the meaning, though, and you only need to save one character, it looks like.
Commonly overcharge fits well
Page 7: Textbox is properly positioned, but the text is not vertically centered. Is that something you can adjust?
In the settings the textboxes start at the same height, but because the header is a different font and a bigger size, it makes it look misaligned. Should I try to make the textbox on the right level with the black text or the orange text (header)?
P.8, 11, 15, 16 have a similar situation.
- Page 16: (Aw, I jinxed it.) The group hazard paragraph leaves a hanging word. I couldn’t think of a way to change it to fix that.
I can’t think of a good way to do it either.
- Page 17: “Players” again in the “attackers” paragraph. We should probably spot-search for “players” and check if it shouldn’t be “characters” or “PCs.” As a matter of fact, we should perhaps spot-search for “characters” as well and see if a change to “PCs” would make sense.
Is players not appropriate or we are just trying to make sentences longer or shorter?
- Strange double-space again, between “will” and “attempt”
Another legit double space.
they find an assortment of bones, teeth and claws which can be used to fashion some kind of trophy.
I changed it to the above.
Consider formatting with Justify (I think we may have already talked about this?). It’ll make everything look smoother and more professional.
Hmm… when I change it to Justify it looks pretty weird to me =P. I kind of want to be done with the formatting so we can move on.
(Left justified, right not justified)
I implemented all the other changes.
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Maybe they showed up in my selection as single spaces because they were counted as a “single double-space.” :P
I am so confused. These textboxes are making my circuits sore.
I’ll check and figure it out, then get back to you.
I’ll check it, we can probably get away with not changing anything.
“Players” refers to the meta-persona of the non-GM game participants, while “PC” is specifically the character played by the player. “Character” is a generally-applicable term for in-game personas, whether portrayed by the GM or a player. Context will usually make clear whether it refers to PCs, NPCs, or both, but sometimes it is good to specify. I don’t think there is anywhere in this book that the PC/NPC distinction is relevant, and so PC is recommended for space concerns.
As long as it fits. Just don’t forget the Oxford comma.
Yikes.
Justify shouldn’t apply to incomplete lines (e.g., header, final line), only the ones in the body of the text that will be just a little bit off. But I share your desire to be done with the formatting. We can safely go without, even though the standard style is to use Justified.
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Ah, I see the confusion. I’m talking about the gray boxes of text, not the columns.
The headers and columns are fine. That’s how it should be, even though it does look a little odd.
What I’m talking about on page seven is how the text within the gray box is closer to the top of the gray box than to the bottom of said gray box (also, the gray box is not centered in the column, and is too far to the left).
I do not know the process of manipulating the text box. I wish it was as simple as telling the program to highlight a certain number of lines. My suggestion was that you see if you can actually shift the text, or if you can only manipulate the placement of the box.
Regardless, this is a minor visual detail. I’m sorry if my precision has been causing headaches for you, I’m perhaps too much of a perfectionist.
Textboxes with which I noticed spatial discrepancies:
- Page 7: Crammed tight against the top, spacious at the bottom. Ideally, shift the text down a little bit, maybe trim a tiny bit off the bottom. The textbox is shifted slightly left.
- Page 13: The textbox could maybe use just a little bit more space top and bottom (extend the bottom, shift the text).
- Page 19: Could use a little bit more breathing room at the top, if the text could be shifted down a little bit.
The only thing that really needs to be fixed is the horizontal alignment of the textbox on page seven. The others are fairly minor details that stick out to me, but many others would likely not notice.
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Maybe they showed up in my selection as single spaces because they were counted as a “single double-space.” :P
Heh… perhaps 
Ah, I see the confusion. I’m talking about the gray boxes of text, not the columns.
That makes much more sense now!! Ok.
The gray textbox is an object that I can move around and is fairly flexible as far as placement and dimensions are concerned. The words themselves can only move one full line at a time.
Page 19: Could use a little bit more breathing room at the top, if the text could be shifted down a little bit.
I moved the textbox up one pixel but now it seems close to “following”. I could also add a space between “following” and the textbox, but that would be different than how we’ve done it so far.
I updated the textboxes you mentioned.
Regardless, this is a minor visual detail. I’m sorry if my precision has been causing headaches for you, I’m perhaps too much of a perfectionist.
That level of precision and your analytical sense have greatly helped with improving the quality of the project.
At this point, for me, time is at a premium moreso than usual (I am starting a new job, studying for an important exam, etc.) and we are getting diminishing returns on minute changes, so I am looking forward to wrapping up so we can move on to the playthrough and call it a day after a job well done!
It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty darn good.
Edit: Other than a few tweaks to the textboxes, is there anything else that is glaring to be changed?
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If you have completed those tweaks (and added the missed Oxford comma), I’m ready to call it a finished product pending play-test.
I have a tendency to… even out sideburns until there aren’t any sideburns left, so saying “done” is an almost foreign experience to me. But I’m saying it. xP
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If you have completed those tweaks (and added the missed Oxford comma), I’m ready to call it a finished product pending play-test.
Sounds like we’re done!
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I just want to say thank you again for all your input and support on this project. It turned out to be a pretty massive undertaking and we worked on it for about 3 months.
Cheers. Looking forward to the playthrough.
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