DPnP: Creating Books
Posted by: Ruel Knudson in Campaign Resource Manager, DPnP, Developer BlogDigital Pen n Paper’s Campaign Resource Manager was initially designed specifically as a content creation tool for project development. In essence, we created the CRM to build RPG books of varying types. So what does that mean for you?
We’ve talked quite a bit about the content creation and options involved in the CRM. What we have not gone into a lot of detail with is what you do with this content. First, we know that the electronic files are used in other DPnP programs such as the character manager. However, this is only a small part. The CRM also has a component labeled “Reporting”.
The Reporting section of the CRM takes your information and presents it in a Rich Text Format, similar to what you find in programs such as Microsoft Word or Open Office. RTF is a standard for representing text in varying formats. This standard allows you to cut and paste it into Word Documents, as well as print them as is. It also allows you to customize the look of the report. You select the font and formats for 5 different heading levels starting with Heading 1, which represents title headings, all the way down to the base paragraph font and style.
After customizing how the campaign will look you can select what part of the file you want to show on the CRM’s Report. You can select from any single element type, such as just Skills, Items, or Races. Other elements, such as Character Creation Rules, contributors, etc. can all be viewed in their own reports.
Each section organizes your work. When you create something like a skill, you also create a skill group. Those groups are used like section headers. Each section header will then list its skills, or items, or whatever. If something requires tables, such as items, then tables for that section are also created.
Organizing content is done using the same format as E-RPG books. Therefore, certain item groups appear first, such as weapons, then weapon upgrades, ammunition, then armor, etc. Organizing in this way makes it easier for the reader as the more conforming a report is to a standard, the more easily information will be to find. After certain groups and types are organized to the E-RPG standard the rest is alphabetized to make it easy to find specific elements.
Each report for a specific section also shows you how much of what kind of elements exist. You will see at the top that X amount of item groups, and X amount of items exist in this report. Each report can also be filtered to hide elements not available to a player character. For instance, showing elements like NPC statistics are only valid for a player character if the character can be purchased like an item. Otherwise, these elements are not shown.
Lastly, the entire collection of elements, or rather the entire campaign, can be compiled into one very large report. This organizes the work into sections, with page breaks appearing before each section. These sections are like chapters in the book. You start with the campaign overview, which shows the campaign description, credits, and character creation rules, and then moves on into Skills, Items, Races, etc. Each element is also organized in the same format as a Player’s Guidebook. Therefore, if you have Magic enabled a chapter on Magic is placed after skills. The last element of the book is a list of contributors, which are all of the people that made campaign elements you imported into your campaign from other people.
All of these features allow us, the developers, to quickly create the content, then let the CRM organize it, automatically create the tables we need, collate the information, give us a list of contributors to credit, etc. It basically takes the worst part of creating an RPG book, which is organizing and compiling all the written components, and automates it.
Now, no automation is perfect. The CRM makes certain assumptions with the information provided. The GM is still expected to review and make any alterations before sending the printed file to his/her players. However, creating a full fledged E-RPG campaign book, book of races, Grimoire, Archetypes Collection, Item Book, Regional Atlas, Skill Expansion, etc, etc, etc. is now more easily handled for you. As a matter of point, you may not even be someone who does create such books because they are such a chore to do. This is who this feature is for. You will find that while you may never have thought to create such a book, you will be doing so before you realize it because it simply is so easy and fun with DPnP.
There is more as well. The CRM also compiles all of the information into an XML file at the click of a button. This allows you to use style sheets to further increase the formatting options. You can also take the XML files and use them to build campaign websites, Wikis, etc.
Whether you are printing copies off for your weekly game, creating the next great E-RPG supplement, or building content for your own campaign website, the CRM handles all of nasty ugly grunt work for you. This allows you to do more, with less effort than ever before.
