I don't want to overstate my process from markdown to final product. There are still fiddly bits that take some time. Having said that, though, the process does save a lot of time.

One of the fiddly bits is tables. I use a program called Typora to make tables in markdown. The time needed to enter a table is drastiacally reduced. Cool, right?

However, when I convert the markdown file into LibreOffice format, I need to touch every table to format it correctly. There's no way in the template to pre-format the tables. Plus, Typora requires every table to have a header. Great for random tables, awful for monster stats. So, there's a bit of time touching every monster entry to remove the top row.

Making Black Hack stuff, no issues at all because monster entries don't use tables. Making Basic Fantasy and traditional OSR stuff...

The second fiddly thing is image placement in Scribus. Every new document requires some tweaking because the text is different. Minor annoyance, but I don't know of a way to avoid it.

With all that, though, I'm still happy to be where I am with workflow processes. Still tweaking, but I feel closer to being able to pay off my idea debt than ever before.

    Last post for the night.

When I started thinking about subsystems for games, I realized that a video would be much better for demonstrating the concept.

I have an old USB Camera, an old Linux computer, and OpenShot.

I think I'm ready. Just need to have a table downstairs. Bwa ha ha ha.

Work really lightened up the past week, so I have more brainspace to get things done. Woot!

    I haven't stopped working, but I haven't been able to write much.

The short version is that I am building infrastructure to make it easier for me to fully flesh out ideas and make well-structured PDFs for general consumption.

The long version started with my ideas from over a month ago to make short documents about subsystems for use in games. That led to searching for ways to easily to swap out one subsystem for a different way.

Specifically, if I decide to use playing cards (or UNO cards, or Rook cards) for initiative in The Black Hack, I wanted to swap out the initiative section of TBH for the card-based system. After the switch, I wanted to be able to quickly have my customized TBH in one document, ready to hand out to player and add to my GM screen.

The Black Hack is already available in markdown code, so it's easy to break it up into modules. Since all my TBH stuff began in markdown, I started working out a way to add in classes and magic items, swap out initiative, and replace the monster section. After that, I'd use a tool named pandoc to convert it into files for LibreOffice.

As I began doing that, I picked up a thread in the Basic Fantasy community that helped me finalized my process. I consider BF to be the closest thing to an open-source project. (The only thing missing is github.) I can get the entire source document and modify it. On a dare, I began to convert the entire BF rules into markdown. (I only have Chapter 8 left to convert.)

Not only did pandoc help me speed up the conversion work, but once it's finished, I should be able to convert it back into a LibreOffice file, with a specific template. The resulting file can then be imported into Scribus for layout work.

So I haven't stopped working, but I have come very close to having a process that works quickly and effectively.