Now that I've caught up my campaign work from the holidays and from all the time spent trying to get my contest entry presentable (gah! still wince at the typos I didn't catch!) I want to go back to putting my original adventures up on my website in a moderately cleaned up format for download.

The first one I posted was in Excel format with multiple tabs, because I like to be able to flip between them.

But last time I had at least one request to do it in PDF.

So I would like to get some opinions. What is most user friendly for running a scenario? For those who have seen my excel formatted adventures, do you like them? Would you prefer a simple formatted text document? A PDF file?

Opinions much appreciated.

Did you change your website up? I can actually read the tabs on the right, or maybe FireFox likes your site better than IE.

GAH!! Thank you for the heads up to look at it in IE. Apparently it does not like the transparency on my png images. I'll have to change them to gifs.

But in the short term, I've removed the image backgrounds, and here is the link to the adventures:

http://aethel.net/darkheresy/adventures

I think pdf would be best option or barring that plain text/doc.

You know you can insert links instead of just typing them as regular text?

And rememeber that there are always people willing to help out to turn a plain 'ole document into something a bit spiffy...

Kage

I loved your Sins scenario by the way, great introduction to the game before getting PtU underway.

Personally I liked the Excel thing you did, once I got used to it (admittedly, I was at first horrified) the sheets made for easy navigation. Really though even plain text is sevicable, I'm not picky.

PDF is the standard for most documents as it's readable using a wide number of applications on all operating systems.

I'd love to see some .ODS format material just to confuse Office users.

Ha ha Charax! Well I do actually use OpenOffice...

But anyway, thank you for the input guys (and the offer Kage). Based on that, I will probably go to PDF for future adventures. (And maybe even go back and put Sin up in said format.) I at least got adjusted to the idea of a single document when developing Eternal Tide, though I did do the grunt work in a spreadsheet and then move it all over to the text file at the end for polishing. I have to admit it was easier to print out without worrying about page breaks.

And thank you very much for the compliment Aureus. Of course I overthought myself on that one, since in my campaign I ended up changing the big bad in PtU to something other than the SQ!

I personally prefer .rtf. I like it simply because that's what I write in. If I could, I'd do PDFs.

I always preferred PDF's, Excel makes me nervous but maybe that's just me being weird about office programs.

PDF for preference- I use a variety of computers, and not all of them can read .xls or .doc or .ods. They can, however, all read .pdf, so I have a habit of transferring any downloads from other formats into that anyway. Any work saved on my part, however, is always appreciated.

Well it certainly seems like the PDF's have it. (I miss the Poll feature!)

Thanks for the input all.

Andrea,

Do you use the XL format while GMing the game? I like the quick random acess of the sheets, just from looking at it, but haven't tried it. So far I've only GM'd from hard copy, but have often thought of using my laptop in game time to record PC/NPC intereactions and so on.

Anyways, PDF is great. I mark up the margins and put notes there as the game is in progress.

What tools did you use to create the boxes in Eternal Tide?

Personally I GM from memory and occasionally a few notes. That way I'm not ever acting like I'm tied to script (which helps with my players). Aethel, if you do the gruntwork in Excel anyway, do you think you could provide the excel as well as the PDF when you put stuff up? I can go either way, but I loved the access (again, once I got over the initial shock).

Nojo- Yes, I usually just GM straight out of Excel, except for the NPC profiles for fights, which I print out. Sometimes I write my "during game" notes on paper, and sometimes I type them directly into my adventure notes log. But anything I write down, I always type up later.

And the text boxes were just a table with 1 row /1 column, and a border. I did the layout and edits in rich text format, which supports tables.

Aureus- My preferred method of GM'ing is just a rough outline that makes sense only to me. The adventures I upload have a lot more text in them than they did at the time I ran them.

I'm sure whatever format I do the final editing in (rtf or spreadsheet, one of the 2) I'll make that version available as well.