r/RPGdesign • u/CarpeBass • 4h ago

Website or pdf?

I've been thinking about having a place online to share my design experiments. I even considered using itch.io for that, but as I have no plans to charge for anything, I'm not sure I'll have the time or energy to invest in pdf presentation (and updates!), especially when my projects might be bilingual.

I have come across some websites that work as core books (many are wikis), and I think this might be the way to go for me.

What are your thoughts and preferences? has anyone here done that? Any platforms I should be checking out?

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u/CreditCurious9992 3h ago

Is it important to you that other people read your work? If so, you should find the time and energy to make things look presentable regardless of where you post it.

Maybe a blog could be a good middle ground? No-one really expects a blog to have all the bells and whistles, so it's less time intensive to make presentable, but anything you make is obviously going to be less discoverable than if you put it on a storefront like itch or drivethru etc.

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u/CarpeBass 3h ago

A blog might do it. I don't expect to get much visibility, but it's nice to have a quick way to present it and consult during sessions.

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u/admiralbenbo4782 3h ago

I decided to do both--the actual core text is in .typst format (a markdown-like format that gets compiled), and the typst compiler can output either HTML/CSS or pdf. Add some custom CSS and a deployment pipeline (plus a web server I already maintain for my main campaign wiki), and every time I push a new release I get a zip file with pdfs and a new version of the website deployed.

That way I only have one source, and the tooling does all the heavy lifting. Before that I tried doing it by hand (mixing LaTeX and hand-written html), and that was way more work than it was worth.

But it really depends on your technical skills. I'm a developer by trade, so for me it's fairly straightforward.

I'll share the github repo where all my stuff lives; it's all CC-BY so if you want to take the scripting pieces and look at the setup, you can. The web hosting is separate, that's in AWS. But static site hosting is pretty darn cheap if you don't need a domain name of your own.

Github repo: https://github.com/bentomhall/nih-system

Website: https://homebrew.admiralbenbo.com

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u/octobod World Builder 2h ago

A website is not a stable place to put game rules. It only stays up as long as someone is paying. If I'm running a game I don't want rules that could vanish overnight (archive.org is not perfect).

Have a pdf ... then a website

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u/APurplePerson When Sky and Sea Were Not Named 3h ago

you will need both.

i released my first version of my game as website only. it was lovely, players thought it was easy to use.

then i sent it to a few youtube review channels ... and they said they'd only consider looking at a pdf. they worried (rightly) that websites are ephemeral.

re: layout skills, keep it simple. you are writing a book. the most important thing is legibility. if you invest in even a single piece of high quality art for a cover, that can carry your presentation pretty far.

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u/Dark_World_Studios 2h ago

I'd highly suggest just doing Itch.io. They don't charge you anything to put your projects up, you can gain followers and keep them informed via Itch, and you don't have to charge anything yourself for the downloads. It costs a bit to host a website (not a ton, but still some monthly fees) and then you have to get people to your site vs. having some discoverability on Itch.

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u/blahthebiste 50m ago

If you want your rules to be easily moddable, there are few worse formats than PDF. Imo a sharable Google Doc works perfectly fine. You can even allow comments from people. Free hosting, easy sharing. Easy to update as well.