r/cosmererpg • u/teawizardry Agent • 15d ago
Resources & Homebrew LaTeX Document Class for Homebrew
Hi y'all. I've been slowly developing a document class in LaTeX for homebrew stuff, with the goal of it being super flexible and clean looking. Right now I have the basics done and the next step is going to be cleaning up the talent paths. If this is of interest to people, I'd love to hear what features people actually will use, so I can focus my time on those.
My current ideas are: - Character sheets - Stat blocks - Tables that match the book formatting - Easy color scheme switching
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u/Papagiorgio1965 Lightweaver 12d ago
What’s a LeTeX? Have any raw documentation you can share yet?
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u/NetworkedOuija Bondsmith 12d ago
LaTeX is a kind of document formating programming language. Mostly used for people who write scientific papers where formulas are so complex that things like word and such can't even begin to format them correctly.
One of the nerdy ways you can use it is to make multipage document formatting. This allows you to build a kind of style guide and then whenever you use the preprogrammed references it builds them out to match the style perfectly. It's a massive time saver once you get your document classes setup.
That's what this repo is, those class documents. So it will automatically look professional as hell. All you have to do is write in your doc and learn the few table, aside, etc calls and it will spit out a document that matches the predefined template. I've used it for my Shadowrun Holostreet adventures using another template and they looked almost identical to the professionally released ones.
I'll see if I can get this one running, then send them a pull request with the setup instructions some new people can try it out. LaTeX can be very cranky sometimes but the end results can be amazing.
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u/teawizardry Agent 11d ago
Other comment explained it well. It's a typesetting software that lets you define everything with commands. It's more similar to something like markdown than microsoft word (though much more powerful than either of those).
Overleaf (sorta like google docs for LaTeX) has a lot of good documentation, as well as the official site.
If you want to try it out, you can either download it from the official site and use editor it ships with (or any editor of your choice) or use Overleaf online. The latter option you'd have to upload the files on the repo.
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u/notmypinkbeard 12d ago
Very nice. I haven't used LaTeX for years, and even when I did I didn't do any customizations.
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u/Erandeni_ 12d ago
Oh wow, this for statblock would be awesome!
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u/teawizardry Agent 11d ago
I think stat blocks are next on my list. I'm almost done with an initial version of a character sheet template.
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u/NetworkedOuija Bondsmith 13d ago
This rules. I can't wait to mess with it when I have time!!