Exclusively online RPG publishing

[Clinton R. Nixon]

I really like the idea of HTML games. PDFs, while cool, aren't really accessible. They're great for getting your book to a printer, but are unwieldy, slow, and in my opinion, annoying, on screen.

If I were to do it, I'd have to leverage some technology.

First, separate your info into plenty of small topics. Each of these can get their own page.

On any page, use code that allows for two CSS files, one for screen and one for printing. (This is dead easy. See http://www.alistapart.com/stories/goingtoprint/.)

Lastly, though, I would use some sort of database backend. Doing this, you can have automatic templates for topics, so you don't have to write them in HTML. In addition, you could have a page where one could select as many topics as they liked, and all the topics would be collated on one page to print.

One might ask, how do I handle art for an HTML game? I say, do it separately. Very small art for color (for example, a small compass beside all designer's notes) works fine in HTML, but large art should be moved off to art galleries on the site.

[Daniel Solis]

Character sheets they can type into then print, etc...

I've been searching the forums, has there been a thread detailing how to do little tricks like that?

Good to see you here Gobi, I remember when Zombie: The Coil first appeared, good stuff.

Thanks, but it's been years overdue for revision. :)

[busling]

To check out a big game setting online, see Agyris:

http://www.agyris.net/

[Mike Holmes]

To check out a big game setting online, see Agyris:

http://www.agyris.net/

Funny, but that's exactly the one I was thinking of.

Mike

[Clay]

Lastly, though, I would use some sort of database backend. Doing this, you can have automatic templates for topics, so you don't have to write them in HTML. In addition, you could have a page where one could select as many topics as they liked, and all the topics would be collated on one page to print.

I think Clinton must be my PR man (since he uses my software on his own site, this isn't too shocking).  I have some nice software for stuffing a whole web site into a database and making it easy to maintain.  In the past, I've also written a nice little tool to render it as a PDF.  Even better would be a tool to render it as LaTeX, which would allow for the formatting to be made a little nicer before it becomes a PDF.

[wraeththu]

I realize this is an older topic, but I found it after a bit of absence and wondered if any of you had seen Children of Fire.  It's a very nicely put together web game.  Excellent example of using html as a medium for the product.

http://www.mimgames.com/cof/