If you've read Awesome Adventures, you may have noticed that it's not the most beautifully laid out book.  That's because I laid it out myself, using Open Office.

So, I'm looking forward to my next game, Escape from Tentacle City, and I think it would be good for me to practice with layout a bit.  I have a copy of InDesign, but I can't make heads or tails of it.

Can anyone recommend a good tutorial for InDesign, or a free, easier to use alternative?

Look for the book Real World InDesign (for your version, though many concepts translate from version to version), authors Kvern and Blatner. It's a brick, but the version of the book I have it for (CS2) was astonishingly well-written.

Try Scribus. Free, open source, good tutorials available.

c.f,. http://www.scribus.net/

Answering your subject line, I've found two books very useful for getting up to speed on layout basics.

The Non-Designers Design Book (Robin Williams)
Looking Good in Print (Roger C. Parker)

In that order.

I learned InDesign "orally," mostly over chat with Joshua Newman and (sometimes) John Harper.

I'm happy to do the same with you.

About.Com has excellent tutorials in my experience for all the Adobe software: <a href="http://desktoppub.about.com/od/indesigntutorials/Adobe_InDesign_Tutorials.htm" target="_blank">About.Com's InDesign Tutorials, and they are graded at varying levels. And most of all: Free.