Thursday, December 23, 2010

Font of (Character) Knowledge

I hope you're enjoying yourselves for the holidays, whichever ones you might celebrate. I've been relaxing since I got my shopping done, and while tweaking some (donning my cloak of defying flames) 4E D&D characters, I thought I'd design my own character sheets that appeal to my organizational and note-taking preferences.

So, in comes a request for suggestions, just in case anyone might like their own copy of the final PDFs: What are some good fonts to use, or to avoid? I'm thinking about going for some fancier fonts for the bigger bits of text and an "ordinary" san serif font for smaller things for the sake of readability.

Of course, I suspect the thread may very well turn into a display of horrible fonts as others groan and beat the dead horse of comic sans.

32 comments:

Q said...

Have you thought about using the Diablo font?

Don said...

I don't think there's any need to get at all fancy on the nuts and bolts of the sheet. That stuff's there to serve the game and not to get in the way. Last year I whipped up some character sheets for a homebrew Fallout pen-and-paper I cobbled together over a couple of nights from the old World of Darkness and the SPECIAL system, and Calibri, the new MS Word standard, worked just fine.

Word verification: "wooks," something you only say on Kashyyyk if you want to have your arms torn off.

Bronze Dog said...

I know there's no need to get fancy, but I want to be a little fancy. :)

I'll most likely be using Adobe Illustrator, since it's what I know. Mostly I'll be just drawing boxes to fill in modifiers and some decent blank spaces for individualized notes, conditional modifiers and such.

Front page'll have a lot of space for 'fluff' about the character, since there's more to one than numbers.

Ryan W. said...

I love any old Latin font with the long "s". If your campaign is medieval try to print it on some old parchmenty looking background.

I did something similar a loong time ago.

I shit you not, my word verification was "woonest". I'll take "Deepak Chopra's House" for $1000 Alex.

Don said...

Have you considered Comic Sans? How about Papyrus?

Dunc said...

Depends what you're looking for... The HPLHS have some lovely period fonts, mostly early 20th C, but they've got a couple of nice blackletter fonts as well.

Don said...

Dunc:

Those are some really awesome fonts. I suddenly wish I had a reason to use cool fonts. The one based on Lovecraft's handwriting is probably my favorite.

BD:

I just noticed you were expecting flames for mentioning 4E DnD. It's been so long since I've played DnD that I'm out of the loop, but is 4E really that much of a pariah? What I read of it seemed like they had learned some positive lessons from the party-based combat of WoW and given each class a specific role in a fight, which, to me, made the game more tactically interesting. I can't for the life of me understand why people would hate it so much.

Especially since it's not like Wizard's came around to everyone's house and burned their 3E and 3.5 books. It always drives me nuts when gamers bitch and moan over a new ruleset, as if they're being forced to upgrade and can't just keep playing with their preferred rules.

Captcha: "lamed," what you have been if Dave Mabus leaves a comment on your blog. Ex: "Whoa, look at that screed, dude. Looks like you got lamed!"

Bronze Dog said...

I haven't met many people who like 4E, yet, and lots of people who seem to like whining about D&D being Ruined FOREVER because they see some vague WoW thing in the streamlining efforts. (I wouldn't know, since I haven't played WoW.)

That includes people who like to whine about the martial classes having "spells."

...So how exactly does having more options than "5-foot step and attack" or "full attack" ruin a fighter? How exactly does getting "Whirlwind attack" as an encounter power instead of a multi-prerequisite feat ruin it?

And, of course, there's the luddite faction who seems to despise the idea that anything even vaguely inspired by game styles invented after the 70's found its way into D&D.

Don said...

That last faction is ridiculous. I've read the "WTF DnD" feature at Something Awful, and color me unimpressed. Granted they pick the worst of the worst, but the original game mechanics were ridiculous and the setting was just plain silly. Like, way sillier than modern DnD, which is still kind of silly.

I thought the encounter powers/daily powers/etc. aspect of 4E was one of the most intriguing parts of it. It was a dramatic restructuring that I thought made the game a lot more varied and interesting. Like you said, it opened up the options for all classes. Not only that, it gave each class something to do other than "cause damage," which was really the primary goal of all classes in past editions.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Bronze Dog said...

And DM returns with the standard copypasta. And after I was having so much fun getting him to speak in context-sensitive sentences that he ended up hanging himself on.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

you little fuckers die today...

Bronze Dog said...

Oh, fun. I'll get to smile when the clock ticks past midnight and I'll still be alive, and DM'll be wrong once more.

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...
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Bronze Dog said...

Still alive.

Don said...

To the tune of "Still Alive" from Portal.

Ahem.

This was a triumph
I'm making a note here: huge success
It's hard to overstate my satisfaction

Atheist heathens
We disbelieve God
Cause he's not there
Watching over all of us
Even the ones who are dead

But it's no use crying over every death threat
Because there is one thing that David Mabus won't get
It's that science is sweet
And it makes God retreat
We are the people that are still alive

We're not even angry
W're being so sincere right now
Even though you asked your God to kill

We are examples
Philosophy/enemy of life
Michael Shermer raped and murdered Mickey

Now I know your shrink has prob'ly put you on pills
But you don't take 'em because that's what God wills

So it must suck for you
To hear our point of view
And know that here we are still alive

Go head and copy
And then control V; it's what you do
Maybe someday God will really listen

Maybe he's out there
That was a joke; ha ha, fat chance
Anyway, this life is great
Without the need to fear Hell

Look at me still talking
When there's gaming to do
When I see your comments I am glad I'm not you
There an X-Box to play
Cartoon demons to slay
Which we can do 'cause we're still alive

You're so angry that we're still alive
We think you're crazy and we're still alive
We feel fantastic and we're still alive
You can threaten but we're still alive
You threats are empty so we're still alive

Still alive

Still alive

Anonymous said...

BD - you no longer exist... end of discussion

Bronze Dog said...

That's funny coming from a 4x copy pasta troll. (Deleted, since he knows it's a waste of everyone's time.) Here's a hint: If you post the same garbage over and over again, no one's going to bother to remember you.

Try speaking in a civilized context like a human being, not a robot. Until that becomes your default behavior, you're nothing but an ephemeral running gag. A few more years, and you'll just be remembered as a crazy guy who started one of those memes everyone got sick of.

And that will be the closest thing you'll have to a contribution to society.

Oh, and it's funny that you're denying my existence when it turned out you were wrong about me dying.

Don said...

What the hell is with this guy. I mean, seriously. I'm at a complete loss by this point. He is now denying your very existence, and I don't know what to make of that. It's almost like he's gone further off the deep end.

Anonymous said...

BD, ever play any of White Wolf's stuff? Like Exalted?

Bronze Dog said...

No, I haven't. Mostly D&D for me so far. I end up doing more worldbuilding than playing, actually. That may change for my meatspace situation, though, depending on job status, since I've got some promising options. I may actually get a place where geeks hang out.

Anonymous said...

Alrightie. I asked because I'm recruiting for an online game and since I'm a long time lurker on your blog I figured, "oh, what the heck."

Bronze Dog said...

Ah, okay. Feel free to check in on me again, sometime.

MWchase said...

DM, seriously, for all that we mock your self-referential, contentless, copy-paste ramblings... You are ill. Get help. Nobody will think less of you, and you may be able to begin repairing your reputation once you've recovered.

On topic, if you feel like going overboard (which I'd understand if you don't), you could try rolling your own. Most tools for that are probably too much, but FontStruct looks pretty simple, comparatively. (I'm thinking of using it for a project of my own, but it's not yet necessary.)

Anonymous said...

censoring comments now shows what a little liar you are... Do you think I should have MERCY on you?





an example and warning of the fate of those who try to divide people....

randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/1176-serves-em-right.html


At least we're on the same page...

Serves Em Right, eh, Randi....


skepticalcommunity.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=29968&p=567498#p567498

Bronze Dog said...

I only censor the copy-pasta comments.

You should thank me for encouraging actual discussion with real people instead boring, mindless badmouthing of the figments of your imagination.

Bronze Dog said...

Heh. I'm reminded of the time when another copy-pasta troll here thought it was clever to copy-paste "dumbass" so many times my web browser warned me there might be a script in an infinite loop.

Such a towering intellect.

Anonymous said...

bronze dog - you are a trouble making idiot and I am going to make your life a BIG PROBLEM...

Bronze Dog said...

Oh, fun. I'm quaking in my boots.

The Internet Tough Guy routine doesn't work on me. Last I recall, your response to seeing PZ Myers in person was to run away, followed by the childish antic of pulling a fire alarm.

Oh, yeah. Aren't you the guy who was dropping comments about how Mickey Mouse was real and that atheists killed him?

Face it, your life is a joke. Get medication and grow some humility.