Chargeit's page

Oh, Scribus is a open source replacement for Indesign, just grabbed it up and plan on trying out soon "Ugh, if I have to learn one more program I'm going to have a brain overload". From what I understand, its main draw back is not supporting Indesign files. Umm, shouldn't be much of an issue if you aren't expecting backwards compatibility.

I doubt he wants to drop several thousand to make personal gaming books.

I've Used all the ones I mentioned, expect Scribus o/c, and though the learning curve is steep at times, they are very functional.

Shoot, a lot of things are a lot easier to do in say GIMP, vs photoshop.

You can easily create professional quality products with the software I've mentioned. Main draw back is the lack of support and tutorials that Adobe products have.

Open office is a good replacement for word and is free. It also allows for the creation of PDF.
If you don't want to drop 800 on photoshop, check out Gimp which is free. It has many of the same functions.
Not sure about InDesign.

Good luck.

*Check out InkScape for doing vector graphics.