Not sure if this is the right forum or what would be the right forum. :)
My partner and I are currently working on creating our first "we might actually sell this" module. The module is written and being edited, and the part where it needs to go from a text document to a PDF document is rapidly approaching.
Problem: I've never touched InDesign before in my life, nor any similar programs (I don't even know what similar programs exist).
At this point I'm looking for literally any advice, but especially: Is InDesign the best tool for this job? What are my other options? Where could I find good tutorials for using InDesign, especially tutorials relevant to this specific kind of project?
TIA for any help at all, and if this is the wrong forum sorry and please let me know where to ask!
Well, stuff I've created has just be for personal use documents and gaming references. However, I've been able to do enough basic columns and text flow even with just Word and outputting as PDF. This included placing images in amongst text and having the text wrapping around it as appropriate. The images I'd generally use GIMP, and it was relevant/useful to use images that I could specify transparent regions as that was important for allowing text to approach it closely if I needed it.
I'm not saying Word is an IDEAL tool for the job. However, I suggest you consider if it is enough for your first project or not. My question being do you want your first project to focus on you learning newer/advance typesetting and layout tools, or presenting your gaming material in a simple to read, but not bland layout. I think it might give you enough features to present you with the ability to place appropriate images in the midst of your material that it makes your content pleasant to read without having to get super complicated for you or your reader.
I don't know what platform you are on, but I suspect Pages has enough layout functions that as long as my initial lookup is accurate that it has the ability to save to PDF, you could potentially use it if you are on a Mac.
Gimp is a graphics tool I like to use since it is free and available on multiple platforms. It is very powerful and capable of doing many of the things people often look to photoshop for. I don't claim to use it for many of those powerful things, and I wouldn't argue with some folks who may claim photoshop is more intuitive (especially if that was what you first saw), but it is both powerful and flexible and has lots of your fundamental tools such as magic wands and layers so you can do basic image manipulation and image file conversions pretty easily.
I suspect an important part of your testing of the PDF you create should be trying to see what it looks like on a variety of other people's machines. So I'd suggest you have a friend with a Mac, a PC and pick a few different phones and tablets as well to have them take a look at what they look like.
I don't know if you might get more feedback within the Third-Party forum or not. I can't tell for sure if that is supposed to only talk about products that are already published, or if intent to be published is enough to fit there. There appears to be on several occasions, for instance to be requests for various types of things/products in the Product Discussion thread, or questions asking if someone is working on something in there.
Are you going to be publishing under the Pathfinder Compatibility License, or just using either the OGL or Orc?