Tools for Demon Hunters

This project is an attempt to help GMs and Players of the Demon Hunters RPG create useful supplements with little effort.

Currently, this includes

• filled-out character sheets,
• chapter overview sheets,
• encounter sheets,
• item cards, and
• postage stamps.

If you have any questions or suggestions, don't hesitate to open an issue!

Setup

You need the following software.

• Ruby 2.3 (or newer)

  With gem pandoc-ruby.

• Pandoc

• LuaLaTeX (e.g. from TeX Live)

• pdftk (optional)

• gs (optional)

I recommend you put a (sym)link to compile.rb in some directory that is in your PATH.

Missing resources

You will have to provide the fonts since I can not distribute them due to the respective licenses. Put them all into resources.

• ARJULIAN.ttf -- used for headlines on all sheets.
  Find it e.g. here.

• futurabt-light.otf -- used on the character sheet for Fringe aspects, and on gear cards for permissions.
  Find it e.g. here.

• futura_lt_condensed_light.ttf -- used on all sheets for inscribing aspect boxes.
  Find it e.g. here.

Note bene: I do not redistribute the original character sheet, but the script will download it (once) from the official site if it is missing.

Using other resources

While you are certainly welcome to experiment with other images and fonts (check out CONSTANTS in compile.rb), note that the designs are tailored to the measures of the ones I have used. You will probably mess up the sheets in some way. If you don't know your way around TikZ, I recommend you stay clear.

Paper format

Chapter, encounter and gear sheets use A4 resp. A6 paper formats. There is no option for creating formats used in the US; that would be quite the effort. I recommend you just create the A4/A6 sheets and let your printer driver fit them onto whatever paper format you happen to have handy.

Usage

Except for postage stamps, all supplements are created from JSON files. You use a command like this:

compile.rb [options] file1 file2 ...

You can pass arbitrarily many compatible JSON files. The script uses custom file endings to decide which kind of supplement you want to create, so stick to those given below.

You will get some messages printed to your command line, and after a little while a PDF should appear.

As a general rules, the script tries to supply reasonable defaults or warn you about problems with your JSON. Please take note of any messages that appear.

Options

• --debug -- if set, the temporary folder is not deleted so you can inspect the generated LaTeX and log files.

• --folded -- this option affects chapter sheets only. If you want to punch the sheet on the left short side (and presumably fold it to A5), set this option. Otherwise, there won't be enough room for punching.

• --concat=file -- by default, compile.rb will create one PDF per input file. If you want them all in one file, for instance to print them more easily or print multiple pages per sheet, set this option. file is the filename of the target file.

  Requires pdftk from the pdf toolkit.

• --small -- the original character sheet is quite large, thanks to a rather big background image. If a 3MB file is too large for your purposes, you can set this option.

  Requires gs from Ghostscript.

Character Sheet

Files of the form name.char are translated into character sheets.
See examples/testC.char for a complete example.

The template basically fills in the official character sheet. I added some cute details such as a short form of the Discipline's name in its Aspect box and proper display of Fringe disciplines.

Note:

• chapter has to be an array like e.g. ["Psi", 7]: first the Greek letter, then the number.

• Discipline fringe should be either nil or an array of the form ["Pyrokinetic", "Pyro", 6]; the short string appears in the Aspect box, if there is any.

• Discipline Aspects use the same keys as the list of Disciplines.

• conditions should contain an array of the form [3,2,1] -- first the number of mild, then moderate, then severe Conditions the character can take.

  This entry does not affect the character sheet; it is used for chapter and encounter sheets.

• You can add as many stunts as you want, but they may overflow the sheet.

Chapter Sheet

Files of the form name.chapter are translated into chapter sheets; they are meant to summarize the most important information (for the GM) about the whole chapter in compact form.
See examples/test.chapter for a complete example.

Note:

• members, temps, leader and gear contain filenames of character resp. item files without the file endings.
• Player characters should appear in member; temps is for important NPCs. The presentation is not different, but temps go last.

Item Card

Files of the form name.gear are translated into item cards that players and GMs can use to keep track of the cool property of the most precious gear.
See examples/testG.gear for a complete example.

The Demon Hunters rulebook contains nothing about gear; we should model most if not everything using Aspects. However, I found that special circumstance can warrant characters having personalized items; for instance, mad scientists probably gain something that is more than a prototype at some point. I looked to the Gadgets and Gear section of the Fate System Toolkit for how to do it.

Note:

• owner can contain either the name of a character file (without the ending) or any string.

• certified informs whether the item fulfills some made-up paragraphs in a Brotherhood Codex (CBCT) I assume exists. If you don't want to use this feature, just set "certified" : nil.

• The spade picture in examples comes from here.

Encounter Sheet

Files of the form name.encounter are translated into encounter sheets; they are meant to help GMs track data during combat encounters.
See examples/testE.encounter for a complete example.

Currently, the sheets support grouping characters and creatures, repeating the same creature multiple times, tracking of conditions, tracking of turns and some free text.

Note:

• Entries in each group are either a string (name of a character file without the ending) or an object { ... } with at least a name and conditions.
• Make an entry for mobs by setting mob to the number of creatures in the mob.
• Create multiple entries of the same creature by setting number to the desired number.

Postage Stamp

This is just a plain LaTeX file you can compile with lualatex. The resulting PDF contains a made-up pre-paid stamp to use on in-game artifacts sent by Brotherhood administrators.

Currently, there are English and German versions.

License

Copyright 2016-2017, Raphael Reitzig

dh-tools is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

dh-tools is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with dh-tools. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

---

Game terms have been taken from the publication Demon Hunters: A Comedy of Terror, published by Dead Gentlemen Productions, LLC, in accordance with the Open Game License.

Logo graphics republished with kind permission of Dead Gentlemen Productions.

Demon Hunters: A Comedy of Terrors, Copyright 2015, Dead Gentlemen Productions, LLC; Authors Cam Banks, Jimmy McMichael, Don Early, and Nathan Rockwood.