Learn how to use Adobe InDesign to make a beautiful, simple gamebook for digital or print.
In this short course, you'll learn how to create a professional-looking interior layout for a gamebook in the style of Choose Your Own Adventure, Give Yourself Goosebumps, or Fighting Fantasy.
Laying Out Your Solo Adventure Gamebook Using Adobe InDesign is a short course that covers the basics of laying out the interior of a solo adventure gamebook for publication.
Each lesson is a tutorial that uses step-by-step instructions and annotated screenshots to walk you through the process of creating a PDF file you can upload to a site like Amazon KDP or Lulu.
By the end of the course, you will have an InDesign template you can reuse for future gamebooks.
This course assumes minimal familiarity with InDesign, though you should be comfortable using a computer.
What is a solo gamebook?
Gamebooks are fiction books where, instead of reading them cover to cover, the reader is presented with choices at the end of each passage. Depending on what choice the reader makes, she'll be instructed to turn to a different page and keep reading from there.
Some choices move the reader further along in the story, introducing new settings, characters, or plot details until she reaches the conclusion. Other choices, however, can lead to a story's unhappy or premature end — often with an inducement to the reader to try again. Gamebooks tend to emphasize adventure stories, with fantasy, science fiction, superheroes, and horror being popular genres. Younger readers have historically been the audience for gamebooks, though several gamebooks for teens and adults are available as well.
Some choices move the reader further along in the story, introducing new settings, characters, or plot details until she reaches the conclusion. Other choices, however, can lead to a story's unhappy or premature end — often with an inducement to the reader to try again. Gamebooks tend to emphasize adventure stories, with fantasy, science fiction, superheroes, and horror being popular genres. Younger readers have historically been the audience for gamebooks, though several gamebooks for teens and adults are available as well.
This is a companion course to Choice Design in Solo Adventure Gamebooks but can also be taken as a standalone layout tutorial
This is a self-paced, activity-based course
Here's a brief overview of the curriculum:
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Welcome to Laying Out Your Solo Adventure Gamebook Using Adobe InDesign! 👋
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About the Instructor
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Get to Know the Storytelling Collective
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Course Downloads
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Accessibility Tools and Considerations
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1. Setting Up Your Document
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2. Choosing Fonts
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3. Creating Parent Pages
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4. Adding a Title Page
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5. Adding a Copyright Page
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6. Adding Instructional Pages
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7. Adding Numbered Story Passages
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8. Starting Numbered Story Passages at 1
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9. Highlighting Choices
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10. Adding Illustrations
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11. Exporting your Gamebook as a PDF File
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About this course
- $13.00
- 16 lessons
- 0 hours of video content
Plus, your registration includes:
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Templates and sample files
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Help and support from your instructor
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Access to a private Discord channel
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Indefinite access to the course and any future course updates
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Support, encouragement, and accountability from the StoCo community
About the Instructor
Sersa Victory
Sersa Victory is editor-in-chief of Trident Gamebooks, which publishes pick-a-path fantasy adventure stories such as Tomb of the Everstar Sisterhood, Trial of the Wolf Girls, and the upcoming Forge of the Molten Queen. He is also an ENnie-award-winning tabletop game designer whose work includes the traps collection Testament of Malice and the bestselling dungeon modules Tomb of Mercy and Necropolis of the Mailed Fist. His game design has won him many contest titles, including Monarch of the Monsters (Kobold Press) and Apprentice of Acererak (Wizards of the Coast).
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