One Final Capstone
To round out my education at New England Institute of Technology, I poured all of my passions into a final piece. This piece would be a D&D Homebrew booklet, featuring original subclasses, magic items, and a short adventure for level 5 players. This booklet would utilize my knowledge of InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator, and would showcase my expertise in them.
Why D&D
As you may be able to tell by my previous works as well as my Bio, D&D holds a special place in my heart. I’ve used it not only as a game but also as a way to meet new people and share new memories. Some of my best friends were met through D&D, so I decided to oversaturate my portfolio with it just one more time before I stepped into the real workplace.
After I learned about this assignment a full year before working on it, I knew I wanted to attempt to make my own book. This is because I have been my group’s resident Dungeon Master (The player that runs the game) for a full 2 years now, and because of this, I had a lot of custom content either made or in the works. I saw this project as an opportunity to really take a bite into print production.
One of my favorite parts of this project was including programs that I utilize during my own D&D games. These programs include Heroforge.com which I used to make all the models, and Inkarnate.com, which is a map-making program.
Utilizing a Variety of Programs
The bulk of this project was done in InDesign, the program that specializes in digital print production. From Paragraph Styles to Tables, I utilized InDesign to its fullest. The program was very useful overall, as its utility and convenience made laying out the document the quickest part of the project. I used Photoshop primarily to edit the graphics that I created through Heroforge, but also used it to make the cover. Illustrator was used the least and was used to make the buttons in the Interactive PDF.
Printing the Book
I printed the final book through Staples’ Business Document printing. I chose to have the book spiralbound, as I believe would be convenient to be able to have the book lie flat on a table while flipped to a single page.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this was a great experience to have. I wish to pursue this work a lot further, and will definitely be making more of these books in the future. It just so happened that my home campaign ended alongside the completion of this book, so starting a new adventure will definitely spawn more of these homebrew works! For now though, if you’re interested in more of my print design, it can be found in my Shacksbury Rebrand
