2016-09-23 RPG Modules and LaTeX

I just saw an impressive *LaTeX* class for B/X adventures in a private share on Google+.

• RPG Module class support thread
• Small example in this post
• Longer example on CTAN: see rpg-module and follow the links to the the .pdf file
• Source document for the documentation, for the curious

support thread

this post

rpg-module

Source document for the documentation

I’ve been using a different, much simpler class by +Peter Fröhlich, latex-bx.

Peter Fröhlich

latex-bx

Sadly, I didn’t get far with *Raising a God*.

I’m not even sure I want “a tool for authors to typeset RPG modules in a style reminiscent of the old-school adventures of the 1980s” – I like the Tufte class I’ve used elsewhere, eg. Halberds-and-Helmets.pdf.

Halberds-and-Helmets.pdf

But there are probably many ideas worth stealing in there. For example, all the stats of all the B/X monsters. Then again, I might as well go back to writing some more instead of tinkering with the tools.

☯

But now that I’m trying to install a new class, I’m running into problems with my LaTeX installation.

alex@Megabombus:~$ tlmgr update --list
Unknown directive ...containerchecksum c59200574a316416a23695c258edf3a32531fbda43ccdc09360ee105c3f07f9fb77df17c4ba4c2ea4f3a5ea6667e064b51e3d8c2fe6c984ba3e71b4e32716955... , please fix it! at /usr/local/texlive/2014/tlpkg/TeXLive/TLPOBJ.pm line 210, <$retfh> line 5579.

I need to get the latest TeX installed. And since I’m really into Homebrew:

Homebrew

alex@Megabombus:~$ brew search texlive
Installing TeX from source is weird and gross, requires a lot of patches,
and only builds 32-bit (and thus can't use Homebrew dependencies)

We recommend using a MacTeX distribution: https://www.tug.org/mactex/

You can install it with Homebrew Cask:
  brew cask install mactex
alex@Megabombus:~$ brew cask install mactex
==> Downloading http://mirror.ctan.org/systems/mac/mactex/mactex-20160603.pkg
`#``#``#``#``#``#``#``#``#``#``#``#``#``#`## 100,0%
==> Verifying checksum for Cask mactex
==> Running installer for mactex; your password may be necessary.
==> Package installers may write to any location; options such as --appdir are ignored.
Password:

• *****

Later, run *TeX Live Utility* and select *Update All Packages*. All of this will take a long time.

And finally, you probably want to trash the older installations?

alex@Megabombus:~$ du -sh /usr/local/texlive/*
4,2G	/usr/local/texlive/2013
4,5G	/usr/local/texlive/2014
4,7G	/usr/local/texlive/2016
584K	/usr/local/texlive/texmf-local

☯

The key to installing extra packages on a Mac is finding the right directory:

installing extra packages

alex@Megabombus:~$ cd Library/texmf/tex/latex/
alex@Megabombus:~/Library/texmf/tex/latex$ unzip /Users/alex/Downloads/rpg-module.zip
...

​#LaTeX ​#Mac ​#RPG