I was wondering what tool(s) people would suggest to use for writing my RPG game system? I have Adobe Master Collection CS3 so this gives me most of the Adobe tools and also I have Open Office.

If you mean pen and paper rpgs or battle mechanics for computer rpgs I get the most use out of open office calc

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Original post by Kaze If you mean pen and paper rpgs or battle mechanics for computer rpgs I get the most use out of open office calc

Yeah I mean the pen & paper(ish) mechanics of the game but also design doc stuff. I am kind of surprised you use a spreadsheet, maybe just for charts?

After I posted, I started to wonder if some of the data should in xml and have the main document link it. It would be nice if the document and game shared the same data for the game system.

For statistics and other numerical data, a spreadsheet program can be quite useful. I've seen it being used for localization and other purposes as well. If you choose to export to a .csv file, the data is easy to parse with custom tools and scripts, too.

For a design doc, I'd use a word editor. A wiki could be useful as well, if you're working with a team that's spread across the globe or if you wish to keep track of changes more easily. For notes and work logs, I use Evernote, a nifty little mix between Notepad, Word and a database.


Linking directly to the statistics data is a good idea. Alternately, you can also choose to generate some documentation from the statistics. Just play with it and see what works well for you.

Just a note about XML: unless you can generate it easily, don't go for XML just because it's popular. A spreadsheet will probably be much easier to work with: editing large XML files by hand is rather tedious.

When I'm working up combat equations / dmg etc. I use excel. I will have the stats of various attackers and various defenders/targets. Then when I write up an equation I can copy paste it and see how it works with a large combination of character stat sets immediately.

Honestly excel (and I assume OO's spreadsheet) is great for making up game rules. It even has a random number generator built in so you can test out some combat right there.

And if this is really an actual pen and paper game why do you need the Adobe stuff at all?

Thanks for all the feedback. I can see how the spread sheet could be good for stat specific parts. I also agree with your take on XML, I started using it for some game assets and abandoned it. Thing is that XML/CSS is the only thing that comes to mind.

Now I am thinking that it would be really good if all the data could be shared between a design doc, website and the game. The only way I can see this working is using html, xml and css. Can you embed a spread sheet into html and format it?

BTW this isn't a pen & paper game, it's a MMORPG. Isn't everyone making one :) I bought the Adobe CS because I needed Photoshop, Illustrator and Dreamweaver. Everything else was a bonus.