Song of Spreadsheets and Data Merge

As I was leafing through the Song of Blades and Heroes rulebook, the idea of creating cards for each of my figures surfaced. Not only would they look nice, but they would became handy when presenting the game to new players, or to quickly muster forces for an impromptu game. As my day job involves desktop publishing and digital printing, manufacturing the cards themselves would not be the problem. However, individually typing each and every card seemed an arduous task, not to mention the possibilities of errors in punching each value manually. Luckily, there are alternatives.

Ever since CS4, InDesign has had the Data Merge function, a rudimentary method for importing spreadsheet data into the layout, in order to create varied, personified flyers and such. It eliminates the need to type repetitive, similar values over and over again. Granted, the system is quite basic, but then again, figure cards for SoBaH are not very complex either. Name of the figure, Quality rating, Combat value, and any Special Rules and Point Value of the figure would be enough. Few trials with the method confirmed that the system could do what I needed, and even more so, as I could import images to the cards this way also, but there was a snag: InDesign understands only a limited type of spreadsheet data, namely .csv or .txt formats, and although Ganesha Games has quite a handy online system for building SoBaH warbands, it does not output data in a format that would be useful to me. I also tried to find Excel-based builders online, but those I came up with had the same limitations, and eventually I decided that it would be easier to build one from the ground-up rather than trying to reverse-engineer an excisting one.

I chose OpenOffice so that I could use the same files both at home and at work, since I'm using those facilities for the final print run, and most likely need to make some last minute adjustments. I had not dabbled with spreadsheet programs much in the past, but fortunately there are good guides online, and the internal Help -function in OpenOffice is not bad, either. So, although I felt a bit overwhelmed in the beginning, I soon was up and running, and even had to continually remind myself to not add features that were really not essential. And, fun as it was, I was not ready to spend any more time with the program than absolutely necessary.

Example of the spreadsheet in use. Some columns, such as those showing the point values of each Special Rules are deliberately hidden.

Eventually, I reached the point where I needed to call quits. I had a spreadsheet that was quite handy with generating a small warband. It calculates the point values accurately, makes easy selecting the warband/faction the figure belongs to, and provided there's an image of the figure ready and in proper format, places that neatly to the card with one simple command. There might be some tinkering to be done with the sheet, to make updating it with new Special Rules easier, for example. But for now, I'm content with what I've got. And so, with the function out of the way, it's was time to concentrate on the form.