# WORD TEMPLATE

###### tags: `WORD` `PUBLISHING`


### **A** **Note from the Designer**

Thanks so much for downloading this template! If you have any questions, feedback, or suggestions for features 
you’d like to see, please get in touch! You can reach me on Twitte[
r @laura hirsbo]
(https://twitter.com/laura_hirsb)r email [e-mail].

If this template helped you, I’d be thrilled foryou to share about it on social media, or leave a review on the product page so others can hear about your experience!

When you publish your product, please include a credit indicating you used my template, along with a link (I’ve already provided a sample in the credits to left). This helps others learn about this product and support my work.

Cheers, Laura Hirsbrunner

P.S. If ever you have a particularly fun project in need of editing—I’m a professional copyeditor and platinum bestselling game designer. I’d love if you reached out!

This is how you can give more information about your pretty cover art and interior art, a la Wizards hardcovers. In this case, the lovely typewriter photo was taken by [WildOne.](https://pixabay.com/photos/vintage-typewriter-write-new-york-1170656/)

To replace the picture inside the above frame (while keeping the frame), click on the picture, then select the Picture Format tab. Click Change Picture, and you can select a new picture to put in its place.

**Tip: Update the Copyright Info Below!**

You can use the copyright info at the bottom of this page for your own document. However, be sure to replace my name (Laura Hirsbrunner) with your own before publishing!

_Disclaimer: The designer of this template did not come up with a clever disclaimer, but felt obligated to format this template with it nonetheless._

> DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, D&D, Wizards of the Coast, Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, Eberron, the dragon ampersand, Ravnica and all other Wizards of the Coast product names, and their respective logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast in the USA and other countries.
> This work contains material that is copyright Wizards of the Coast and/or other authors. Such material is used with permission under the Community Content Agreement for Dungeon Masters Guild.

> All other original material in this work is copyright 2020 by **ANTON PALIKHOV** and published under the Community Content Agreement for Dungeon Masters Guild.

## Using This Template

this document is intended to serve as a simple template to format fifth edition supplements in Microsoft Word. Before /Rfl( Svl| using this template, you should complete the following steps, or it may not work correctly. The PDF included in your DMsGuild download is a direct export of this Word document, so you can see exactly how it should look when you open the Word template.

**Install Latest Version of Word**
This template is designed for use with Word 365 or 2019 on Windows 10. If using a previous version of Office or are on a Mac, the template will likely still work, but your mileage may vary. When you first open the template on an old version, a few page elements may be in a different place than in the sample PDF. However, as long as you do all your layout on just one computer, and export the PDF from it as well, it's likely to work without issue.

Regardless of what version of Office you have, it's recommended that you install the latest Windows and Office updates for it. Open Windows Update, choose Advanced Options, and check the “Give me updates for other Microsoft products when I update Windows” box.

### Install Fonts

All but one of the template fonts are licensed for commercial use under the Open Font License. They [must](https://medium.com/@356labs/how-to-easily-install-multiple-fonts-d8bb3eb615d5) [be installed](https://medium.com/@356labs/how-to-easily-install-multiple-fonts-d8bb3eb615d5) before opening this template in Word. The fonts are all included in your DMsGuild template download, or you can get them straight from Google Fonts:

• [Merriweather](https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Merriweather) *(serif body text) *

• [Trirong](https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Trirong) *(serif header text) *

• [Source](https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Source+Sans+Pro) Sans Pro *(san-serif text) *

• [EB Garamond](https://fonts.google.com/specimen/EB+Garamond) *(cover title text)*

• [Alegreya Sans](https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Alegreya+Sans) *(cover subtitle text)*

The drop caps font is free for commercial use, but you will need to download it separately using the following link, then install it:

• [Royal Initialen](https://www.1001fonts.com/royal-initialen-font.html) *(decorative drop cap font)*

### Turn On Background Printing

After finishing the above steps, open this DMsGuild Word template. Next, you need to enable printing of background elements (instead of leaving them out to save toner). If you skip this step, your exported PDF won't include the parchment background, and will be white instead.

• On the File menu, click Options.

• On the Display menu, find Printing Options.

• Check “Print background colors and images, ” click OK.

### Open Styles Gallery

The text formatting in this document relies on Styles. Open the Styles gallery by going to the Home tab, then clicking on the pop-out arrow to open the Styles window:

## Quick Style Guide

_The above chapter title uses the “5E - HEADING CHAPTER” style. To put an epigraph/quote at the beginning of a section like this, you can apply the “5E - EPIGRAPH PARA1 ” style. Note: If you’re not adding a second paragraph to your epigraph, you’ll need to manually change the space after PARA1 to 9 points—the default for PARA1 is to have no space, allowing a second paragraph to follow immediately after._

_If you add a second paragraph, format it with “5E -_

_EPIGRAPH PARA2 ” to properly indent the new paragraph._

—Epigraph Author_, Epigraph Source_

This paragraph uses the “5E - CORE BODY PARA1” style. The paragraph following it uses “5E - CORE BODY PARA2,” which is indented. Though this may seem complicated, it keeps the first paragraph formatted correctly, and distinct from later paragraphs.

After you’ve properly introduced your chapter, you can launch into headings below. Note that to follow fifth edition style, you should never use two headings in a row without putting at least a bit of text between them.

## Heading 1

The above heading uses “5E - HEADING 1.” The current paragraph uses more of “5E - CORE BODY PARA1,” and if you added another paragraph here, it would use PARA2.

### Heading 2

After a heading comes more text. While you should (almost) always proceed through headings in order, H1, H2, H3, there is one exception: if you’re presenting a spell or item statistics within an Hi section, it’s okay to skip this H2 and go directly to H3. Otherwise, be sure to use it.

#### Heading 3

_Core metadata (for example, listing spell level and school, or item attunement and rarity)_

**Core Hanging:** This is a hanging indent; these are generally used for lists of items. To make the section before the colon bold, highlight it then assign the “*5E CHAR BOLD” style. For an example of this in practice, check out the PHB’s section on Dwarf Names.

**Good for Spell Info:** You can also use this style for things like spell casting times. This style is also sometimes known as “Core Stat.”

**When Should You Use Hanging Indents?** If your section functions like bullet points except each “bullet” starts with a bolded title, you should generally use hanging indents rather than using inline subheads. On the other hand, if you’re using the titles to split up sections that would work better as a subheading of H3, that’s an inline subhead—you can read more on those later in this section. Note that lists with hanging indents should almost always be preceded by a colon, just like bullets would be.

Here we’re going to switch back to body text for a moment, just for fun, then it’s onto the inline subheads. How do those work? Good question.

**_This Is an Inline Subhead._** We don’t need a separate paragraph style for this—all that matters is that the first line is indented, so we first use “5E - CORE BODY PARA2”, then the first sentence/title is bolded and italicized, so we highlight that title and assign “*5E CHAR BOLD & ITALIC (INLINE SUBHEAD).” Yes, the style name’s a mouthful, it gets the job done.

**_Inline Subheads Can Be Considered H4._** In general, if the content within it could work as another subheading (if headings beneath H3 existed), it should go into an inline subhead, which is sometimes informally known as H4. On the other hand, if you have a section that functions like bullet points except each “bullet” starts with a bolded title, you should use hanging indents, not inline subheads—you can read more on those earlier in this section.

**_What Happens If You Need H5?_** If you’re already in an H4 section (aka an inline subhead), and need to nest yet another heading beneath it... Well, generally, you shouldn’t. Ideally, you’ll revise the section to make everything at a higher heading level. However, sometimes that doesn’t work. In that case, you can actually use the hanging indents previously discussed to form what some people call a “hanging subhead.”

_This Is a Hanging Subhead._ It uses the same “5E - CORE HANGING” style as other hanging indents, but what makes it a hanging _subhead_ is that you italicize the “heading” before the period. You also don’t necessarily have to precede hanging subheads with a colon, unlike most other instances of hanging indents.

_An Example of Hanging Subheads._ You can see an example of a hanging subhead (H5) beneath an inline subhead (H4) in the PHB under Rock Gnomes. There, gnomes are given a choice of three devices they can create—those are formatted using an H5.

**_How Do Bullets Work?_** Generally, if you have a bulleted list but you want to give each bullet a title, it uses the core hanging style instead. On the other hand, when you want a simple list of bullets, just use “5E - CORE BULLETS.” Note that bulleted lists should almost always be preceded by a colon, like this:

• This is a bullet.

• Guess what? This is another one.

• And one more for good measure.

**Tip: Read the Official Style Guide!**

The quick reference above focuses mainly on formatting text. In addition, you should be familiar with the official [D&D House Style](https://www.dmsguild.com/product/267467/DMs-Guild-Creator-Resource--Style-Guide-Resources)
[Guide](https://www.dmsguild.com/product/267467/DMs-Guild-Creator-Resource--Style-Guide-Resources) or fifth edition, freely available on the Dungeon Masters Guild. This contains a wealth of information about how to write for fifth edition.

### Applying Styles

When using this template, _do not format things manually,_ except for when you need to do something that doesn't have a style (which will happen very rarely). Instead, when you need to change the format of any text, select the style you need from the Styles pane. The later pages of this template contain many examples and instructions for how to select and apply the correct styles to your document. Only use styles that start with “5E,” the rest are Word default styles that you can ignore.

The thing you're most likely to need to manually adjust is paragraph spacing, as you might find times you need more space before/after a particular style than the style automatically provides. To do this, go to Paragraph Settings; you may need to change the points before or after a particular paragraph, or to uncheck the box “Don't add space between paragraphs of the same type.”

Use Paragraph Styles to Bold/Italicize Rather than using the buttons on the ribbon (or Ctrl-B and Ctrl-I) to bold and italicize text, you can assign character styles to do the same. This may seem arduous at first, but has three primary benefits:

• Keeps Word from creating new temporary character styles for every style that you modify by bolding text. If you bold a word without using the “*5E - CHAR BOLD” style, Word will start showing a second “5E - CORE BULLETS” style with the bold attribute added... and so on for every single style you add bold or italics to.

• Makes it safer to apply paragraph styles to large blocks of text without worrying about a particular word losing its bolding or italicization. It'll always keep that character style on it once assigned.

• If you ever send your Word document to a layout designer for professional layout in InDesign, it's easy for for them to migrate your text over to the final InDesign layout and easily see how words should be formatted.

## Sample Monster

This is a sample monster, formatted using this template so you can see the text styles in action. As long as you apply all the styles to your monster exactly as in the sample stat blocks, Word will automatically insert the red dividers between sections; if you have red dividers showing up where they don't belong, double-check that all the Stat Block Data lines use the “5E - STAT BLOCK DATA” style, that the ability score names (STR/DEX/etc) use “5E - STAT BLOCK ABILITY SCORE NAME, ” and that the ability score numbers use “5E - STAT BLOCK ABILITY SCORE NUMBER.”

**_Single Column._** The single-column monster stat block uses a single text box and is very easy to work with—just resize it as desired.

**_Two-Column._** The two-column stat block is a little more complicated behind the scenes, but you can use it much like the single column. The stat block is comprised of three text boxes. The first one is a full-width text box that should have no text in it, and serves only as the background. The other two text boxes have no background or outline, but are set up right next to each other; when the first one overflows, Word automatically puts the extra text in the second column. Then, all three columns are grouped together so that when you move one, they all move.

If your two-column stat block is longer/shorter than the sample included, click once on the whole stat block to select the group, then on the outline that appears, there will be two different dots at the top and bottom— the outer one refers to the group, the inner one refers to the individual box. Click the outer of the two dots to resize it to be taller/shorter. If you try to resize and \ only the background moves, not the J* L.

text too, you selected the wrong dot.
Spellcasting

This section is included to show how to format the spellcasting ability lines, as well as bonus spells.

Spellcasting Ability

You can format the below spell save DC and spell attack modifier lines using “ 5E - CORE SPELLCASTING ABILITY.”

**Spell save DC** = 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Wisdom modifier

**Spell attack modifier** = your proficiency bonus + your Wisdom modifier

Bonus Spells

If a subclass grants bonus spells, use the standard table format, which is copied below for ease of use. It's recommended that you use an inline table, not one floating in a text box, since these should always fall immediately after the bonus spells section.

**S****ample** **S****pells** **T****able**

**Class Level Spells**

|
3rd

|

_spell name, another spell name_

|
|

5th

|

_spell name, another spell name_

|
|

7th

|

_spell name, another spell name_

|
|

9th

|

_spell name, another spell name_

|
Publishing Your Finished Document

After you’ve formatted everything the way you want it to appear in the final PDF, here are the final steps you’ll need to take to publish on DMsGuild!

Change Cover Image

If you haven't already done so, take a moment to change the sample typewriter cover to your own cover art. To do so, click on that image on the first page. Once highlighted, click on the Picture Format toolbar, then click Change Picture. Browse to your 8.5” x 11” cover image and insert it. Repeat the same steps for the back cover.


ictures

Change Picture

Reset Picture

Adjust

S Colorv

Artistic Effects ■

E|2 Transparency v

\ /

:o:

/ \

Corrections

V

Preparing PDF Bookmarks

If you’ve correctly used the styles in this document for all your headers, your PDF will automatically include bookmarks for everything you labeled with “5E - HEADING CHAPTER,” “5E - HEADING 1,” and “5E - HEADING 2.” Before exporting the PDF, you can check that you did this correctly by going to the View toolbar, then check the box for Navigation Pane. This shows you exactly what will export to the PDF (however, note that the Navigation Pane shows Header 3, while the PDF will not). If something is showing up in your Navigation Pane that isn’t actually a header and thus shouldn’t be a bookmark, click on it, then change the text style to something other than the 3 styles mentioned above.

If you have a header that is one of the above styles, but you don’t want it to appear in the PDF bookmarks, you can edit that after generating the PDF by installing the free version o[f PDF-XChange Editor.](https://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-editor) Open your PDF in PDF- XChange Editor, then enable the bookmarks sidebar by pressing Ctrl-B (or by going to View > Show/Hide > Navigation Panes > Bookmarks). From there, you can edit, delete, or create bookmarks; just be sure to save your changes to the PDF when finished.

Compress Images

Depending on the resolution of the images you used, it

might make the final PDF extremely large. To reduce your file size, click on one of your highest - resolution images in the Word document, then click on the Picture Format toolbar that appears. In the Adjust section, click Compress Pictures to open this dialog:


Be sure to **_uncheck_** the box for “Apply only to this picture,” because you want Word to compress all your images at once. Then select the maximum resolution you want your images to have; 220 ppi is ideal for most supplements, but if your final file size is prohibitively large, you may want to reduce it to 150 ppi; this will reduce image quality a little, but is still acceptable for PDF supplements (Note: if you select a low-resolution picture, it’ll gray out all the higher resolution options, even if you have other images in the document that are that resolution. Be sure to select one of your highest-resolution images when you do this step, or it might restrict your option to 96 ppi). Once you click OK, it’ll compress all your pictures so none of them are larger than the resolution you selected.

Saving to PDF

After you’ve finished the above steps and are ready to publish your document, save a final copy in the normal DOCX format (if you need to make updates later, you can’t use Word to edit a PDF, you’ll need the original Word file). Next, go to File, Save As, and click Browse. On the next box that opens up, click the dropdown box and select PDF:


Options ? X

Page range

Beneath that, be sure you select “Optimize for Standard (Publishing online and printing).” Then click the Options button, which will open the dialog you see to the right of this paragraph.

The most important options to select are “Include non-printing information” (check all boxes), “Optimize for image quality, ” and “Bitmap text when fonts may not be embedded. ” Do **_not_** check “PDF/A” compliant!

O Current page

Selection

O' 1 t 1 '

Publish what

(•1 Document

Document showing markup

Include non-printing information

0 Create bookmarks using:

(•1 Headings

Word bookmarks

0 Document properties

0 Document structure tags for accessibility

PDF options

0 PDF/A compliant

0 Optimize for image quality

0 Bitmap text when fonts may not be embedded

CJ Encrypt the document with a password

OK Cancel

Once you’ve set those options, you can save your PDF. It may take a minute or more to generate—don’t worry if your computer freezes for a moment, it’ll eventually finish.


Using Images

Adding art to your supplement is one of the easiest ways to add polish. Here are some quick tips on how to make the most of Word's picture tools.

However, keep in mind that putting a lot of images in your Word document will increase your PDF's file size. You may even experience some slowness while editing the text within Word. Be sure to note the “Compress Images” section on the previous page for instructions on how to reduce your image file size before publishing.

Inserting Art

You can drag and drop art from the Windows File Explorer straight into Word, or click the Insert tab, then click pictures. Once it's inserted and you click on the image, you'll see a Picture Format toolbar appear.

Positioning Your Image

For almost all art, you'll want to change the Wrap Text options to either Tight (wraps text around the shape of that image), Top and Bottom (makes text skip the lines it occupies), but otherwise lets you move it freely), Behind Text (allows you to freely position anywhere, and makes text appear in front of the image), or In Front of Text (allows you to freely position anywhere, and hides text behind it).

|
§ Position -

|

IT\] Send Backward

|

\- ® Group-

|
|

E2!zwrap Text A

|

Selection Pane

|

éd Rotate -

|
|

LJ\] Bring Forward

|

- Align v

|

|
|

|

Arrange

|

|

By default, Word tries to restrict your image to keep it within the page margins. To place an image outside them (as with a full-page-width image at the top or bottom of page, as common in official sourcebooks), you can either set it to appear Behind Text (which doesn't wrap text), or you set it for Top and Bottom wrap, then uncheck the box for Move with Text (which allows you to put it in the margins of your page, but still easily wrap text around it).

Image Effects

While Word isn't intended for photo manipulation, there are some basic effects it can add to your images. A few of the most useful are demonstrated here, with examples on the right of page.

Picture Styles

You can select a wide range of Picture Styles from a dropdown menu, including frames, drop shadows, and faded edges. In addition, you can customize the styles by opening the Format Picture dialog box (see red arrow for where to click).


Artistic Effects

You can also do some quick “photomanipulation” to add art filters to your pictures, though the options are far more limited than a photo editor like Photoshop (paid) or GIMP (free) would allow.

**P****icture** **S****tyles****: S****imple** **F****rame**



**P****icture** **S****tyles****: D****rop** **S****hadow****: B****lur****:** **10, D****istance****:** **3**



**C****olor****: S****et** **T****ransparent** **C****olor**


Miscellaneous FAQ

This section includes miscellaneous tips and tricks to help you get the most out of this template.

Importing Text With Other Formats If you copy and paste text into this template from another document, it will likely import with different styles than the ones you need to use. Good news, all of the right template styles start with “5E” to make them easy to find.

You can make changes en masse to other styles that come in with imported text:

• Click on a paragraph holding the text you need to reformat—the Styles window will jump to that style.

• Hover over that style and click the down arrow next to it.

• Click “Select all # Instances.” When you do so, Word will think for a moment, then highlight all the times in the document that use that exact formatting.

• With all the text that needs to change highlighted, click on the new style you want to switch it to—for example, the “5E - CORE BODY PARA2” style. Word will switch all that text to using the Core Body style with indented first lines. After that, it's easy to go through and change the first paragraph of each section to correctly use the “5E - CORE BODY PARA1” style without the indent, while leaving the rest formatted with the proper indent.


How to Un-Italicize Epigraph Text

If you have a style that applies italics (or bold) to a block of text, but you need a portion of it to be formatted without it, you can (counterintuitively) un-italicize it by highlighting that text, then selecting the “*5E CHAR ITALIC” style. This will reverse the italicization on that paragraph. For example, this is useful if you need to un-italicize a word in an italicized epigraph.

Changing Font Size

The core body font size in this template is roughly equivalent to that of a Wizards of the Coast hardcover (even though this font is Merriweather 8 pt., this particular font is larger than Bookmania 9 pt., the font used in hardcovers). If you wish to increase the font size, you can do so by right-clicking on the “5E - CORE BODY PARA1” style and selecting Modify. On the Style Options screen that opens, change the font size dropdown box to 9-point font, then click OK. This will automatically change the Paragraph 2 style as well. You can change other styles (such as sidebar fonts) the same way.

Modify Style

Properties

Style based on:

Formatting


Paraqrapr

Style type:

Style for following paragraph:

Merriweather

Using on a Mac

This template has been successfully used on Word for Mac, though files created using a Windows computer might appear slightly differently on a Mac, and vice versa. You can use either a Mac _or_ Windows computer for your layout, but it's not recommended to work on the same file with both systems and expect it to open with the same layout on both—there may be minor shifts in image and text placement.

For best results, install all Office updates before using this on a Mac; to do so, open Word, then on the top menu, click Help > Check for Updates.

Here are the known issues that beta testers have intermittently seen while using Word for Mac:

• Hyperlinks and clickable Table of Contents don't reliably export (this is an overall Word for Mac issue, and not something that this template causes). If your document needs hyperlinks and they don't export, consider exporting final PDF using a Windows computer; however, be sure the layout hasn't changed when you switch operating systems!

• In some versions of Word for Mac, sidebars have had intermittently distorted text upon PDF export. If this happens, you can try changing sidebar font to Arial.

• If you're using this on a Mac and experience other issues, please email me and let me know so I can add it to the list (or try to fix it).

PARAGRAPH VS. CHARACTER STYLES

This template uses both paragraph and character styles. Paragraph styles affect the entire paragraph, and can't be used to format just _part_ of it. In contrast, character styles allow you to apply selective formatting (e.g. bold) to just a few characters if you wish, while leaving the underlying paragraph style untouched.

You can easily identify which are which in the Styles sidebar: the character styles are prefixed with an asterisk and appear at the top of your style list. You can also identify them by the icon Word displays to the right of that style name. Character styles have an “a” icon, paragraph styles have a “fl” icon.

Slow Performance

Depending on your computer, it may be slow to work with a Word document that has a lot of pictures embedded (as does this sample template). To work around this, don't add any pictures until you've finished writing & layout.

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