If you're printing out stuff for a character packet, you want the packets script (except for centralized-file things like badges and statcards). But when you're just printing random stuff, especially during runtime, you usually want to just use the normal latex, xdvi, dvips commands. The Template doesn't replace the normal tools, it just augments them!
If you haven't already, set up your dotfiles properly. Each GM needs to do so, but only once.
This is just a normal way you print latex stuff. (The Template just adds the use of DVI subdirs, which aren't important.) Let's say you want to print a bluesheet named sword.tex; this'll also work for a character sheet, a cards file once you've made it, the playerlist, whatever.
cd Bluesheets/DVI latex ../sword.tex dvips sword -o gv sword.ps gv is in the sipb locker.)
lpr -Pprintername -Zinlower sword.ps The actual printing part here is the same, but we'll also cover making a file for a batch of miscellaeous cards.
Usually you'll print cards as parts of character packets. However, you may find that you need to print lone abilities or items or other such cards that aren't usually done that way (like during runtime). For this you need a file that makes just these cards.
LaTeX/Central has misc-items.tex, misc-abils.tex, and several other
such files that are there for exactly this purpose. If there's one
for the kind of thing you're making, just pick the appropriate file.
Between \begin{document} and \end{document},
list the cards (say abilities) you want:
\Afakeabil
\ability{Sample Powers}{You have the ability to do strange and
marvelous things once every three days.}{You see a strange and
marvelous thing.}
If you want cards to have a character's name on it the way the ones printed from their charsheet do, put \name{\Ccharactermacro}. All the cards from there until the next \name will have that character's name on them. (Well, unless you make a type of card that never puts charname on.) \name{Unowned} will switch back to Unowned cards.
\pageof{card} will make a page of that card (starting a new
page to do so). So \pageof{\Ibowling} will
produce a whole page's worth of bowling ball item cards, \pageof{Sample
Powers}{You have... three days}{You see...} a page of Sample Powers,
etc. This is particularly useful for mass-producing money.
\putcard makes another copy of the last card you gave.
\newpage starts a new page (as usual in latex).
You've made your file. It gets latex'd and printed just
like the misc sheets instructions above.
(LaTeX/Central/ has a DVI subdir for this purpose.)
Cards automatically come out single-sided, double-sided, or mirror-sided
as appropriate, without you worrying about it. (If you have mirror-sided
cards that you want to print non-mirrored for some reason, use
dvips -h unmirror to print them.)
If there isn't a misc-whatever.tex file already, or if you just want to start a new batch of whatevers, you need to write a new file. We recommend doing this in LaTeX/Central. It'll look a lot like the misc-*.tex files.
Start with the lines
\documentclass{game}
\usepackage{abilities}
\begin{document}
\end{document}
but with the name of the card's style file you already made in LaTeX/Styles
instead of 'abilities' (which gets abilities.sty). Any files needed to
define abilities, say Lists/abilities.tex, should already have been \input by
the style file, so you don't need to think about them at this point.
If you're doing a card for a specific character, add a line after like \name{\Cfred} after \begin{document}, using the character's macro as per LaTeX/Lists/characters.tex. Again, this name holds for all cards until you say \name{} again; use \name{Unowned} to get back to Unowned cards.
Now pop back up to the quick method and proceed from there, filling your file with cards and printing.
Even though statcards and badges belong in character packets, you don't want to do them as part of packet printing because each character only has one of each (usually), so you'd print many pages of cardstock with one card each. That's no good.
But you don't have to. All badge info, and all stats, are listed for each character in LaTeX/Lists/characters.tex and players.tex, so the Template already knows what should be on badges and statcards. In LaTeX/Central there are prewritten files, which you shouldn't have to touch at all, called badges.tex and stats.tex; these look at Lists/characters.tex to see what to make.
So when you latex Central/stats.tex, it automagically makes a stat card for each entry in characters.tex; badges.tex makes a badge for each entry, plus a pageful of Observer badges at the start. You can deal with these files just like printing random sheets at this point.
However, with statcards and badges you often want to print out only one page of them---say, to print out the page of Observer badges multiple times. You can do this two ways.
gv the .ps file (as recommended above to preview),
find the pages you want and mark them at the left edge of gv.
Remember to mark the pages in pairs, since stuff is on both sides.
Then use "Print Marked".
See misc.html about the other stuff in LaTeX/Central; these mostly also latex and print like random sheets.