Phone directory pages for tabletop RPGs

A directory page is a clue that does not look like one. Somewhere in a column of three hundred names is the one number the characters need, and the table has to find it the way anyone would: by reading.

What goes on the page

A running head across the top — the guide words, the directory, the place and year, the page number — and four columns under it, filled from a palette of blocks: listings under a category heading, a boxed listing, a display advertisement and a small notice. Any listing can be set bold, the way a business paid to have its name stand out. Drag the blocks between the columns until the page balances; an advertisement takes whatever room its column has left.

Five directories, five worlds

The classified skin is yellow stock from the late 1980s, bold headings and dotted leaders to every number. The 1920s skin is a telephone directory with exchange names in the numbers, and Eastern Bloc is a grey district subscriber list with the villages on manual exchanges. For fantasy there is a register of guilds and workshops listed by seal number, and for science fiction the services directory of a space station, printed only when the terminals are down.

Export is A4 at 300 DPI, as a PNG or a PDF. A single advertisement blown up to fill a page is an Advertisement, and the story that sends the characters looking for the number belongs in the Newspaper.