Change number of first chapter

Question

Is it possible to change the number of the first chapter? I'm using the bookdown::gitbook output format, and I would like to flexibly change the number of the first chapter from 1 (it's default) to 2, 3, 4, etc.

The reason I'd like to do this is that I want to create separate markdown html output files for now (with the intention to later combine them into a book).

Answer 1

Adding this argument in the document's YAML solves the issue:

output: pandoc_args: ["--number-offset=1"]

This particular offset changes the section headings to start with 2 instead of 1.