Free GM Resource: Inspiration Pad Pro 3

This week's Free GM Resource is one of those "time savers" that can really help cut down on some GM prep time. Of course it could also be a huge time-suck for some, but that is the nature of these kind of things.

Inspiration Pad Pro is now at version 3. This table generator has a pretty slick interface and I love the way they've alternated color in the results window.


Editing the included tables or generating new ones seems pretty simple & straight-forward. The folks over at NBOS Software included a good PDF User guide. When testing out the software I found two minor bugs with installation and in use. First, and this is one of those bothers-me-more-than-it-should kind of things, when installing while you can specify the installation directory, the program still places another folder of files outside of that specified directory. I really only discovered this when I went to look at a table layout and noticed that the table was largely just pulling in result from another table that wasn't listed in my installation directory. I ended up having to do a search for the table (they are .ipt files) to find the other directory. The second bug I found was that the default for saving files is as a .html file, but those html files are empty. Electing to save as a .txt file works perfectly fine though.

Click for larger example

All things considered, these are minor qualms for such a good program. I have found that having a good table generator to be a huge benefit at the gaming table. Whether you pre-generate things you need in advance or you use the generator on the fly, it can really be a time-saver. Can be......I've been known to spend a LOT of time making tables that may or may not get used in my games. I do have some fun while making the tables, so it isn't a waste of time.

If you don't already have a table generator and you want an easy-to-use free one, I highly recommend Inspiration Pad Pro 3.  I will freely admit I probably won't be using this program much, but only because I bought a different generator years ago and have a bunch of tables already made that use a slightly different scripting. If I was starting all over again I'd probably use Inspiration Pad Pro 3.