Free GM Resource: Character Generator

This week's Free GM Resource is a limited-feature character portrait generator appropriately called "The Character Creator". I have to say "feature limited" because there aren't nearly as many option say as.....other options I'm having trouble locating right at this moment.

I poked around a bit and had some issues getting things to work right, like selecting a nose, but whenever this online resource seemed like it was glitching a quick page refresh not only loaded the page, but went ahead and reloaded the most recently selected options as well. My poor no-nose demo dude was good-to-go after a refresh.

Look MA! No Eyes!

Since there aren't so many fantasy options for clothes and whatnot I doubt I'll get as much use out of this as I'd like, but The Character Creator can be a good source for simple portraits, or at least for the beginning of said portraits. My demo guy saved with a simple click and opened in Adobe Illustrator almost fine....his eyes were gone. I can fix that.....I didn't, but I could.

Now you might wonder why I'd bother with an arguably incomplete portrait generator that seems a bit buggy in the 1st place. For me the BIG reason for using this particular online program is the fact that you can easily have a bunch of emotional expression swaps pretty much on the fly. Demo dude not looking quite the way you want.....then make him Angry, or Sad. Rage that guy up some and see how he switches his look up.

It's far from perfect, but The Character Creator has at least one cool feature that is really worth checking out.

Free GM Resource: Town & City Assets from Two Minute Tabetop

I've been pretty much busting at the seams to be able to share this cool new Free GM Resource, which is a collection of Hand-drawn Tow & City Assets from Two Minute Tabletop.

I've known about these as an early release since last month, but they weren't made public until this weekend. There are a couple of reasons I love these graphic assets:
     1) I suck at drawing top-down view of buildings, which has actually hindered some of my efforts in the past.
     2) Like everything else from Two Minute Tabletop, this stuff rocks.


Did I already mention how I suck at doing top-down buildings?

Seriously though I've been a big fan of Two Minute Tabletop since I first discovered him on Patreon. I'm to the point now where I have every map he's done and now that $1 monthly coupon code is wasted on me.....and I'm ok with that.

Keep making cool things like this and I can be ok with a lot of stuff.......please just take my money.

These graphics assets have been released under a Creative CommonsCC BY-NC 4.0 license, which means I won't be using them on any maps I want to make commercially, but thankfully that's a small amount of maps.......

Please, check out Two Minute Tabletop's Town & City Assets.... you owe it to yourself.

New PWYW d30 Table is up at DTRPG: Random Cavern Table Generator

It feels like it has been forever since I put out a new d30 table and damned if I didn't miss doing this. If you're one of my regular 13 (it was 12, until a new reader tracked me down and corrected me!) readers you know that the last couple years have been problematic for me. Some serious real-world crap that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy (well, maybe I would...screw that guy) followed up by some major upheaval that is moving out of my home of 20 years and moving cross-country to a new job in a new career.

That whole moving saga is coming to an end....soon I hope, and then I can get back to not living out of suitcases and boxes.......

......anyway, back to the real topic at hand which is a new d30 table!

Free GM Resource: Free Map Tiles by Madcowchef (via Devient Art)

Unfortunately my day job has me offsite for a month, which has been.....interesting so far. Let's just leave it at that, shall we?

I'd spent some of my unexpected free time this weekend looking for some specific art resources for a project I'm working on and even though I doubt I'd ever be able to use anything found on the site I did poke around Deviant Art a little bit and cane across the work of "Madcowchef", specifically a few sets of  freebie map tiles.

As of the timing of this post there looks to be eight (8) sets of tiles: Underground, Forested, Diabolic Fiery Waste, Winterscape, Fortifications, Tree City, Desert, and Swamp. They're a bit small for my taste at 72dpi and a size of 14"ish square, but I'm sure that some GMs could get some really good use out of them. I'm coming around to the idea of printing them up small and using them as mini, mini maps, like this idea from my buddy @billiambabble: 

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I'm playing around with my "Pocket Edition" Dungeon Cut-Ups. The pencil has been added for scale since the flagstone squares are only 10mm wide. A cork tile makes a handy non-slip surface (failing that, you still have the option of pinning pieces down). I sell the Inked Adventures Dungeon Cut-Ups Cards in my Etsy store. :) Either search for "Inked Adventures" on Etsy, or try http://bit.ly/IA_Etsy Shipping from UK to the world. :) #DnD #TTRPG #dungeonsections #dungeontiles #RPG #dungeonmap #Etsy #tabletop #illustration #InkedAdventures

A post shared by billiambabble (@billiambabble) on Jul 15, 2019 at 1:36pm PDT

Regardless of the specifics on how I'd use these freebie map tiles I thought I'd share and see if any of my 12, or is it now 13....(?)...irregular readers get up to utilizing these cool small-scale maps.

Free GM Resource: Daniel's Maps (Free Maps on Patreon)

I've been spending this week at work (so far) up to my elbows dealing with computer upgrades, software updates, and documenting things so my more computer-illiterate co-workers (hey, they self-identified!) could deal with issues down the road. When I come home I've been staying off the computer to re-charge.

Well tonight I fired up the laptop and poked around/caught up on Facebook and came across this one map artist advertising his free maps. Daniel's Maps is a Patreon page and most of his offerings are for Patrons, BUT he does have some good freebie maps for download.

I'm digging what I'm seeing and am going to seriously consider adding Daniel's Maps to my already-too-large list of my own Patronage. Seriously though, check out his Patreon and enjoy the freebies he's made available.

Free GM Resource: Ruins of Arduin Swords & Wizardry Campaign Supplement

The most popular game my buddy and I played (i.e., his favorite) at North Texas RPG Con was Swords & Wizardry. Because of his interest (he actually bought a rulebook, which was highlighted years ago as a Free GM Resource).

I've been poking around a bit, looking for some PC sheets, and came across this awesome homebrewed Swords & Wizardry campaign.......that has been published as a 65 page PDF.

Ruins of Arduin is the name of the blog where the author shares this supplement of the same name. I've just barely scanned it, but I'm looking forward to reading this later.

Head on over to Ruins of Arduin and check it out!

Free GM Resource: A Twofer of Judges Guild Goodness, Both Old & New

I've never hidden the fact that I'm a HUGE HackMaster fan. While I don't get to play the current edition pretty much at all, I did get a lot of gaming in on the earlier, technically 1st, edition which we all called 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. The HackMaster development team described HackMaster as "50% 1st Edition, 25% 2nd Edition, and 25% Home Rules"

.....Anyway, you're probably wondering where I'm going with this.

I like playing OSR games, and I also like Zines. The only thing better than an OSR Zine is an actual Zine from back in the day. If you're one of my 12 regular readers you know I picked up a whole bunch of Judge's Guild stuff on my last day at North Texas RPG Con. So I guess I have a good start towards my collection.....I think?

The first Free GM Resource I want to share this week is the Judges Guild Booty List. With the indexes contained there I can see what issues I'm missing in my new collection. Not nearly as much as I thought I would be missing.

Now that's the "old" Judges Guild. The new Judges Guild has some rules, some maps, and a Character Generator available for download.

North Texas RPG Con: Day 4 Report

The last day of a con is always a bit bittersweet. I didn't have any games scheduled, but my buddy had heard about a morning game he wanted to get in on, so we woke up way too early, grabbed breakfast, and was good to go in case the game started at 0900.