Free GM Resource: Chartopia

Now it isn't a secret that I like random tables.....even though I have a particular fancy for d30 tables, I dig random tables of all types, shapes, and sizes.

Some of the coolest tables I've made/seen were on the 'ol computer because software lets you call tables from tables and link everything together.

This week's Free GM Resource is not just an online repository of tables, but also a website that can actually let you run tables as well. Chartopia lets you make your own charts, call data from other charts, and even display them on a third-party website. There is a LOT of functionality, much more than I can delve into here in a quick blog post.

I suggest checking out Chartopia.....sign up, putz around with some charts....you can start with these Moldvay Treasure Charts.

New Kickstarter (That I'm Backing): 3D Printable Fantasy Dwarven Mine RPG Dungeon Tiles

This morning I decided I had to back a new Kickstarter for some Dwarven Mine Tiles for 3D printing from Tomb Guardians Miniatures.

Maybe an hour or so later I got a message from the Tomb Guardian guys thanking me for backing the Kickstarter and asking me to share the news of their campaign.

1st off, the message is simply brilliant. Why wouldn't you want to thank an investor/buyer/backer/customer for their purchase/funding? Obviously I thought their campaign was worth me spending $66, so who better to let others know?

2nd...and this is more an important disclosure....I actually stand to benefit if one of my 13 regular readers (or an online read-by) participates in this particular Kickstarter Campaign. Like most campaigns, the more funds they raise, the more bonus goals that get unlocked. The more bonus goals that get unlocked, the more free files I get.

All that being said, I think this Dwarven Mine looks awesome and is something I want to be able to add to my growing collection of .stl files.

Of course the Kickstarter has a bunch of pictures and some videos, which you should check out. The 3D Printable Fantasy Dwarven Mine RPG Dungeon Tiles should be worth at east a quick look.....

Free GM Resource: Nameberry

There wasn't a Free GM Resource last week due to a death in the family, but this week a resource normally used for a birth in the family is something I'd like to re-purpose for the game table.

At 1st glance Nameberry seems to be a rather sparse website with a few lists of baby names available to peruse, presumably to name NPCs.

The thing is there is actually a lot more names available, with lists buried as sub-pages & lists from other pages/lists. Allegedly there are over 50,000 names on the site.

Now I'm a fan of the historical names listed, but what I really enjoyed was the "Name Hunter" where you can put in up to 8 names you like as "themes" and the generator will spit out somehow magically-aligned names that go with your liked names.

Unless you're like me an have been cultivating numerous lists of names for your own name generator, you can probably get a lot of use out of Nameberry.

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.