Free GM Resource: Owlbear Rodeo (VTT)

 

Yeah.....I have no good excuse about not posting yesterday....my bad?

This weekend while YouTube hopping (this isn't another YouTube channel) I was alerted to what looked like a freakin cool online Free GM Resource for running games online: Owlbear Rodeo.

This is not the perfect Virtual Table-Top, but I've been through a bunch of VTTs and I'm starting to form the opinion there is no "perfect" VTT, unless you want to code one yourself. Lately I've been in an online game over Zoom and I'm thinking my group could probably get a helluva lot of use out of Owlbear Rodeo.

Getting started is easy....really easy (emphasis is mine):

1. Start a game to generate a unique URL that can connect you and your players.

Each game is recycled after 24 hours so make sure you create a new game when you play your next session.

2. Invite players with your unique URL from step 1.

3. Share a map, roll dice or share audio with your players.

All data is saved automatically to your computer so next session simply use the same computer and all your maps and tokens will be ready to go.

That's it, no accounts, no paywalls, no ads, just a virtual tabletop.

For more tutorials visit the How To page

Now I think you should check out the site, poke around, and even become a Patron if you do that kind of thing, but since I found out about this site through a YouTube review, you can get some eyes-on with a single click:

Free GM Resource: Art & Tutorials from Stéphane "Wootha" Richard

 

I'm not an artist, but I do try to make & create "art" time from time, usually digitally. While I have actually taken a Photoshop course, it was part of a larger Adobe course....and a decade ago. I forget a lot of stuff normally, and specifics on how to do stuff in a computer program.....

Anyway, I'm assuming some of my 12 13 readers uses Photoshop, or maybe GIMP, and could use a few pointers here & there.

Today's Free GM Resource is a bit of a twofer from a "single" source: Stéphane "Wootha" Richard. Wootha is a French Freelance Concept Artist who also does some cool online tutorials. That's one part....the other is that recently Wootha put a metric (he is French) shit-ton of his work into the Public Domain.

The tutorials can be found on his page at Artstation.

The artwork can be found via his Adobe Spark page. For the most part it is a huge 90GB file dump and allegedly has a web folder view, but at my cursory glance I didn't see a whole lot. I didn't want to download a big file dump onto my laptop, so I'll have to look later.

What I did find useful though, was a quick Google Image Search of his work.

Free GM Resource: Smithsonian Open Access

This week's Free GM Resource is another one of those "as valuable as you want to make it" kind of things. Smithsonian Open Access is a place where you can "where you can download, share, and reuse millions of the Smithsonian’s images—right now, without asking."

Now this might not seem like a big deal, but.....a) you need to poke around the Smithsonian Open Access to see what's in there to "steal" from.....art resources are always a good thing if you can use them, and b) this is the Smithsonian....this collection is only going to get bigger & better over time.
 

For example......need a picture of a Castle for something you're writing? One quick search and here's the 1st result:

You can download a high-res version (I didn't here, but I could have), edit as needed, and go nuts. Attribute (you should 'cause that's the right thing to do, pun intended), don't attribute...whatever. The stuff in the Open Access collection is Creative Commons Zero content:

"Open Access items carry what’s called a CC0 designation. This means the Smithsonian dedicates the digital asset into the public domain, meaning it is free of copyright restrictions and you can use it for any purpose, free of charge, without further permission from the Smithsonian. As new images are digitized, if they are determined to be copyright-free, the Smithsonian will dedicate them as CC0 ongoing."

Did I mention that they also have 3d renders of stuff?

Free GM Resource: RP Archive YouTube Channel

 

[Sorry to have two YouTube channels in as many weeks, but I'm home recovering from a bout of sickness and in a fair bit of pain, so I'm doing "nothing" watching a lot more YouTube. I wanted to save this for next month, but it was either this or nothing......]

So I've recently started actually working on some table-top terrain and I'm not following the source documentation video to the letter. After watching and re-watching the video a few times I finally let YouTube just run it out and let the algorithm figure out what I should watch next because the part of the project that took maybe 20'......yeah, for me it's more like six hours. Seriously...I'm making some tweaks  for "realism" and it's dragging me down.

Anyway, as I'm doing my tedious work on this terrain YouTube starts flipping through a few terrain channels and eventually jumps to one I haven't seen before: RP Archive. I'm not a huge fan of the modularity of some of his blocks, but I love his furniture and how the channel creator uses magnets.  I've already picked up my supplies to make some things from RP Archive after I'm done with my current terrain project.

Free GM Resource: Goobertown Hobbies YouTube Channel

I know that I missed last Monday. Last Monday kind of sucked because I lost my job and had a going-away. Don't fret, I'm not overly concerned as this should be a temporary thing and I'm not just being optimistic.

I did have a going-away at work and some libations, and you know....the weekly Free GM Resource totally skipped my mind, 'cause I was (I hope understandingly) occupied.

The graphic isn't really indicative of this week's resource, which is another YouTube channel: Goobertown Hobbies.

Now I generally don't get too much out of watching miniature painting videos, but this particular miniature painter also does some terrain painting, which I totally dig watching. Any tips & tricks I can pick up there I'll probably use.

Don't get me wrong.....I do allegedly paint minis, but if you saw my overwhelmingly large (percentage-wise) unpainted mini collection, you'd probably see why I'm a bit "meh" about mini painting videos....but I will say I think the channel shows off some great work there as well.

Free GM Resource: Ambient Mixer

 

I'm a big fan of audio at the game table, even though I rarely pull it off myself. I've been toying with digital soundboards and there is one I kind of like, but I've been also thinking about creating a physical push-button soundboard as a hobby project.

Of course that is only distantly related to today's Free GM Resource. I was at a Half Priced Books today and picked up a project book for Raspberry Pi and a soundboard was one of the projects.....which is why this was on my mind today.

Ambient Mixer is a cool website that just has some awesome ambient soundscapes you can run from your web browser. Now there is a Android app that draws from the the website, but a lot of the recent reviews report huge crash issues. Not sure if that's a new thing...like a bad update, or if it's an underlying issue that never got resolved. I'd just stick with the website for now.

This is pretty cool!

Free GM Resource: Epic Games

 

I know this half-a-week early, but I want to put this "out there" as a Free GM Resource: Epic Games.

Why share a video game company as a free resource? Well, 1st of all Epic Games is giving away a free game every day between now and the News Year Day. 2nd......playing games is fun and one sure-fire way to reduce the chance of straight-up burn-out is having fun playing other games.

Seriously though, sometimes an easy way to recoup, refresh as a GM to switch sides and play. Sometimes being able to sit-down at another RPG table is just not feasible, so switch things up and play some computer games instead.

Free GM Resource: Osher Map Library

 

I think it's been a while since I posted any online map collections.....and I lurve me some oldy-time maps for inspiration, and sometimes to actually use as a base for my own mapwork.

The Osher Map Library is a collection from the University of Southern Maine that had a mix of old and new maps. You can download the maps, but they are a "low" resolution. Actually the maps are like 400dpi, just on the small size, so if you need it on a screen you can resize it to a something "physically" larger.

At first glance, the Osher Map Library doesn't seem to be a decent online resource, especially if you select the obvious...and prominent "BROWSE MAPS" feature. What I found so much more useful was to do the almost-as-obvious "Search our Collection" feature. Once you have a selection of maps brought up by your search you have a bunch of options on the left side of the screen to dial-in your desired results.