2/22/2021

Free GM Resource: DIY Projects Crafts

 

Free GM Resource: DIY Projects Crafts
It's finally warmed up here in my neck of the woods and I don't have to worry about such things as rolling blackouts or having to insulate my living room windows with &#%@$ blankets.

Ugh.

So basically I had a week where I was stuck inside and not because of quarantine. I did manage to start some terrain building projects and watch more YouTube than was probably healthy.....

I've recommended a bunch of YouTube channels over the last couple of years and you'd think I've seen it all.....but evidently I have not. I like seeing different creator's take on creating the same things.

DIY Project Crafts isn't a huge channel, but there are some great videos of crafting that just seem to hit projects I've seen a couple times now in a different direction than I've seen accomplished before. Having just finished Version 1 of some buildings that I know I have to redo to up my game (as it were)...well, to also fix some things I didn't like......I know that just figuring out how to do stuff in the first place is a long, drawn-out process. I cannot image in the amount of work it takes to get it on film!


There are a few good videos for you to enjoy, but this is the one that initially caught my eye......

2/16/2021

Nothing to see here......until later this week

Nothing to see here......until later this week

I'm not so homesick this week as my current home in Oklahoma is blanketed by a bunch of snow and negative temps. Nothing for this Iowa boy, but it's bad enough that the locals are loosing their collective minds....

....and bad enough that the local power company is cycling power through the neighborhoods so I may or may not be able to do much online.

Just a head's up I'm deliberately pushing off any real post until later this week when I don't have to worry about electricity or freezing to death (home construction here isn't up to the challenge). I think the fact that most folks around here don't even own real cold weather clothing is the only reason there hasn't been looting for resources......

2/09/2021

Free GM Resource: Owlbear Rodeo (VTT)

 

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:


2/01/2021

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

 

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.

Stéphane "Wootha" Richard's Artwork


1/25/2021

Free GM Resource: Smithsonian Open Access

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:
Saltwood Castle by Miner Kilbourne Kellogg

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?

1/18/2021

Free GM Resource: RP Archive YouTube Channel

 

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.



1/11/2021

Free GM Resource: Goobertown Hobbies YouTube Channel

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.



12/28/2020

Free GM Resource: Ambient Mixer

 

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!