Free Printable Minis for D&D that Will Make You Smile Unless You’re Heartless and Awful

I stumbled across the link to iheartprintandplay tonight while surfing Twitter. Its owner, Derek Weller, creates charming printable standees in the style of the Order of the Stick for your D&D games. He’s got a whole host of mini beasties and PCs for D&D, and he’s also got plans for printable origami dice! He’s also created adorable character condition cards, too. Definitely worth a quick trip over, especially if you run a light-hearted game that doesn’t take itself too seriously. I may just print these little guys out to put on my desk at work because they’re so awesome.

There’s also a great section of the blog dedicated to other free print and play games. There are only a couple of games listed now, but if you’ve got one of your own, you might want to contact Weller and tell him about it!

Kickstarter: Brass Monkey’s Dragons Gameboard

I know many of you have been out at GenCon, playing your fill of games and seeing more stuff to buy than you could possibly purchase in a lifetime. I just thought I’d mention a neat Kickstarter project that has some really great potential: Brass Monkey’s Dragons Gameboard.

This nifty little package would let you display a battle map on a TV or large computer monitor for your players to see during tabletop gaming. Each of them could, in turn, manipulate their own tokens on the map via smartphones or tablets.

I absolutely, positively LOVE this idea. Using individual handheld devices at the table would keep my players engaged (and would keep their phones on something game-centered instead of on Twitter or Facebook.) A system like this cuts down on prep time, too; I wouldn’t have to set up a table full of cardstock buildings and minis, spend the morning keeping the kitten off the table, and then switch out a million tiles and buildings mid-session when the PCs moved to a new area. On the other hand, I personally dislike the art style here–I’d like to see something that looks more like an actual hand-drawn map, something less griddy/pixelly. The games I tend to favor don’t focus on strategic battles, so I use maps flavor more than for tactical clarity, and a bunch of colored blocks don’t really add much flavor to a game. The project promises to remain open source, though, so DMs would have the opportunity to implement their own tilesets and could undoubtedly figure out how to make use of the system for other sorts of RPGs.

This project is definitely one to keep your eye on; Brass Monkey has a solid idea, and for those with limited table space, it might mean the difference between making your home a viable place to play and always having to tote your minis and chips to someone else’s house.

Maps, Glorious Maps–for Free!

I have a love-hate relationship with RPG maps. I love the beautiful, professionally-created ones that FFG makes, and I hate my own when they fall short. During campaign prep, I often regret not having a degree in graphic design (a field in which I have absolutely no interest other than this.) On the other hand, I find in my own group, maps tend to decrease the bickering about what’s going on and increase the suspense. My party tends to think that if something’s in the picture, it needs explorin’, which can lead to some hilarious moments when they sidle up cautiously to an innocuous (but mysteriously on-the-map) table.

I generally use Campaign Cartographer in spite of its steep learning curve–which I have to learn again each time I use it because I use it so seldom. I had high hopes for Ortelius, but as I said here, it doesn’t yet seem to fit the bill, so I find myself returning to CC over and over again. Yet I do hesitate to pull out CC when I only need a quick little image; it can take me an incredibly long time to remember how to use it, and I hate having to move from my Mac to my PC to work.

I was excited, then, when the link to Pyromancers’ online mapping software floated across my Facebook feed the other day. (Thanks, Rob!) This free, web-based mapping program doesn’t have the extensive graphics library of CC, but it does have quite enough to make a very nice sketch of a generic dungeon, tavern, or ruin, and you can import your own existing graphics if you’re feeling up to a bit of clicking around. I easily figured out the commands in about two minutes. You can save the maps you’ve made onto your hard drive; export them as PNGs, JPGs, or PDFs; or share them via an online gallery. The program supports both hex and grid maps, and will mark coordinates for you for ease of tactical use.

Here’s the simple tavern map I made start-to-export in about three minutes:

The website offers a way to include a map in a forum post and have players manipulate tokens on the map directly from the forum itself. I’m not playing in any forum-based games, but for those wanting to do online play, this solution might be just the ticket.

Overall, Pyromancers offers a great set of tools on their website. It strikes me that contributors to fan supplements and e-zines might make great use of this tool, and it’s certainly useful for any GM looking for uniquemaps. Do check it out!

Adventures in Japan

I’ve been away for a couple of weeks, touring around Japan for work, which explains my lack of blogging. It’s difficult to keep up with the happenings in the RPG world when you rush about for 11 straight hours and then collapse in an exhausted pile at the end of every day. Not that I’m complaining, mind you–it was a fun trip, and I got to see lots of temples and shrines, statues of warriors and demons, and strange winding alleyways, all of which are good fodder for campaign writing.

I’ll be updating the blog regularly again starting this weekend; in the meantime, I may share some of my photos over the next few days that don’t contain any modern details. Feel free to use them in your campaigns if they suit you!

Not Too Plain, Not Too Fancy

Whew! It’s been a busy week, but I managed to squeeze in a quick trip to the gaming store tonight. Although it’s been available for awhile, I was pleased to see Gale Force 9′s outstanding Dungeon Master’s Mat set on the shelf. I’ve already discussed how impressed I was by the map of the Welcome Wench. Made of high quality materials with great graphics, the GF9 mats are sturdy, attractive, and easy to write on/wipe off.

That being said, some of the previous mats had strange graphic details that made made me leery of using them. The King’s Road map seemed, at first glance, to be infinitely useful; how many times a game does a GM need a plain path with a few rocks strewn here and there? Yet the handful of graves alongside the road had me cringing. I could get away with ignoring them once, but by the second time the mat came out, my players would be harping on the repetition like an insidious Internet meme: “My God, these roads are deadly! Is it a pothole epidemic? Should we stop drinking the water? And why do the people always die in sets of three?” If you have a group like mine, minor details in the art can lead to the players asking a major NPC in the next town about “all those graves,” and then you have to make a GM call about whether or not to roll with it and bring their metagaming into the fiction by having the NPC respond–and God help you if they decide to ditch the quest you had planned and instead go after the metaquest, which you’ll now suddenly need to create on the fly. Ugh!

That’s why I was glad to see the plain DM’s mat set available. One mat has a plain grassy background; the other has stone tiles. They’re perfect for placing under cardboard scenery, and since you can write on them, it’s easy to set up the buildings ahead of time, mark where they should go on the map, and wipe the outlines off after your session ends. Further, these mats would be great to throw in a GM’s convention gaming kit, as they have a bit more flair than plain brown grid maps.

I generally prefer detailed and evocative art, but sometimes, simple is best, especially if simplicity serves to focus your players on the details you want them to see.

Worth 1000 Words…If You Can Find It

I use images pulled from the Internet for handouts, slide shows, and videos to enhance my games. It’s not hard to pull useful images from the internet–and to avoid the worthless ones–if you know a few tricks about Google Image Search.

Here are a few tricks I’ve learned from a couple of art history minors, a few years of teaching, and a bunch of GMing:

General Search Tips

• If you want to find something for a fantasy game, use appropriate historical tags. The three best words you can add to any search are “medieval,” “Renaissance,” or “Anglo Saxon.” Medieval will often return a lot of modernized pseudo-historical stuff or very fancy late medieval French stuff, because those pictures are more colorful and gets more clicks than earlier medieval pictures. Renaissance will often get you that half-timbered architecture that you tend to see in fantasy villages, although it’ll also get you Ren Faires. If you want gritty and simple, go with Anglo Saxon.
• If you want specific, be specific. “Castle” will get you a host of pretty pictures, but “battlements” may be what you’re really looking for. Wikipedia the article about the appropriate architecture or item if you’re not sure what to call a particular part of what you’re seeking.
• Don’t forget to -. If you look, say, for Warhammer Orcs, you’ll find many images from WAR Online. If you’re looking for GW concept art and miniatures instead, just throw -online into your search term, and Google will filter out images with the Online tag. It won’t get rid of everything, but it will help.
• Teach Google. When you look at your search results, go ahead and click on results you like, even if you’re not going to use them right now. This helps Google find more images like the one you clicked in future searches.
• Use your own computer whenever possible. If your kid is searching for Disney Princess castles, (God help you,) her clicks will throw off your future search results and will filter in a bunch of animated junk you probably don’t want. Same goes for a spouse who thinks “giants” are some sort of sports team. The computer I’ve used to research and pull only historical images at work for years can practically read my mind–largely because I seldom do other types of searches on it. If you’re lucky enough to have multiple computers for your family, keeping yours to yourself will do wonders.
• Go with the flow. Often, I’ll find an image so awesomely bizarre that I just have to work it into my game. Recently, I was searching for medieval village festivals, and found this great picture of a guy with a yellow cap and a purple face who was leering crazily at the camera. Nothing modern was in the shot, really, so in he went as an NPC. (Of course, my PCs slaughtered him instead of talking to him, but what can you do?)

Making Friends with Google

Most of us know how to type search terms into Google and then click on the Images tab at the top to bring up just images, but Google actually gives you quite a bit more control than that over your image searching.

Here I’ve used Google to search for an Anglo Saxon farm; it has already given me a pretty promising image on the right, there, that would be perfect for a poor village.

Check out the left side of the screen and you’ll find a whole set of tools that will help you refine your search. If your search has returned a set of infuriatingly useless little thumbnails, you can click on Image Size Large on the left to return only big images. If you want only purple-hued pictures, you can click on the purple box and it will filter out images with dominant colors that aren’t purple. Below, I’ve clicked on line drawing to refine my search. Naturally, this filters out a whole bunch of potentially viable pictures. In this case, it actually returned a bunch of crap–but now that I look at it, that bull in the top row is pretty nice. Maybe I could use him on a coat of arms or in a puzzle.

Finally, don’t forget Google’s Advanced Search Options. You’ll find them right underneath the little blue magnifying glass in the top of your screen. When you click the link, you get the following screen:

I sometimes find it useful to limit my searches to certain websites (the Victorian Web, the BBC, or, if you’re feeling particularly brave, DeviantArt,) because those sites will return predictable results of a certain flavor. Here’s the search for “Anglo Saxon shield” limited to BBC sites:

I’ve generally found that I can find almost anything I can imagine somewhere on the internet if I’m willing to spend the time seeking it out.

Useful Image Collections

Morguefile will give you royalty-free images of general interest. You won’t necessarily find fantasy-themed stuff here, but if you’re looking for a particular thing, (a manuscript, a cow, a mountain,) you can probably find an aesthetically pleasing and free picture here.

Olga’s Gallery is an online collection of famous paintings. If you’re lucky enough to be a part of an educational institution that pays for academic databases, check ArtStor, too.

A Feast for the Eyes has some awesome images of medieval food and beverage. The same site also hosts a gallery of medieval woodcuts.

Although I’m not the hugest fan of the style, Wizards of the Coast put their archives of PC portraits from Dragon magazine online here.

If you’re running a Steampunk or Victoriana game, The Victorian Web‘s art galleries may have what you need.