A Postapocalyptic Public Service Message

 

If the recently released Mad Max: Fury Road trailer has you jonesing to run a post-apocalyptish, car-combatesque RPG session, RPGNow has Colin Chapman’s Atomic Highway RPG and the Irradiated Freaks supplement for free.

You’re welcome.

 

A few post-Christmas freebies

Well the holiday season is mostly over – but I’ve spotted a couple of leftover goodies at the bottom of the ol’ bag of holding! Let’s drag them out and see what we’ve got.

– Floor tiles and fantasy buildings: Courtesy of Billiam Babble (who himself creates some excellent floor tiles of his own that are not all free but well worth what he’s charging) is a link to the Black Ronin Roleplaying Games website, which has a bunch of free dungeon floortiles, sci-fi floor tiles, and fantasy wargame buildings that are yours for a click.  If you like what you see and get some use out of it, consider buying some of their other products (only two are available at present – river tiles and street tiles – and they are very reasonably priced) and keeping an eye on them for upcoming releases.

– Character development: Someone on Google+ asked about tables that you can use to build backstory and life events for characters, and I mentioned the  Central Casting books which usually provide some very crazy results, but are a goldmine for ideas. While searching for a link for more info, I discovered that all three books in the series are available (legally) for free on scribd – Heroes of Legend, Heroes Now!, and Heroes for Tomorrow. You can read each online or download them as TXT or PDF files. Start rolling on tables and making notes the way Jacquays intended, or just leaf through them and see what catches your eye – either way, you’ll get a more colorful, interesting character in the end. (EDIT: My friend Marques asked if Central Casting: Dungeons was also available, and it is! I didn’t even know that one existed, and it looks like a pretty neat supplement for fleshing out a dungeon crawl. Grab it, too!)  (Sorry guys, looks like these aren’t legal after all. My apologies to the authors and publishers.)

– Lastly, there’s this marvelous thing – Dave’s Mapper, a widget that spits out random hand-drawn dungeons. You can make a dungeon from a mix of different artists, or narrow it down to a few or even just one, then export the result to PNG to print out and stock with monsters, traps, and treasure. It’s a lot of fun to play with.

Enjoy, and I’ll be back soon to talk about this year’s New Year, New Game project!

 

A nifty sci-fi name generator

…and since it seems that I’m making up for my lack of posting by tossing up links I find with StumbleUpon, here’s a nifty sci-fi name generator that will give you a list of names in seven categories (cyberpunk, space, Crest of the Stars, Cthulhu Mythos, Serenity, Star Trek, and Star Wars) and many different sub-categories under each:

SciFi Name Generator – http://donjon.bin.sh/scifi/name/

Here’s a sample of what it spat out for me for Space – Locations:

The Waurill Industrial Complex on Irra
The Jenoxium Mines of Pemphredo IV
The Ruins of Ilon City on 4663 Dou Xiu VII
The Living City of Kaferran
The Sicyl Station orbiting Hyldemoer
The Lital Military Base above Ashima
The Vanik Military Base above 4219 Circini VI
The Yeman Military Outpost on Graneang
The Niii Hakucti Colony
The Conian Military Outpost on Micrillan

And a list generated from Cthulhu Mythos – Unspeakable Names:

Ynga-Xothlabho
Glanath
Bha-Akehot
Ugha-Rhulhuggo
Tanithast
Ghat-Yuratho
Sha-Nyarloigua
Glyehoadre
Adda-Rlegoth
Addanonia

Since I’ve always been a little rough at coming up with appropriate names on the spot, sometimes I’ll generate a bunch of names with a program like this, cut and paste them into a Word doc, and print them out for future reference. Having it in paper (rather than making it up off of the top of my head) adds to the illusion that a casual reference to an NPC or location could be crucial to the story – and could even inspire me to make it so, if the mood hits me.

Have fun!