Negative Space: gaming tools
- Are my dice random?
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My d20 appears to have been rolling a lot of ones, a disaster if I were playing D&D but a boon for Gods & Monsters. Is my die really random, or is it skewed towards a particular result? Use the ‘R’ open source statistics tool to find out.
- Automatically grab flavor text snippets in Nisus
- In Nisus, it is very easy to grab all text of a specific style, and its nearest heading. This makes it easy to make “room description cards” for handing to the players after reading them.
- Constructing encounter tables using Nisus
- Here’s a Nisus Writer macro that makes it a little easier to create encounter tables.
- Cover image source files
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Today’s release of The Vale of the Azure Sun includes the Persistence of Vision scene files necessary to create the cover.
- Fantasy adventure generator
- Clinton R. Nixon has made up an automatic adventure idea generator that really generates some cool ideas. Try it out and play with it!
- First level calculations in Pocket Gods
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If you need to quickly calculate reactions and other numbers for a first level character, Pocket Gods can now do that for you.
- Hex and square grids for mapping
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For your adventure mapping pleasure, here is a set of map grids in PDF form, and the Python script that created them.
- hexGIMP for old-school wilderness maps
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The isoMage has a script and brushes for GIMP that make it easy to create old-school TSR-style outdoor maps.
- How I handle adventure logs
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Tracking what happens cross different sessions helps me not to forget important details, as well as obscure details that become important later.
- How to use hex maps
- Rob Conley describes the benefits and tricks of using hex maps.
- New character sheets, maps, and reference sheets
- The character sheets and reference sheets have been converted to Scribus, and new map grids are availble in Inkscape. All are also made available as PDF files.
- Nisus Writer Pro 2.0
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The new Nisus is pure awesome: very easy to use, and it does everything I need.
- Online die roller
- In need of a quick die roll to pass the time? Look no further!
- Percentage-based random tables
- Our current random item generator assumes that each item shows up as often as any other item. That’s very OD&D-ish. But AD&D uses percentage dice to weight toward some monsters and items more than others.
- The Pocket Gods & Monsters app
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I’ve added a web application, mainly for small mobile devices, to the reference sheets section. It should work with any HTML 5 device.
- Portable speakers for Adventure Guides
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If you have audio in your adventures, there are a lot of portable speakers available designed to work with MP3 players.
- Prepping non-player character dialogue
- Preparing snippets of NPC dialogue can help a lot when your players start asking unanticipated questions. I use the same technique when I’m playing a character rather than Guiding the game.
- Roll20 and Gods & Monsters
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Roll20 appears to easily accept the Inkscape maps I’ve been creating for the various Gods & Monsters adventures
- Rolling random levels across a range of experience points in AD&D
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I’m going to North Texas again, and this time I’m going to run an AD&D game for levels 4-6. How can I roll a random number of experience points that will only produce characters of level 4, 5, or 6 regardless of class?
- Room description cards for players
- With open text adventures, room cards with each room’s flavor text are as easy as copy, paste, print, and cut.
- Traveling books
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You can trick your printer into printing 8.5 x 11 pages at 5.5 by 8.5 for portable books.
- Visually interesting hand-made character sheets
- Just because I’m a fan of hand-written, line-ruled character sheets doesn’t mean you have to use them. Here are two character sheets, one based on Celtic designs, another riddled with alchemical symbolism--along with instructions for how they were made.
- Who is the master?
- Game-mastering advice is very personal, and every game master has their own preferred way of doing things. Every gaming magazine has published articles on how to be a good GM, generally more than one article and at least partially contradictory. Different games require different styles.
- Xel-i-tec: the random dungeon of doom!
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Need a quick dungeon adventure? You’ll need to fill out the flavor text and stats, but everything else is ready for printing with Jamis Buck’s dungeon generator.
