Cool and/or useful tools for your game

[Bai Shen]

I was cleaning out my bookmarks and came across this. It generates an image of a newspaper clipping with whatever text you decide.

https://www.fodey.com/generators/newspaper/snippet.asp

[Glorious_Leader]

If you make a lot of character sheets digitally then this tool may help out:
https://www.textfixer.com/tools/remove-line-breaks.php

It removed line breaks in blocks of text. Comes in handing if copying out of a pdf and pasting into a character sheet.

[Jimalcoatl]

If you are playing a Star Wars campaign, this opening crawl creator is a great tool for kicking off a campaign or adventure.

[Greybird]

By coincidence, a Facebook group I belonged to recently asked members to post about the props and GM aids they use in their games, with pictures. I thought I'd share here, too, in case it might be useful for someone.

First off, for D&D 5E, I found the inspiration system... uninspiring. It didn't have any flavor, and since you only ever get one at a time, people were loathe to actually spend it when they had it (thus having zero.)

I replaced it with a system of my own design inspired by several other systems I've played. At the beginning of each session, each player blind-draws two tokens from a bag. They have a variety of benefits, some stronger than standard inspiration, some weaker. On one side is a bonus, on the other is flavor text. The weakest is 'Boon', a simple +1 that can be applied to any roll (there are 10 of these in the bag.) The strongest is probably 'Adrenaline!' that lets the player take a full extra turn (there are only two of these in the whole bag - it'll only happen once every few sessions.) There are 15 different benefits, and the average bonus is a little weaker than plain inspiration.

They earn them the same way they'd earn inspiration, although I'm a little more free with them than the standard system. The thing is that they discard them all and draw new ones at the beginning of the next session. Since they earn them more easily, and since they don't carry over, and since they have more than one, there is no real incentive to hoard them.

Here are the tokens by the draw bag. They're simple wooden disks, painted with 'chrome' spraypaint and written on with paint markers. A friend who borrowed my system used popsicle sticks with the effect written on one end, kept end-down in a cup for people to draw from. The system has been playtested quite a bit with several groups and DMs over several years.



In case anyone's interested, here's the breakdown of tokens in the bag:



Next up, my rolling tray. Well, more than that. See, I like to roll in the open, where my players can see. But what's the point at a large table when only a couple of them are close enough to actually read the dice? So I went out and got two clear-sided trays sold as drawer organizers (so the dice are visible through the sides), fitted the bottom of the unlined one then picked up several sets of giant Koplow dice. The dice are visible from everywhere on the table.

For an extra bit of drama, I added a light-up d20 for combat rolls. It flashes bright red when it rolls a 20, which always draws cheers or groans from the table. I included a standard d20 for scale.



Hopefully this isn't too many of these. I also run a lot of Savage Worlds. Not everyone is familiar with it, but it is a great rules-medium game, a little lighter than 5e. It uses cards for initiative and everyone has an extra d6 that they roll with every skill roll called a 'wild die'. I believe strongly in theming, and Savage Worlds is setting-neutral. I've played it for fantasy, western, sci-fi, post apocalyptic, superheroes, everything. I have a whole collection of card decks in order to be able to use theme-appropriate cards for every setting, plus stacks of d6s for thematic wild dice.

Here are a the cards and dice I use for sci-fi games. One of the card decks is clear, by the way, if it isn't obvious from the picture. The other was a Kickstarter set (they're actually black-light sensitive with hidden designs, although I haven't really used that in any games.)

The circuit dice are Q Workshop. The 'metal' dice were just some I picked up at GenCon somewhere.



Ok, last one. Hope I'm not overdoing it. One of my favorite settings for Savage Worlds is Deadlands. Think old west meets supernatural horror. It uses a special token system that has players blindly drawing colored poker chips from a bag. In addition to the 'knucklebone' dice and faux-dirty playing cards, I made a thematic fringed buckskin bag (yeah, real buckskin) for drawing from. It really pushes the atmosphere in-game.

[clintmemo]

I miss playing around a table.

[Bai Shen]

By coincidence, a Facebook group I belonged to recently asked members to post about the props and GM aids they use in their games, with pictures. I thought I'd share here, too, in case it might be useful for someone.

First off, for D&D 5E, I found the inspiration system... uninspiring. It didn't have any flavor, and since you only ever get one at a time, people were loathe to actually spend it when they had it (thus having zero.)

I replaced it with a system of my own design inspired by several other systems I've played. At the beginning of each session, each player blind-draws two tokens from a bag. They have a variety of benefits, some stronger than standard inspiration, some weaker. On one side is a bonus, on the other is flavor text. The weakest is 'Boon', a simple +1 that can be applied to any roll (there are 10 of these in the bag.) The strongest is probably 'Adrenaline!' that lets the player take a full extra turn (there are only two of these in the whole bag - it'll only happen once every few sessions.) There are 15 different benefits, and the average bonus is a little weaker than plain inspiration.

They earn them the same way they'd earn inspiration, although I'm a little more free with them than the standard system. The thing is that they discard them all and draw new ones at the beginning of the next session. Since they earn them more easily, and since they don't carry over, and since they have more than one, there is no real incentive to hoard them.

Here are the tokens by the draw bag. They're simple wooden disks, painted with 'chrome' spraypaint and written on with paint markers. A friend who borrowed my system used popsicle sticks with the effect written on one end, kept end-down in a cup for people to draw from. The system has been playtested quite a bit with several groups and DMs over several years.



In case anyone's interested, here's the breakdown of tokens in the bag:

Interesting. I made up a Bennie system as well for GURPS to tilt the odds a little more in the players favor. It's similar to the Deadlands one but the GM doesn't draw chips. I may try something like this where the bennies don't get more powerful but are just different.

Ok, last one. Hope I'm not overdoing it. One of my favorite settings for Savage Worlds is Deadlands. Think old west meets supernatural horror. It uses a special token system that has players blindly drawing colored poker chips from a bag. In addition to the 'knucklebone' dice and faux-dirty playing cards, I made a thematic fringed buckskin bag (yeah, real buckskin) for drawing from. It really pushes the atmosphere in-game.

Cool. I use a kids costume cowboy hat for people to draw from.

[Greatwyrm]

One of my personal favorites is the CIA World Fact Book.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publication ... -factbook/

Everything you need for a top-level reference if you're running a modern espionage kind of game. Leadership, imports/exports, economy, military, demographics, languages spoken -- current and all in one spot.