What the Mastodon taught me: A collection of RPG links

I’ve been spending time on Mastodon, chatting about RPG stuff. It’s been a lot of fun.

I’m at tabletop.social, but a lot of RPG people are at dice.camp, both RPG related instances.

Just wanted to throw together a bunch of useful RPG related links I posted or found there, both for my own reference, and for everyone else’s use.

---

Say you’re running a RPG set in ancient Rome. How do you know how long it takes, and how much it costs, for your players to travel around the empire?

Try looking at Orbis, it’s a Google Maps for the Roman Empire…

https://orbis.stanford.edu/

---

If you need to generate a name for a dark fantasy setting try the Goth Name Generator:

https://generatorfun.com/goth-name-generator

---

K.M. Alexander’s (@kmalexander@mastodon.social) collection of fantasy brushes. It’s basically a collection of little digital images you can plug into most drawing programs. All of the images are taken from antique maps.

It makes creating old-timey looking maps ridiculously easy:

https://kmalexander.com/free-stuff/fantasy-map-brushes/

---

Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social) built a tool called the “Weird Old Book Finder”. You enter a search term, and it finds one, and only one, public domain book on the subject.

https://weird-old-book-finder.glitch.me/

---

Seedling Games (@seedling@dice.camp) put together this useful list of resources for RPG makers:

https://seedlinggames.github.io/blogging/business/low_cost_resources.html

---

Katrin Moondaughter does cool medieval-styled art, some of it is for Robert E. Howard’s Hyborian Age (Conan stuff), and some is for Glorantha.

https://www.katrindirimart.com/

---

On the Mazirian’s Garden blog, a post about running dreamlike sessions in RPGs:

https://maziriansgarden.blogspot.com/2022/06/the-dream-aesthetics-dilemma.html

---

A bunch of old, free OSR adventures from Gus L., the author of Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier:

https://alldeadgenerations.blogspot.com/p/pdf-adventure-archives.html

---

An interesting blog post at Halfling’s Hoard about the unique magic system in Whitehack:

http://halflingshoard.com/2022/10/29/magic-in-whitehack/

---

An old public domain autobiography over at Standard Ebooks, about Jack Black (not the actor), and his life of crime at the turn of the century. Excellent RPG source material.

https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/jack-black/you-cant-win/