links

Social Media Stuff

Tim MaidmentLeave a comment

I’ve been watching the turmoil across social media around the developments at Twitter. Although it isn’t something I make a lot of use of, a lot of my friends do, and it’s nice to be able to dip in now and then. I also tend to use it as another place to link to here when I post – and back in the day when Facebook allowed APIs to play nicely, I had a little chain of things set up that I could post here and see cross posting back and forth to my various other places without any intervention.

Now, just in case things go up in smoke over in that-there land of Twits, I’ve been looking at Mastodon as a decentralised alternative – mostly because most of the people I know are also heading there, along with various artists, authors, and associated ne-er do wells.

It took me a while to get to grips with it, but I’m now set up on an LGBT server (other servers, of course, are available) and am making links and getting used to the differences in how it all works – I refuse to call them toots, no matter how much they try. If anyone’s interested in wandering over – here’s a link to my profile to follow.

https://mastodon.lol/@LondonLudd#

If you haven’t already got an account, it will then prompt you to set something up, but otherwise I’ll be able to follow you back (the usual mantra of these things – have we gone back to the noughties again?)

For A Few Designs More

Tim MaidmentLeave a comment

Work was work, and so this evening I’ve worked on some old graphics to bring them up to scale to use on tshirts on Amazon UK. I’m considering putting a few up for other countries at some point, but as far as I know the majority of our DDC audience is UK-based and this is hardly a superstar blog.

Still, you might enjoy these:

Family Tree: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B093S2ZJFL/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_glt_fabc_KF9RA0TSVTH25XB53CJ5

Gothic Butterfly: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B093RBRRD2/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_glt_fabc_QFYWSQXZEXF88NM0RC7Q

Reflection: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B093G9VG5T/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_glt_fabc_93EN37ATGWZ619G5F5A5

Fractal Fishpond: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B092TB3BZG/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_glt_fabc_JFXBHQBHGCTD92WNJXXN

Hope there’s something there for people to enjoy. If nothing else it’s a good way to relax for me.

Proud Blog-Father

Tim MaidmentLeave a comment

My daughter has been in lockdown in Oxford Brookes University since everything kicked off, and like so many of us has been trying new things out on the cooking front.

Today I had a quick note and link to an article she just had published on the Oxford Brookes Student Union website about her “student-approved” baking recipes.

Being a proud father to a fellow writer, I of course have to share this with you all. Go have a look at https://www.brookesunion.org.uk/articles/student-approved-quarantine-baking-student-blog and enjoy both the quality of writing and the baked goods.

Additional Gaming Resources for RPGS

Tim MaidmentLeave a comment

I’m doing a lot of setup and preparation for the new D&D group, and part of that has been going back and updating the resource, reference, and inspiration websites to help me when I need to come up with stuff quickly. Sometimes its needing to look the bare bones of something up, and sometimes its needing something to spark when I need an off-the-cuff name or location description.

As the DDC in its current form is not overly combat-orientated, and has a distinct preference for strategy and talking their way into and out of situations, I’m fully expecting to have all sorts of curveballs thrown my way.

Some of the resources are additional image packs that I’ve bought through the Roll20 market – some of them have been creature and character tokens, but the majority have been modular mapping packs – as each average about $4.99 or so I’ve been finding them very good value for money for then designing and customising location maps.

I’ve also been playing around with the following sites:

  • Iron Arachne – https://ironarachne.com/ – which has a wide selection of what it calls procedural generation tools for tabletop games, and also a list of other sites providing similar tools. Generating cultures, weather, names, heraldry is as simple as clicking a button, or just looking at the results posted on the site as recently generated results.
  • Donjon – https://donjon.bin.sh/ – has a huge number of random generators – be they names, adventures, dungeons, or worlds for a wide range of backgrounds and game systems.
  • Eberron Unlimited – http://eberronunlimited.wikidot.com/ – is a developing wiki of rules and information, generators and tables specifically focused on the game world we’re using.
  • D&D Wiki – https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page – another treasure trove of information for quick reference for a number of D&D editions as well as Pathfinder, largely using the SRD kits for those systems.
  • Deepnight.net – https://deepnight.net/tools/rpg-map/ – browser-based map maker that also has a downloadable desktop app. I’ve used this to map out simple locations and then export them as png or jpg files to upload to Roll20.
  • Dave’s Mapper – https://davesmapper.com/ – need a quick village or cave system or dungeon mapping out in old-school D&D treasure map style? Give this a look. I’ve used this to quickly throw together at least one location.

Hope the gamers among you – whether players or GMs – find these useful, and I’m always interested to hear of others that people have found easy to use or a little hidden gem…

Have fun!