| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
Hello everyone! I'm trying to compile a list of resources than every DM should have, well every GM even. The books and articles that surpass the setting and the game. The podcasts that go beyond teaching you to play this game or that or GMing some system or other. The things that help you become better at the game no matter what game that may be. I already have a number of them in my head, but I want to make a list. This list won't be just to remind me but I plan on posting about it on my blog and updating this initial post as I make the list, as I find things, and as you folks respond with similar resources. Please everyone share those resources you guys always go back to whatever they may be....and why.
And to throw out the resource at the top of my head right now: (and coincidentally appropriate for this site) Pathfinder's Game Mastery Guide. Honestly one of the most mechanically unneccessary book to play the system it was made for (have DMd pathfinder games for years without it). Nevertheless a source that as become invaluable. It goes into everything from DM styles, play styles, random generating tables, world building tips galor, and so much more. Useful for every setting even if it is heavily geared towards fantasy (obviously).
I have started writing up a list which you can see the beginnings of over at my blog. I realized that there's a ton to talk about when looking for things that every GM should look at. I'm going to focus my immediate efforts on actual role-playing game books. They will still come from a variety of systems however and while I discuss them I will also edit the first post here with the list and a couple of links.
Part one is up! It only contains 3 books so far, and many parts will be forthcoming. Anyone out there have any books they use alot? For multiple games?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I can't check out your link from work, but do you include a link to the "Big List of RPG Plots"? If not, I recommend Googling it and considering it for inclusion among your suggested resources. I've found it very helpful. :)
I will definitely check this out as soon as I can. Sounds very, very useful.
You might find the geomorph project is useful for making dungeons.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
GM Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing
GM Miscellany: Wilderness Dressing
Amazingly handy.
Well it looks like I have a ton of new material to look into. If anyone wants to do their own little usefulness review of anything they mentioned I will definitely add it to one of the resource posts as a bonus as I work my way through my own list.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Novels in Three Lines by Félix Fénéon
First, it's a very amusing little book. It's essentially a police blotter from France in 1906. It's not full-fledged articles, just a sentence or two about a story. So-and-so did this to another person. That kind of thing. If you want strange and random events, but for them to be realistic and plausible, this is an excellent source. I use it for random rumors, or things for villagers to be talking about so that their world feels more real. You could use it for plot hooks as well.
Google maps redone in pencil-style
I think it's taken directly from Google, but they put it through a filter and it looks pretty amazing. That's a random city on Tasmania I think? but you could easily look at other cities. It changes quite a bit depending no how far you zoom in or out. Venice and London have some particularly nice views.
I love the somewhat obscure resources you guys have. This is fantastic!
Dotting in. I'll have to remember some of these. :) The map thing is particularly awesome.
Just posted part two with an overview of the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook from 3.0, Ultimate Campaign, and Savage World's Realms of Cthulhu. Also I am definitely purchasing a copy of unframed this week to read.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
All of the Raging Swan Press GM's Miscellany are indispensable. Dungeon Dressing, Wilderness Dressing and Urban Dressing never leave my side during a session.
I keep a book of names and their meanings on my gaming shelf (I.e. A "What to name your baby" book). Very helpful when you introduce an NPC on the fly and the players ask, "What's her name?"
I keep a book of names and their meanings on my gaming shelf (I.e. A "What to name your baby" book). Very helpful when you introduce an NPC on the fly and the players ask, "What's her name?"
Without a doubt. This book and one on minerals and rocks are two books that pretty much decided that as I continue to mini-review resources everyone should have on the shelf, there much more than rulebooks and role-playing guides that need to be included.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
A must resource for me when I am stumped for trap inspiration:
Deadly Trappings from Kenzer and Company
Though not books, these are wonderful resources I pull form often:
Behind the Name There is also a surname one.
Donjon (Pathfinder link) Has lots of great random generators.
I'll come back if some others come to mind not yet mentioned.
A must resource for me when I am stumped for trap inspiration:
Deadly Trappings from Kenzer and CompanyThough not books, these are wonderful resources I pull form often:
Behind the Name There is also a surname one.
Donjon (Pathfinder link) Has lots of great random generators.I'll come back if some others come to mind not yet mentioned.
Behind the name is especially great if you want a bunch of names that are ethnically similar for a new area your PCs are travelling to. And Donjon has some fantastic things to work with. That site pops up alot when I do searches to help me figure randoms things out.....like fantasy calendars.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Several people beat me to BehindTheName already.
http://www.artmagick.com/ - for artsy visual reference stuff-- I run a lot of PBP games, and I like peppering posts with imagery-- or browsing for inspiration.
Google Image Search seems self-evident on that count, but still, useful.
I tend to get a bunch of resources together for particular settings I'm working with. For instance, I'm running an Ulfen campaign, which means I've made extensive use of the information here (historical and archaeological information -- several pages within that site, not just that one), and here (a dictionary) in order to pepper my dialogue with the occasional bit of 'Skald' dialogue or better describe the food and houses the PCs would be exposed to.... so, IDK, those are circumstantial and don't apply to every GM and every campaign. But I guess just building a good reference stable for stuff specific to your campaign is a great idea.
This digital atlas of the Roman empire provides some awesome data mining stuff.
It would be cheating to just link to All of Wikipedia, but some specific pages I have bookmarked:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_ship_types
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Grimoires
While I don't usually go as far in-depth for an RPG as the questions here, sometimes I'll ask my players to answer a question or two from here in order to figure out 'who' their character is:
https://www.writingclasses.com/toolbox/character-questionnaire
A good article on 'realistic army sizes' in fantasy settings:
http://www.writing-world.com/sf/hordes.shtml
A useful summation of visibility and distance:
http://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/6610/a-summary-of-visibility
A useful summation of visibility and distance:
http://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/6610/a-summary-of-visibility
The second response works great as a random visibility chart. I'm thinking 2d10 take the highest and that tells you how clear of a day it is. Though for different climates I'll change the causes, like a desert will be blowing sand/dust instead of fog.
noting for future reference
Dotting for future use.
I've mentioned this elsewhere, but again Deviant Art is a fantastic site to get inspirational pics and maps. Even if you just go in there and look at the content it can often give you tons of ideas.
Also the Cartographer's Guild is a great site to look at the efforts of a lot of professional grade works.
I received my copy of Unframed the other day, and have managed to read a few of the essays. So far it is a fantastic book. Definitely going to say it is worth getting. Lot's of insight, all written very well so far.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
A must resource for me when I am stumped for trap inspiration:
Deadly Trappings from Kenzer and Company
Thanks for that. I've been wanting something exactly like this for some time. Just bought the last one in stock at Amazon.com. Hehe
Thanks for that. I've been wanting something exactly like this for some time. Just bought the last one in stock at Amazon.com. HeheA must resource for me when I am stumped for trap inspiration:
Deadly Trappings from Kenzer and Company
It is a great resource because of the concept each trap shows you. They are not stated out, but can be used in virtually any rpg system. Most are fairly easy to make for pathfinder or d&d. Many need to be toned down unless you are making a new tome of horrors dungeon. I got my copy for about $5 used. Hastings had a all used books 5 for $25 and i needed a fifth book. It easily was the best one i got that day
Deadly trappings sounds like the kind of thing I have been looking for. I will definitely be getting that soon!
Hello again everyone. For anyone who hasn't already checked out Unframed, please do. It is such a good book. Not only are the tips and tricks fantastic, but it is well written and clear to the reader. As much as improvisation, its about being ready to do so. I wrote my own review on it here.
Oh, and Deadly Trappings will be purchased this evening. Thanks again for everyone with great suggestions.
And in more news, a little something different this time around. Some podcasts/streams to take a listen too. I included This Week in Science to get people's minds thinking and I always find inspiration in sciences. Also included are two of my favorite live-plays that I listen to / watch: Critical Hit and Critical Role, the latter of which I also included a specific link to a DM tips episode that has some great tips for fleshing out your world.
Starting to post more of these, hopefully in addition to other posts. Today I have one sharing some horror video games to play that may help inspire any horror based campaigns you may have.
Dotting for interest
BEST TOOL EVER:
http://combatmanager.com/
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pfrpg-rd/id488594793?mt=8
A few other things I have as general gaming resources...
Scientific American vol. 252, issue 1 (January 1985) has an article about the history and development of the crossbow.
Scientific American vol. 264, issue 6 (June 1991) has an article on early bow design and construction.
The Fringes of Reason: A Whole Earth Catalog (1989): Lots of articles about fringe science, occultism, unconventional religions, conspiracy theories, and other general weirdness, with references to other sources in a pre-Internet age. Rather dated, but still a great resource for general weirdness to pull into a game.
A big d20 counter die to keep track of rounds.
A copy of The Farmer's Almanac in case you need to figure out the weather or phase of the moon on a given date, and want to be consistent. (Alternatively, the National Weather Service keeps historical weather data.) Just pick a US city as an analog for your gaming location. (e.g. Korvosa = San Francisco)
Awesome to see more stuff. I'll have to get over to the Carrion Crown threads and share. I do like my horror and would love some resources from them too.
It has been far too long since I posted here. Just so everyone know's I have begun doing this post on the blog every Thursday. Part of doing this means expanding the included items to be my reviews and inspirations, as well as games you can play to give your role-playing some practice or a break. There are a number of new posts not linked here but I am going to include the link to my, newly updated, index of those posts both here and in the original post. Finally I will also look back through this and start making a list of things I want / need to look into!
*apparently I cannot add it to the original post, I may consider starting a new thread so it's there at the top. For now I will do better throwing updates here*
I recently got my hands on Frog God Games Tome of Adventure Design. It's pretty much a giant pile of random charts but I'm finding it to be pretty handy for coming up with adventure ideas I might not otherwise think up.
Just make a dozen or so rolls and then use you imagination to fit all the pieces together
That actually sounds like something I could really use to flesh out some of my ideas!
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'll throw in a second nod towards Raging Swan Press. Everything Creighton makes is geared to save GM's time in prep. They have books of villages, different humanoid tribes, environmental "dressing" books, etc.
New post today featuring 3 third edition books I like to look to for certain themed story arcs. Plenty of mechanic-free information and ideas to be taken.
http://wandering-alchemist.blogspot.com/2016/01/resources-for-every-dm-rule s.html
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
A nod from me on Raging Swan Press, as well. Also, Richard Pett's "Your Whispering Homunculus" articles have great little adventure hooks in them. Some silly, some awesome, some downright terrifying, depending on the topic.
Thanks for making that a link, I should have double checked when I posted. This week I'll be making that list of things I need to look into / add to my Amazon wish list.
I am really neglecting updating this thread, and for that I apologize. The resource list continues, and here are the 4 most recent additions and the archive page.
The Internet Part 1
Rules & Supplements Part 4
Artifacts, MacGuffins, Red Herrings Part 1
Authors Part 1
dot