Fantasy Campaign Tools from Arr-Kelaan Software

Arr-Kelaan Software has seven GM-oriented programs available for free download, including HexMapper, which lets you create old-school hex maps of your campaign world.

The other tools are Dice Roller, Random City Generator, Town Designer, Spell Book Builder, Campaign Calendar Generator and Random Weather Generator (all with fantasy GMs in mind).

They’re all in beta, and will be released as shareware when they’re out of the testing period. They require VB 6.0 to run. (Via Jeff’s Gameblog.)

A Template for Writing Location Descriptions

This guest post by John Arcadian of Silvervine Games started out as a comment on Creating Immersive Descriptions, yesterday’s post about how to describe your game world in terms of all five senses.

John’s technique for doing this revolves around a slick little template for writing up locations in your campaign. Thanks for letting me turn this into a TT post, John!
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When I’m writing up adventures/dungeons/areas I use a template that has the five senses, special notes, enemies, and a “something of interest” field.

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Creating Immersive Descriptions

No matter what system you’re playing, or what your primary gaming interests are (combat, storytelling, characterization, complex plotting, etc.), every campaign can be improved with immersive, you-are-there descriptions of the world and what happens in it.

In my experience, one of the single biggest factors in creating immersive descriptions is including more than just the two most obvious senses (sight and hearing). Smell, touch and (where applicable) taste can be equally powerful as tools to pull your players into the game world.

I’ve always loved crafting detailed descriptions when I GM, and I’ve done this for years — but I didn’t see it as an explicit goal, or actively think about involving multiple senses, before I started writing for Tabletop Adventures. While it takes some effort at first — because it’s so much easier to just describe what the PCs see and hear, and leave it at that — the payoff is worth it.

Vicki Potter, my editor at TTA, has written an excellent free PDF on this topic (direct link to PDF), Using Description to Enhance Your Game. It’s a great introduction to employing all five senses when describing things to your players.

This isn’t the only way to create immersive descriptions, of course. What’s in your GMing toolkit when it comes to immersing your players in the world around their PCs?

NearbyGamers: Find Players with Google Maps

TT reader clem emailed me about NearbyGamers, a new player-finding site based on Google Maps (thanks, clem!).

It’s a great concept: You join, add yourself to the map, flag your profile with tags based on the games you like, and you’re off. The map shows little pins for everyone who’s part of the site.

And I love the creator’s approach: “I built the site because I, as a gamer, want to use it.” That’s one of the best reasons out there to assemble a resource like this. I’ve joined up, and I hope you’ll do the same — simple, useful player-finding sites like this are few and far between. I’d love to see this one succeed.

(And if you’re in the market for players, check out our free PDF, Ten Ways to Find Players & What to Do Next.)

Big, Hairy, Audacious Campaigns

Gerald Cameron recently linked me to an excellent post on his blog, My Play: the cryptically-titled BHACs (thanks, Gerald!).

BHAC stands for “Big, Hairy, Audacious Campaign,” which Gerald explains like this: “The basic idea of the BHAC is to build a campaign – whether a one-session change of pace, or a traditional multi-year epic – around the seed of a truly outrageous, grabby, inspiring idea that will never appear in anyone else’s campaign…”

Now that’s a cool approach.

If Only: GMing Regrets

Over on Abulia Savant, my friend Don Mappin has an excellent post up about gaming regrets. It’s in the same vein as one of his earlier posts, Greatest Hits (discussed on TT in Ranking Your Favorite Campaigns: What Makes You Tick?) — examining your history as a gamer can reveal some surprising insights about how you game, and why.

Let’s repurpose this one a bit, and specifically look at game mastering. Looking back on your GMing career so far, what do you regret?

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Glossary of GMing Terms 2.0

(Update: As of 3/22, the newly-revised, 216-term RPG Glossary is up and running. My thanks to everyone who contributed!)

For a little while now, I’ve been thinking that TT’s RPG Glossary needs to be expanded to include more obscure and uncommon terminology. That would make it more useful to a wider range of game masters.

Sometimes all I need is a little kick in the ass: Yesterday, TT reader Walt C. emailed me with two new definitions, including one (homebrew) that I can’t believe I missed the first time around (thanks, Walt!).

GMs, fire up your jargon: it’s glossary time.

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Digital Map Projection for RPGs

Using a digital projector to deliver the ultimate mapping solution for your game is something of an evergreen topic among GMs: There’s always interest in it, and once you’ve heard about it, chances are you wish you could do it yourself (I know I do!).

d20srd.org (an all-around fantastic site for D&D GMs) has a page dedicated to Jans Carton’s delicious, enviable digital projector setup. It’s not a step-by-step guide to creating your own projector mapping nirvana, but it’s chock full of useful tips and details — plus screenshots of the map creation process, as well as games in progress.

If you’ve been considering taking this plunge, this just might be the page that pushes you over the edge — I know my mental gears started turning when I read that Jans’s projector can be had on eBay for under $300, which is about $1,700 less than I expected. (Via The Island of Eime.)

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