Wherein my New Used Laptop inspires me to begin DMing again.
So, a few weeks ago my wife says to me, “I think I want a new Laptop.” At the time, we had five computers in the house: the desktop in the den which my son and I use, my wife’s work computer (she’s a programmer and works from home), an old obsolete Compaq that was serving out the rest of its days as an overly large paperweight, the decent backup computer which my wife found at a yardsale for five dollars (Woo-Hoo), and the old Laptop.
We purchased the old Laptop about two years ago and we were quite excited. I had never owned a laptop and was rubbing my hands together in excitement at the prospect of being able to Toilet Surf, ride around on long trips while playing Neverwinter Nights, and having a cool new toy in general. I began dming with our laptop and was thrilled with the organizational powers that were now at my disposal. But, due to health and other issues, I put my Campaign on hiatus and not long thereafter my wife had to ship her work computer to the home office so her supervisor could perform some esoteric programming ritual on it, thus necessitating her using the laptop for work. When the work desktop came home, my spouse decided, for various reasons, that she needed both computers. In her off hours, she would use the laptop to play Toontown and pursue other interests; thus, I no longer got to use the laptop as my wife had totally appropriated the thing.
So, when she purchased her shiny new laptop the old one fell to me; I was quite giddy at the prospect of being able to wallow in my Big Man’s Recliner with my New Used Laptop surfing the web, playing games, and wasting time in general. I began setting the thing up, loading my software, etc. When I got around to loading Gimp, I got to thinking about my homebrew campaign world and how much I missed playing D&D.
Gimp is graphic editor, kind of a free version of Adobe Photoshop. http://www.gimp.org/. I was turned onto Gimp by the fine folks at The Cartographers Guild http://www.cartographersguild.com, a forum for fantasy cartography enthusiasts. The Guild has some incredibly talented mapmakers, some of whom produce higher quality stuff than I’ve seen in the vast majority of professionally produced RPG products. Photoshop, Gimp, and CC2 are the tools of choice for most of the mapmakers in the guild, and since the Gimp is free…
Back before the hiatus, I was running a 3.5 game set in Kastmaria, my 23 year old Homebrew world. I had usually drawn my maps by hand, but decided that a digital map would be more convenient. So, armed with the various tutorials posted at the Guild, I set about learning to use Gimp and making new versions of the maps for Kastmaria. I was about two-thirds of the way finished when I stopped running games, and the map in progress sat stored on the desktop for over a year. About two months ago I played with it a little more, finally finishing everything except the text layer.
Anyway, it got me thinking about how much I missed DMing, and I decided to run another game. For various reasons, it wouldn’t be practical to begin until the first of the year, which gave me plenty of time to get things set up. So I dug out my old files, and began setting up my New Used Gaming Laptop!
The first thing I wanted to set up was DM Secretary http://barncatsoftware.org/dmsec.htm, a free Campaign Manager. Version 5.whatever had been released and amongst other changes had been set up for 4E. At the time, I was still planning on a 3.5 game, but the best features of the program weren’t system specific anyway, and it was still usable for any RPG. I then loaded the old AKS Hexmapper program, another free piece of software (Sorry, you’ll have to google this. Be sure to get the tile sets made by various users, as these are superior to the ones that come with the program. If you can’t find any of this email me.) The hexmapper is rather useful for making quick area maps. Here’s an AKS Hexmapper map of the Country of Triested from my campaign world.
The program makes old school style hex maps, which are guaranteed to warm the heart (or tickle the, er, fancy) of any Gygax Era Gamer.
I had misplaced my copy of the Waterdeep Event Generator, so I went to Candlekeep to download another copy http://www.candlekeep.com. This neat little free program can be used with any large fantasy city, and will generate random big city street scenes, as well as pick pocket results. Candlekeep has a lot of cool stuff, including an AWESOME pdf Waterdeep map which is incredibly detailed, featuring maps going all the way down to individual streets! I wanted to use this map so badly that I almost decided to run a Forgotten Realms campaign and I’m still toying with the idea.
I then spent a few days scouring the web for more programs. (I excel at finding creative and useful ways to waste time.)
Next I downloaded Dungeon Crafter III, http://www.dungeoncrafter3.com, a free dungeon map and tile maker; not many objects come with the program, but if you head over to the Dundjinni forums, all the fanmade objects work in DC3, so you can get a ton of stuff. I haven’t tested this program yet, so I’m not sure if I’ll end up going with it or shelling out the cash for Dundjinni http://www.dundjinni.com.
Then there’s Tavernmaker; http://www.tavernmaker.de/eng/men-eng-inf.htm, another free program which generates taverns complete with patrons, rumours and a map! (God, I’m such a Geek.)
Still planning on running 3.5, I set about recreating another lost file, my huge NPC database. Scouring the web, I began amassing as many NPC’s as I could find. For those looking for NPC’s, here’s a good place to start: http://d20npcs.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page.
God knows, creating NPC’s for 3.5 is so labor intensive that DM’s need all the help they can get. With a good NPC database, you can find something close enough to what you want that with a little modification they’ll work just fine, thus, saving hours of time.
I then loaded my Homebrew files, and began going through everything, noting what needed to be finished or modified. “Maybe I should run a 1st edition Campaign…” I mused. I missed the atmosphere of AD&D and found DMing 1e to be more enjoyable than 3.5. The Pathfinder Beta looked pretty good as well. But looking over the 4th ed stuff was giving me some ideas, and if it was more pleasurable to DM than 3.5 then it was time to give it a try. But, did I really want to go to the time and effort of learning a new system and revising my world to work with 4e?
Learning a new game system and revising campaigns was the exact sort of thing I used to count as enjoyable, kinda like Mr. Scott getting excited at the idea of being confined to quarters and having an opportunity to read his technical manuals. Back when 4e was on the horizon, I had a generally crappy attitude about the whole subject. My health problems had me tired and depressed, so I reacted like the generally cranky person I had become and was firmly anti-4e. Now that I had some time to calm down and improve my state of mind, maybe it was time to give 4e a chance. Maybe.
I had misplaced my copy of the Waterdeep Event Generator, so I went to Candlekeep to download another copy http://www.candlekeep.com. This neat little free program can be used with any large fantasy city, and will generate random big city street scenes, as well as pick pocket results. Candlekeep has a lot of cool stuff, including an AWESOME pdf Waterdeep map which is incredibly detailed, featuring maps going all the way down to individual streets! I wanted to use this map so badly that I almost decided to run a Forgotten Realms campaign and I’m still toying with the idea.
I then spent a few days scouring the web for more programs. (I excel at finding creative and useful ways to waste time.)
Next I downloaded Dungeon Crafter III, http://www.dungeoncrafter3.com, a free dungeon map and tile maker; not many objects come with the program, but if you head over to the Dundjinni forums, all the fanmade objects work in DC3, so you can get a ton of stuff. I haven’t tested this program yet, so I’m not sure if I’ll end up going with it or shelling out the cash for Dundjinni http://www.dundjinni.com.
Then there’s Tavernmaker; http://www.tavernmaker.de/eng/men-eng-inf.htm, another free program which generates taverns complete with patrons, rumours and a map! (God, I’m such a Geek.)
Still planning on running 3.5, I set about recreating another lost file, my huge NPC database. Scouring the web, I began amassing as many NPC’s as I could find. For those looking for NPC’s, here’s a good place to start: http://d20npcs.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page.
God knows, creating NPC’s for 3.5 is so labor intensive that DM’s need all the help they can get. With a good NPC database, you can find something close enough to what you want that with a little modification they’ll work just fine, thus, saving hours of time.
I then loaded my Homebrew files, and began going through everything, noting what needed to be finished or modified. “Maybe I should run a 1st edition Campaign…” I mused. I missed the atmosphere of AD&D and found DMing 1e to be more enjoyable than 3.5. The Pathfinder Beta looked pretty good as well. But looking over the 4th ed stuff was giving me some ideas, and if it was more pleasurable to DM than 3.5 then it was time to give it a try. But, did I really want to go to the time and effort of learning a new system and revising my world to work with 4e?
Learning a new game system and revising campaigns was the exact sort of thing I used to count as enjoyable, kinda like Mr. Scott getting excited at the idea of being confined to quarters and having an opportunity to read his technical manuals. Back when 4e was on the horizon, I had a generally crappy attitude about the whole subject. My health problems had me tired and depressed, so I reacted like the generally cranky person I had become and was firmly anti-4e. Now that I had some time to calm down and improve my state of mind, maybe it was time to give 4e a chance. Maybe.