Software

Online/Offline Shadowrun Initiative Tracker

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Stalker, from the Shadowrun Forums has created an interesting utility for Gamemasters. It is an Initiative Tracker that includes the ability to roll and sort the initiatives of PCs and NPCs alike. This utility can be downloaded to your local computer so that the javascript can be edited so that the PCs of the party are automatically inserted into the list of people in the fight, saving the GM some time. Currently it does all the rolling for every character placed in the initiative tracker, but Stalker is considering a way to allow Players to roll their own initiative with dice and that result just entered in for the character and sorting them into the order along with the NPCs. This should be a great utility for most GMs to help deal with larger numbers of NPCs and since it can be downloaded to your system, doesn't require a connection to the Net to be able to use at ones gaming table. Plus it should work on tablets and other systems that support Javascript in their browsers.

Babylon 5 Shuttle

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I've spent a little time over the last several years (wow, has it been close to a decade already) playing around with a piece of software, Lightwave 3D. I've done a few minor projects with it, such as a Dancing Antibody, and recently decided that maybe I should spend some more time learning. So, in an effort to learn more about 3D animation and Lightwave in specific I started to build up a model by following a tutorial I found online. It's taken me most of the last month of off and on work, but I was able to go through all 3 parts of the tutorial. While my poor laptop was able to handle the model itself, the graphics card, a Radeon Mobile 9000 IGP, the drivers apparently don't allow for me to see textures on the model in Layout except after rendering. I can live with that as I can see the effects of lights on the base model which is the critical thing to be able to see once texturing is finished.

Character Maps - Graphical Visualization Continued

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A recent posting by another Savage player brought me back to the idea of using GraphViz in gaming. This particular example was in mapping player characters with their in game relationships to people, places, things and ideas to help a GM visualize how they are all interconnected. I went through the post and created several .gv files that have presets setup to make doing more of these easier should I continue down this path with my own games.

The Temple of Elemental Evil

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Updated Dec. 6 It's been a while since I last had something to write. Part of that is because I've been busy in a few new games. One of those is a campaign that is taking us through a very old module for D&D, The Temple of Elemental Evil. We're not even halfway through the Temple and our party has already suffered major losses and replacements within the party. I've been taking advantage of the shear scope of this dungeon to slowly improve my minuscule Lightwave Modeling skills.

Pathfinder Random Treasure Generator V3.0

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Now this is an interesting find, especially given the current playtesting our gaming group is currently running through. The Pathfinder Random Treasure Generator V3.0. It offers lots of options for controlling the kinds of treasure given out. Magic can be set to low to reduce the appearance of magical treasures, or increased to make them more common. Do you want to give out more coins? or would you rather the party found gems and other items instead? How hard was the fight the party faced? What is the average level?

World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria

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Blizzard has announced the next expansion to the World of Warcraft. The Mists of Pandaria. "Shrouded in fog since the world was sundered more than ten thousand years ago, the ancient realm of Pandaria has remained unspoiled by war. Its lush forests and cloud-ringed mountains are home to a complex ecosystem of indigenous races and exotic creatures -- including the noble and enigmatic pandaren. Will the mists of Pandaria part to reveal the world's salvation...

Savage Worlds Dice Probabilities

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Updated Aug. 7

After doing the data collection for the D6 Probabilities with the presence of the Wild Die I thought I'd take a look at the Savage Worlds system and see how the probabilities show up for the open rolling of a D6 with a second die worked out.

No surprise, the results show a fairly linear falloff for the initial values (up to around 10 or 12 depending on the size of the second die rolled with the D6) with a lessening of the slope after that point (almost a sharp turning inflection point).


Graphical Visualization as a Gamer's Tool

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One interesting problem I’ve occasionally encountered when doing stuff for various games is visualizing the paths through the game. The simplest one would be the path from one adventure to another for a party. A more complicated one would be an entire campaign with various adventures broken down by either level or some other gauge of experience for the game system.
One good example of the latter was posted to the Triple Ace Games site about the game setting Sundered Skies (a Savage Worlds setting). This graph was laid out in something like Visio by hand. Each of the adventures was clustered and linked to the next adventure in the series or Plot Point.

Basic D&D Character Sheet

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Updated April 10,

We've been playing a campaign of Classic Dungeons & Dragons. The most recently completed module is the original Temple of Elemental Evil. If I recall correctly the completion of this module by our party brought the total body count for it with this GM up to almost 30 characters. We were also both the largest and lowest levels to complete it with most of the party being below level 7.
Attached is the character sheet that we've been using for this campaign which has started the second adventure. We're skipping the Pit of the Slavelords as that one has been "completed" by another adventuring party in this GM's already existing timeline.
Thanks to feedback from users I've found some ways to help improve the existing sheet.

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