I Tell You. You Decide If You Care.

So, this is sort of a follow-up to my earlier post on Fantasy RPG Armor for women . This is about Martina at  Nerdforge , and all the awesome shit she makes. Specifically, here are her videos where she makes her own armor and then she makes a shield. She also has videos where she makes tomes, wizard staffs, and all kinds of awesome shit. Frankly, I get a kick out of trying to picture her workshop. She's got some serious and expensive power tools :-) Here are more links about them We're the Nerdforge couple Martina & Hansi! instagram & twitter: @thenerdforge discord: discord.io/nerdforge https://www.patreon.com/nerdforge

HeroForge has amazing tools for creating custom figures for tabletop gaming.  Basically, you can build your own 1" figure for your D&D games... ...or Savage Rifts ... ...or, fuck it, just lose your damn mind and have fun... These screenshots were chosen to show off some of the tool features available in HeroForge "Cat Angel" there was created by a 7-year-old girl, who was just having fun one day playing around with her dad's account.  That's how easy and fun the interface is. And different potential - like D&D , or Rifts, or Supers (I got introduced to Mighty Protectors , which is multi-genre a toolkit game like GURPS   or Hero System ). All of these were created by a friend of mine. He's been using HeroForge for years, and backed a few of the KickStarters , so has free access to some of the advanced tools.  (He was showing me the tools, so I asked if I could grab some screenshots for my blog.) Note, that my friend hasn't actually bought  any o...

Women in armor .  Well, realistic medieval type of armor, anyway, as opposed to modern body armor, but you can find those, too Model unknown. Image source on Pinterest.

Some vids detailing historical use of slings.  Again, in most version of D&D, this is a Simple Weapon that anyone can use. Halflings usually get some nice bonuses with slings, and some editions of D&D go absolutely bonkers with halfling-only sling feats that produce some damage potential to easily compete with longbows and crossbows.  (I can't find the character sheet, but I had a 4e halfling ranger/rogue who, in natural terrain, take  5 foot step at the start of her turn, then use her sling to cause 5d6+4 damage. That was awesome.)

Here is a pretty cool treatise on longbow arrows. I like his style. Very calm, very well-stated. Useful information and perspective, without a lot of hype, and just a touch of snark. Now, I mean, this is most useful to people who like history, or who play a lot of Dungeons & Dragons .  Or Warhammer FRP , or Talislanta , or want to play Hawkeye in your favorite SHRPG, like, say Mighty Protectors .  :-) Personally, I always loved archers.  I was never particularly enamored of the crossbow in 3e, except maybe as the occassional ranged utility weapon for my low-level clerics.  Then came 5e, when I started monkeying with it. The slow reload rate was always a buzzkill, but the Crossbow Expert Feat provided some definite advantages over the Longbow, so I built a Fighter around the Heavy Crossbow, and actually had a lot of fun.

There are a lot of great artists on social media. One is Karl Stjernberg Karl does a lot of RPG  art.  Mostly maps, but also some character sheets.  This one is apparently a Level 1 Kobold Thief. I love the "mind map" free form creativity Karl shows. ( source ) And, Pink! of course :-) (Helllooooo, I'm a girl.  Yes, it turns out that pink is hardwired into us.  We grow out of it... eventually.  Haha.) ( source ) ( source )

Giant Hogweed  - some crazy big ugly plant On the one hand, an awesome D&D trap. On the other hand, I feel horrible for anyone who contacts it, and ends up scarred for life!

You ever flip through a book, and find that one thing that sells it to you?  Yeah, I so need a copy of Fantastic Heroes & Witchery , entirely based on this image.  Well, okay, this image and the fact that Mark Craddock uses it.  Mark manages a game store, so he is kind of a guru on all the new games, so if he considers it worth his time to mock up blog posts using a system , I'm immediately open to it. Then this sample art found in the online sampler  (Ladies, you  so  know what I'm talking about, right?)   ( buy FHW from RPGnow.com ) Hey, for $7.50, if the authors have this kind of sense of humor, I'm totally willing to try it.  If it helps, the online reviews for it are favorable, too.   Personally, I prefer hardcopy, because I like BOOKS - I like being able to handle a physical object, not have to squint, and not have to worry about battery life.

Derek Ruiz is the mad genius behind ElvenTower.com .  He makes maps, and has a Patreon account . Good maps are hard to find.  This is beautiful, easy to use, and totally looks like fun.

The Ultimate - and I mean ULTIMATE - guide to ritual spellcasting in 5e . The author even used color-coding. This is awesome. For example, it seems so obvious to me that a ritual casting would require the character to stand still, but apparently not. The character can walk and chant at the same time. The color-coding is great, and makes it really clear the only spell list worth ritualizing is the wizard spell list. Well, that is unless or until we get a 5e version of "Relics & Rituals" which expanded the ranger and paladin lists so incredibly much that we actually had someone play a ranger with Scribe Scroll, just so she could use all those cool spells (and wow, did she).

Game for Nepal - charity bundle to raise funds for the relief effort in the aftermath of the 7.8 Eathhquake in April, 2015. Includes the complete "Asian OSR" and goodies. Only USD$15 (at the time of this writing).

Mark Craddock, blogger and all around interesting person, runs his own store Store http://www.comicbookworld.com Blog http://crossplanes.blogspot.com Mark posts a lot of D&D 5e goodies on his blog. A lot of them are racial types, like the 3e racial templates. Artwork I found on his blog... to lure you into clicking the link... ;-)

Squeeeee!! If you want to hear color sing, look at the work of Eric Lofgren. Eric can take any hangdog, shy color ( “Hi. I’m Green.” ) and with a little coaxing from Eric, it’s in your face, up your nose, and stroking the pleasure centers of your brain ( “Heeeeey, baby. I’m Green.” ) before you can moan “Oh, God.” Eric’s colors are practically orgasmic. Epic Eric Lofgren has a Patreon account!   Throw money at him ! OMG, Eric is awesome! His art is gorgeous! and he's a neat guy!  I got to talk to him quite a lot, back when I had a Faceborg account . Eric is one of the few people I miss from Faceborg.  Funny, how the people I miss are all artists. For us deeper thinking types,  Eric also has a G+ account , but he just doesn't get the same fan love on G+ as he does on Faceborg, so he doesn't spend as much time there. Anyway, Eric has done a crapload of D&D art, so go throw a few dollars at him, and support a great guy, who does great a...