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.

ewwww, that's gotta hurt. Oh, unless the humanoid part is merely a lure for prey; then this is seriously eeeeevil! :-) Lolth is a fictional  god from  DnD , and the queen of the Drow Elves. She's also a serious sociopath, psychopath, and pretty much the definition of cruelty and Evil.  She is too calculating to be considered randomly chaotic, but she is definitely a psycho-hosebeast of the highest caliber. ( source ) According to the fine print, the artist is Igor Crechanyi, https://www.artstation.com/igorgrechanyi and he does some  really gorgeous work!

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 )

Liquidating Robotech ®  products – everything must go by  March 31, 2018 Palladium’s Robotech® license has expired and we must liquidate all remaining stock of  Robotech® RPG books  and  Robotech® RPG Tactics™ (RRT)  products by the end of March. Please spread the word. Thank you. Original Robotech ®  RPG  &  Sourcebook PDFs  – on sale now – available only until  March 31  – DriveThruRPG.com PDF books of the original  Robotech® Role-Playing Game  and  sourcebooks  from the 1980s and 1990s are on sale on  DriveThruRPG.com  till  March 31, 2018 . After that, they will no longer be available. Likewise, we believe Palladium Books will be required to remove even the FREE  Robotech® RPG Tactics ™ material from DriveThruRPG as we will no longer hold the license. Please get all the items you desire for your personal library before  March 31, 2018 .  After  March 31, 2018...

You might have noticed I've been playing about with the Mighty Protectors  RPG , written by Jeff Dee and Jack Herman, and published under their Monkey House Games imprint. Well, there's this guy, BK Adams , who - rumor has it - may actually be a bigger guru about MP  even than Jeff Dee.  I don't know if this is true, but it's a fun rumor to spread (because, you know, gossip draws attention, and every indie publisher needs all the attention they can get) :-) Meanwhile, BK Adams has been making YouTube tutorials on some of the finer points of Mighty Protectors . I think this is kind of cool in general, and I like his style.  At first I thought "Why are you reading it to me, when I can read it myself?"  But, you know, his style makes sense, and he brings a bunch of fiddly bits together, so the game makes more sense, and character creation - and resulting play - is more fun. So, there you go.  Buy the game , watch the vids , have fun saving the worl...

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.

I've mentioned before that I'm a gamer girl. I'm also a writer-type person.  That means I create a lot of characters, just for the fun of doing it, to see where different ideas and models might lead. Here are three sites that my gamer and writer friends like to use, as seeds for character background and character name.  Let's face it, coming up with cool names is a bitch, and coming up with interesting backstory is even worse. Random backstory generator - http://www.pbegames.com/lifepath/ . Random name generator - http://www.behindthename.com/random/ . Random job generator - http://writingexercises.co.uk/random-job-generator.php . (Image from boardgamegeek.com )

OMG, I could totally waste hours - and hundreds of dollars - at Hero Forge creating custom tabletop minis. This is 3D printing meets gamer wet dreams. You can do durable plastic (especially if you want it really 4" action figure size), or high detail plastic (for painting just right), or steel or bronze.  (Seriously, your own custom bronze statue!) And you can make your human/alien hybrid look just so. And save it for later, when you get that next paycheck.  I could totally see myself building a collection at about one per month. And then totally see what your character might look like as a buff cat girl. OMG, yeah, I could spend a bloody fortune in no time.

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).

I am unashamed to say that I liked playing summoner-types in 3.x, especially with some of the relaly abusive combinations possible with 3rd-party materials. In my defense, I always brought my monster cards, and own minis, so I was prepared. I always prepared my action list in advance, and was usually one of the fastest turns at the table, depsite sometimes having as many as eight critters and 16 attacks. Heh. Yeah, I love me them minions. Which is probably why Summon Monster has disappeared from the 5e PHB. After all, 5e is intended to streamline play, and be a less-complicated experience. But, whatever. I'm not alone in feeling the gap, and this looks like a pretty fun and creative way to fill the void. http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?358469-Summon-Monster-for-5E

If you follow the link, the author has a really amazing price/fee estimator widget that makes it fun to play about and see what different art pieces - with different shared ownership rights - cost. For about $320, I can get a friend of mine a full page, full color, full rights "movie poster" idea he's had for a story he's writing. Not that I've got $320 laying around, but in the world of gorgeous commercial art, this is really affordable.

Doug Kovacs does some beautiful art, especially fantasy art.

Krendel is one of those games like GURPS or Hero System - or a dozen others - one of those "generic toolkit" kind of game systems, where you can build anything, in any system, and so end up with whatever you want. I got the Krendal Core and Krendal Powers books.  I really like the layout, and presentation.  I've only played a bit with the rules, but it's pretty quick and easy. And hey - if you're a member of the Peace Corps, they'll give you a free copy! William Altman (the author) has a blog for the game .  And he's got an "open game" license , so you can create your own derivative works using the Krendel system.  I'm a huge fan of such licenses, because it's a great way for fans to expand the universe and increase the popularity (and utility) of the system without getting into trouble (and possibly make a few bucks to cover their time)  ;-)

Blue Rose Kickstarter The Blue Rose Kickstarter launches on Monday! We are bringing back our roleplaying game of Romantic Fantasy using the Adventure Game Engine, the rules that power Dragon Age and Fantasy AGE. 

Okay, Jeff Brown is not only a brilliant artist, but he knows how to sell himself.  Check this out: \-- $32/month - Commercial Use You get access to the archive & full commercial use of all of the images within! You also get to request what I paint once a month in the form of a 1 line description. --\ So, let me nail this down: for less than $400/year, you get unlimited commercial use of his entire art  library, AND you can request art. Now that's an incredible deal! The guy must be a machine. He's offering to generate one detailed painting per frickin' day if he hits $4K/month. His paintings are gorgeous.

Darrin Drader, author of a crapload of RPG stuff, wrote on the EVP Spire Facebook page Since this group seems to be filling up quick, I'd like to talk a bit about becoming a Patron through our Patreon site, and the benefits you might see of backing us there. First of all, what is our Patreon site? Put simply, Patreon is where you can subscribe to our adventure gaming publication. More specifically, Patreon isn't just a subscription service, it's also a crowd funding service, not entirely unlike Kickstarter. The main different between the two is that while Kickstarter lets you back a project and pay up front. Patreon, on the other hand, only charges you when something new comes out. You pay nothing up front. How much does it cost? Right now, if you were to purchase upcoming issues of The Spire through RPGNow/Drivethru RPG, you would pay $3.50, and you would get the issue. With Patreon, you can get exactly the same thing for $2.50 per issue. Pay $3.50 instead and...