Get your own Free Home Page
There are piles of great free and so-cheap-it's-almost-free stuff on the Internet. Not only handy for roleplaying and cheap miniatures gaming, it's also something for the kids to color in, cut out and put together. What a great activity for a rainy day!
This page is not intended just to be a collection of links (though there are certainly links), nor even a collection of meta-links (links to sets of links), though there are those too. It's intended to become a hodge-podge of facts and tips, with a large set of annotated links that tell you what's at the other end, and how it might be useful. I want eventually to have the links indexed in several ways - by type of content (e.g. figures, buildings, floorplans), by genre (e.g. fantasy, victorian/western, modern, SF), by price (free, cheap, more expensive), and so on. Right now it's only a small way there.
My two favourite places to go are Cumberland Games and Microtactix.
I debated long and hard about what to discuss first. In the end, I don't think you can go past Cumberland Games' HexPaper and Flagstones fonts, so I'll talk about Cumberland first.
The main uses for the Hexpaper and Flagstone fonts is for laying down grids - square, staggered square, hexagonal and isometric in HexPaper, and square and staggered square in Flagstones (but decorated to look like various kinds of stone floor material). Because they are TrueType fonts, you can make them any size you need. Actually, those flagstones can make neat walls, too! I have used the word-art facilities in Word to reshape the squares into rectangles, and I reckon they look pretty darn good as a wall (now all I need are some wooden-plank fonts for walls and floors, some tile and shingle fonts for roofs, and a few nifty doors, and I'm all set for buildings). And check out the price!
Cumberland has lots of wonderful fonts to use as character standups.
Here's my three biggest reasons why fonts are a great way to do figures:
Cumberland also has some quite nice fantasy and space interior sets. These are not scaleable in the same neat way as the TrueType fonts, but because they are PDF files (if your printer can do it), you can scale them at print time.
Free Stuff:
Cumberland has quite a bit of free sample stuff - including fully useable sample versions of most of their fonts.
On the PDF buildings and interiors side, Microtactix have tons of really great stuff - fantasy, western/weird western, space and modern. They also make lots of character standups - even armies of them. These are pdf files rather than as fonts.
Microtactix also have many of their sets in color, and also provide some sets as tiff files (so you can color them yourself).If you want to design and build a custom dungeon or a spaceship interior, Microtactix is the place to go.
Free Stuff:
Microtactix have piles of free stuff as well. Check them out!
Let's start with some pointers to the best sets of links. This is not an exhaustive list - but from these places you can track down most of the neat-and-nifty. (I hope to provide a more structured guide to the best stuff soon.)
The first port of call has to be the Card Modeling FAQ. It has links to most of the good stuff, as well as useful tips.
Then there's S. John Ross' Gaming links page. Scroll down to "Paper Toys".
Thirdly, try these links from about.com
Links to places with paper and cardboard miniature figures, buildings and other accessories suitable for RPGs
First mention goes to Greywolf's Ironclaw font. Because it's a font, and they are the neatest way to go, I think. Mainly useful for fantasy furries, several of the figures have a more general use, particularly the ram-skeleton (which looks like a very cool skeletal demon), the dinosaur and the wolf (which could do quite well as a werewolf). There's also lots of flats (swords and shields, mostly) that would be useful in many games. What this font needs is a blank rectangle of the same size as the rest of the font, for when you get itchy to draw a couple of extra figures.
Vector Heroes -
http://www.fecundity.com/vectorheroes/
You can also pay for full set on line at
http://www.hyperbooks.com/catalog/20058.html
Cutout Models for Tabletop Gaming -
http://usa.spis.co.nz/fitz/roleplay/props.html
Has some colour buildings, doors, arches and gates, pillars
SJG's Cardboard Heroes - http://www.sjgames.com/heroes/
Fiddler's Green - Paper models http://www.fiddlersgreen.net
Paper dice:
Puam's dice - http://www.puam.be/freedice (lots of different polyhedral dice)
Sparks dice - http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/sprkdice.htm (d6s, fudge dice, blank dice)
Microtactix dice - http://www.microtactix.com/site/products/X1002.shtml (d10s)
Aaron's dice http://www.aaronallston.com/gamedown/dice.pdf (d6s)
Converting US and metric paper/cardstock weight:
John M. Ford says:
110 lb stock is 200 gsm
67 lb stock is 122 gsm
Be careful. Basis weights for paper are based on
the weight of 500 sheets of whatever size sheet
the product is cut from. Bond paper is made in
17x22" sheets; index in 22.5x30 -and- 25.5x30.5".
This means that although it appears from the two conversions above that stock weight in lb = gsm * 0.55, this isn't always the case.
Here's my description of how to put a rider on a mount. Or you can download the zip file.
This page hosted by
Get your own Free Home Page