Savaged.us is a site with lots of helpful Savage Worlds tools. Last week, it updated with character generation for Pathfinder for Savage Worlds.

Additionally, all registered users can use the tool, bringing material from the core rules and the Pathfinder for Savage Worlds Bestiary.

To find it, click on Character Creator, go to Settings and look for Pathfinder in the Book Selection list.

Savaged.us includes licensed settings for Rippers, Lankmar, East Texas University, Deadlands and Rifts.

Speaking of Rifts, Palladium Books is now selling a $6 Excel spreadsheet from DriveThruRPG that’s an automated character sheet for the sci-fi epic.

You’ll want to have at least Excel 2016 for this to work best.

$6 may sound a lot to pay for a spreadsheet, especially as many readers will be able to automate much of this themselves if time allows. However, there’s a lot in this one.

• Dice Roller: A simple dice roller is on the main page of the character sheet to help with character creation or game dice rolling needs.
• Automated Attributes and Stat Block: All the bonuses and features from attributes are presented in a large stat block allowing you to easily see your bonus to save vs Psionics, Mind Control, etc. You can pick your strength type (Normal, Augmented, Robotic or Supernatural) to determine your carrying and lifting capacity and even your M.D. punch damage if your strength is high enough and of the correct type.
• Automated Combat Stats: The main page holds a section where you can pull up data for your various combat stats, from hand to hand abilities such as Strike, Parry, Dodge and Disarm, to W.P. bonuses, including those of the W.P. Sharpshooting variety. This section draws upon all of your character’s selection of skills and abilities and even offers customization from odd O.C.C. or racial abilities.
• Automated Psionics: All psionics from Rifts® Ultimate Edition, Rifts® World Book 12: Psyscape and Rifts® World Book 32: Lemuria can be selected from a dropdown menu that then populates tables with the information on psionics for your character. Each psionic ability’s data, including damage, M.D.C. and range, also automatically increases based on the character’s level of experience.
• Automated Spells: All Common Invocation, Necromancy, Ocean Magic and Biomancy spells (yes, all the Lemurian Biomancer spells too!) can be selected from a dropdown menu that then populates tables with the information on spells for your character. Each spell’s data, including damage, M.D.C. and range, also automatically increases based on the character’s level of experience.
• Automated Skills: All skills from Rifts® Ultimate Edition, Rifts® World Book 25: China 2 – Heroes of the Celestial Court and Rifts® World Book 32: Lemuria can be selected and then automatically add bonuses from prerequisites and related skills. Physical skills that provide bonuses also add those bonuses directly to attributes and combat stats. Bonuses that require dice rolls are denoted and can then be manually rolled and added to the character sheet. Custom per cent bonuses such as O.C.C. bonuses can also be added to individual skills.
• Automated Cybernetics & Bionics: All cybernetics and bionics from Rifts® Ultimate Edition, along with some favourites from other books, can be selected from dropdown menus that tabulate bonuses and add them to your combat stats. Prices also sum up so an enterprising Headhunter can keep track of his hardware and upgrades. Simple cybernetic body part diagrams even allow players to allocate their various cybernetic and bionic components.
• Freeform O.C.C. and Racial Power Section: A section for non-standard powers, special O.C.C. or racial abilities allows the player to add custom skills and powers linked to those features to draw upon the character’s level of experience, I.Q. bonus or other stats, so powers grow as the character advances.
• Character Building Section: On the main page of the document is a section to help you build your character, from customizing attributes, to adding non-standard bonuses from O.C.C. or racial abilities, to an Optional point-buy system for attributes.
• Helpful Hints and Suggestions: Red triangular tabs appear throughout the document. Hovering over the red tab with the mouse cursor will reveal useful data from sourcebooks, hints, suggestions and other information, such as what a particular stat means, how it’s used in the game and what things can add bonuses or affect it. There is also a page with overview instructions on how to use the sheet, and several instructional videos will be posted via Palladium TV on the ins and outs of the character sheet. 
• Portrait: A special sheet is set up so you can add an image to the document for a custom portrait for your character. That image is then displayed on the main page and is protected from accidental movement or deletion from the main page.
• Password Protected: Several pages of the document are password-protected so players won’t accidentally delete formulas and ruin the character sheet’s automated features. The password is provided so players can customize the sheet to their liking then protect the sheet again, so they don’t undo all their hard work.

Quick Links

• Savaged.us
• Rifts Automated Character Sheet
• Pathfinder for Savage Worlds

You can download Dungeoneer from GITHub and run it on Windows. It’s described as a tool for lazy DMs, but that clearly undersells its technical abilities considerably.

What’s less clear is whether Dungeoneer is a virtual tabletop (VTT) or not.

There is a tabletop, at least, with a digital tracker, measurement tools, fog of war, dynamic lighting and some effects. It’s not multi-user, though. You can show your map to players via another screen, but they won’t be able to drag and drop themselves around.

The program includes generators to build NPCs on the fly as well as full shops and taverns. Need an encounter? Dungeoneer makes those too.

With Dungeoneer, you can build your own multi-dimensional tables. That is to say, the result on one table can be a roll on another.

If that sounds handy, then so will the mob tracker for managing a swarm.

Despite that lack of online capability, which stops it from being a fully-fledged VTT, Dungeoneer also has dice rollers and can cope with tracking many spells at once.

It’s all free but yuo can buy the creator, Durtur, a coffee.

Quick Links

• Download Dungeoneer for Windows.
• Support the creator

Even in a sleepy village on the quiet corner of a fantasy map, it need not be the case that every day is the same. A GM or worldbuilder can insert a fantasy festival to shake things up a bit.

In this post, a press of a button will generate a random fantasy festival. You just get a name, but perhaps that’s enough to weave the story behind it, the traditions, food and celebrations that accompany the event.

Festival

Why write a fantasy festival name generator? Two reasons.

Firstly, there’s no harm in adding another generator to the site. There are a few others already such as the tavern generator, cult generator and the creaky merchant wagon generator.

Secondly, the RPG Blog Carnival has themed May with Festivals, Holidays, and Birthdays with Full Moon Storytelling the host.

Full Moon suggests a few ways and reasons to integrate festivals and holidays into your campaign, including fetch quests, to introduce a new culture or as a change of pace.

Creative Commons credit: The Courage Festival by Tom TC.

There’s no wrong way to start and run your D&D session.

A common recommendation is to agree, as a group, what sort of game you want to play first, create characters that fit into that concept and who have some reason to stay together and then test how that works in a session zero.

Not every single character option that exists in D&D may be suitable for the game you’re about to run or play. There are so many now!

DM Sam Russell has created a Google Spreadsheet, a tool called “Is This Allowed Too?” to help speed things along. It’s a reference to help reduce the number of times players have to ask questions that start with “Is…” and finish with “… allowed?”

Are Unity Clerics allowed?

Are Gunsmith Artificers allowed?

Those sort of questions.

You can find the spreadsheet here, and you’ll need to make a copy of it into your own Google Drive before you can tailor the data to suit your campaign.

The first tab is “Summary”, and it acts as both a key and, to begin with, a master switch. The colourful Sources column serves as a legend mapping book titles to the codes that appear alongside races, classes, backgrounds, feats and spells later.

For example, “Acquisitions Incorporated” has the code “AI” and is coloured a light green which reminds us that it’s an “Official Source”.

That same tab initially acts as the master controller for what’s available. If the word “Allowed” appears beside the source, then everything from that source becomes allowed; otherwise, it’s disallowed.

The other tabs are Races, Classes, Backgrounds, Feats, Other Features and Spells. Here, Sam has taken the time to write out every single possible entry, splitting them into Official or Unofficial (like Unearthed Arcana stuff).

Initially, the “Allowed?” column checks back to the Summary sheet to see whether the master Source has been allowed, or not. If you want to allow some, but not all, of a source, Sam suggests you simply write over their formula with your ruling; Allowed or Disallowed.

That works, but do note that if you do that, then you will break the connection for that entry with the Summary control tab. If you know only a little about Google Sheets function it is easy to re-write, but if not then you’ll either have to make a fresh copy of the whole spreadsheet (as you would when starting a new game) or forever keep that cell updated by hand.

Sam has updated this sheet at least once already, expanding it to add in new Unearthed Arcana and other new rules. Sadly, once you make a copy, any structural changes or updates Sam makes to their master will not appear on yours.

You can keep an eye on /u/SamsyTheUnicorn Reddit’s profile to see if they post about any future updates, and there’s the Reddit chat option to ask questions. Sadly, Google Sheets does not have a system for a parent spreadsheet to send messages, like update alerts, to its children.

You can access and copy the Is This Allowed Too? spreadsheet here.

Creative Commons credit: Goblin Sniper by Plognark.

How do you generally decide which classes, races and other character options are suitable for your campaign setting?

Do you need a random tavern name generator? What about a short description of the building and a little information about the staff?

If you have a player who likes to check out a few taverns when visiting a town or city, make some streetwise or crime rolls and bring back some choices of lodgings for the group, then a fantasy tavern generator like this may be useful. Or perhaps you just need a tavern name or two quickly.

You can keep on pressing that button until the generator gives you a tavern or a combination of inns that you like.

Depending on the results you get, your fantasy tavern might also feature a random secret society and if the PCs go shopping afterwards then the potion generator may be useful.

Creative Commons credit: The bard’s tavern by inoxdesign.

Geek Native carries RPG news, reviews and offers up the occasional resource like this generator. You can find quick links to a few more over at our resources hub.

There are times in a tabletop RPG session when the GM needs to quickly name a cult.

Maybe the characters are researching in a library and bringing that scene to life means mentioning a host of previous secret societies or cults that have caused problems. Alternatively, an NPC’s background might include being part of, or running afoul of, a dangerous cult.

Or maybe you just want to have a dangerous hidden order in your story, and you are looking for inspiration. Pick a genre, press the button, and this generator will suggest a randomly generated name to you.

A secret society generator

You can keep on pressing that button until the generator gets close to a name you can work with. Each genre has at least five unique templates, and so there are many different possibilities.

As a rule, while there are some generic monsters (titan, dragon, etc) mentioned in some of the designs, this random generator tries to keep clear of anything too system-specific. Whether you’re playing a D&D game, Kult, Beyond the Supernatural or even a sci-fi game with weird space religions, you should get some ideas from these suggestions.

This random cult generator is part of an RPG blog carnival on Organizations hosted by The Expanding Frontier, a sci-fi RPG resource blog. In the comments section of their carnival post, you’ll find other articles about organisations and societies.

There’s a new topic in the RPG blog carnival each month. You can see what’s happened before, or what’s coming up next, over at Of Dice and Dragons.

Creative Commons credit: Summoning Ritual by Alex Kuhn.

Which ideas, concepts or words do you think make for a good secret society, organisation or cult? Let us know in the comments below.

This random generator is based on D&D 5e rules (PHB 155 to 157) with the trade good collection expanded based on medieval European research.

If you’re on a mobile device and hit a generate button, you may need to scroll down to see the results.

Merchant wagons are both a thorny issue and a gotcha. They’re a thorny issue because D&D 5e rules favour abstraction to improve the storytelling experience and therefore don’t convert well to spreadsheet-style inventory management. D&D’s default economy is also calculated for gameplay which results in some oddness. We’ve already looked at how a Conestoga wagon (a large wagon) filled with silk is worth 1.5 million gold pieces.

Generate Cart

Generate Wagon

Generate Large Wagon

What is this merchant carrying?

Wagons are a ‘gotcha’ because if your players are guarding – or raiding! – then they’ll likely want to know what it carries. With so many random encounters involving merchants and wagons, this can catch busy DMs out.

The goal of this random merchant wagon (or large cart) generator is to help out when you need rough details of what’s being carried, how heavy it is and what it is all worth. Wagons tend to be heavily loaded, rarely filled although the carts can sometimes be over packed.

If you want to simulate a wagon that’s had some of its goods stolen or ruined, then it is left to you to discount line items as you see fit.

The large cart carries 200 pounds, the middle wagon/prairie schooner carries 2,000 pounds and the impressive Conestoga 12,000.

A wagon laden with riches is also likely to be well protected, but NPC guards are out of scope for this project. What I have done, though, is make sure that even silk wagons are carrying other cloth and this helps avoid putting players in contact with millions of gold worth of loot!

This random prophecy generator is inspired by the Legends & Lore carnival that the worldbuilding Enderra blog is holding. What if your PCs are rummaging around in an ancient library or transcribing glyphs in the ruined temple? Why not generate a not-so-plain-talking ancient prophecy for them?

The web visitor cometh to generate a prophecy!

Seeing in the future is one of the hardest things a GM has to do, and yet it’s not uncommon to find fantasy games with spells or magic items that give the PCs the power to do precisely that.

Then, of course, there’s the more common scenario of NPCs that claim to know the future.

The random prophecy generator might come in handy in situations like these as well. Even if the prophecy that the code spits out isn’t exactly right for your scenario, it could act as inspiration or a starting point for a crafted prophecy of your own.

If you’re more interested in Legends & Lores, then you can check back at Enderra at the end of the month for a summary of contributions from other blogs or pop over to Of Dice and Dragons who coordinate the carnival.

Last month, Geek Native was a carnival host and talked about random encounter tables.

It seems fitting to mix the two a little month with a random element to legends.

Creative Commons credit: Bad Omen by mgenccinar.

Do you have a player browsing an apothecary, picking up potions and asking “What’s this one?”

The button below will randomly generate an exotically named magic potion. It also suggests some other considerations that may add a little flavour to your game.

Random apothecary

A typical potion generator will typically randomly pick an item from a set of rules, for example, picking one of the potions from the D&D Player’s Handbook.

I created this generator for a D&D 5e-based game in which a friendly apothecary was a reoccurring character, and I wanted the names of the potions to do three things.

Firstly, the metaplot of the game world was that while it seemed pleasant and prosperous in the “civilized” kingdoms, it was actually the case that many ‘monstrous’ races suffered in secret as miners and were even farmed for alchemical parts. The names of these potions, sometimes, allude to this.

As is sometimes the case with shopping, the fancy name of the potion did not always accurately reflect the alchemical contents. This was an added complication.

Secondly, I wanted more game flavour than just calling things “Potion of Healing”. This was especially important as none of my PCs had the skill to identify one potion from another. Giving the medicines weird names meant the group had to rely on the apothecary to tell them what each item might do.

Lastly, I wanted each consumed potion to have a minor effect. There is a temporary and cosmetic unpleasantness that represented the ‘cost’ of consuming the item.

Lastly, just in case I needed to know what a randomly generated potion might do, I also added a suggestion for what the vanilla D&D 5e potion might be.

Creative Commons credit: Potion Bottles by Jeleynai.