Brent P. Newhall's Blog

I’m confused.

I see a lot of articles on the RPG Bloggers Network providing game prep advice. What to think about before a session. What to write down. What to roll up.

Do GMs really have that much trouble preparing for a session?

Seriously. Do we not know how to prep? When I started GMing, I used the advice provided in my GM guide of choice, which laid out the things I’d probably need (maps, enemy stats, etc.).

So, before each game, I made sure I had mapped out any places the players were likely to visit, rolled up stats on any enemies, and figured out what I thought would happen.

Then I GMed. Oh, I’ve tweaked the formula over time—I love world creation, so I suss out lots of details—but I didn’t need to read half a dozen articles about game prep.

And I wonder if other GMs are the same way. Do we really need prep advice? Don’t we know the basics that need to be set up?

I wonder if it isn’t anxiety, stemming from a desire to control the events of the game. Perhaps GMs hope that, with the right prep, the session can go exactly the way they want it to.

Problem is, it rarely does. The story belongs to the players as much as the GM. They have the freedom to pull the story in a different direction, no matter what the GM has prepped.

So, shouldn’t we all just prep the basics, and go with the flow?

Imagine having 100 to 200 role-playing miniatures, in color. Some of them fantasy characters, some of them sci-fi characters, some horror; whatever. And imagine if they cost about 5 cents each, and you could keep them all in a box the size of a hardback book.

I came across these at the D.C. Game Day last year, and I wish I knew the name of the guy who made them. Because they’re ingenious.

First, think about standard RPG tokens, the circular ones printed on heavy card stock. You cut them out and put them on your battle mat. But they’re hard to keep track of, they fall into all sorts of cracks, they flutter and blow around at the slightest breeze, they bend and get creased. They’re a pain.

Okay, so imagine gluing them to the flat side of a washer. Hey. Now they stay put, and they don’t get lost as easily. But you’re still limited to the tokens that your representative game company puts out.

But you’re not.

Go on the web and search for webcomic art. Find some cool web comics. Some will have awesome fantasy characters, some awesome sci-fi characters, some cool monsters; find cool stuff. Drag and drop some great samples to your computer.

Now, open up your favorite image editing application. It can be MS Paint. Crop each strip to just the face of a character (in Paint, use the selection tool, press Ctrl C, then create a new image, change its attributes to 1 pixel by 1 pixel, and press Ctrl V). Save it. Continue for all the strips you’ve downloaded.

(You may not even have to do this much. Many webcomics will have a page devoted just to a list of characters, with facial images already included. Just grab those.)

You now have a bunch of head shots. Drag and drop those into a word processing document. Print it out.

Now go to your local home improvement store and buy a bunch of metal washers; I got 3/18″ washers in bags of 25. Put the washers on top of the faces in your printouts, and make sure they’re a proper size. If not, adjust.

Now you’re gonna make them look fantastic.

Toss your word processing document onto a USB stick or burn it onto a CD, and head down to a nearby office supply store or copier joint. Ask them to print the document out, in color, on nice glossy paper. They’ll show you the papers they have; choose something really nice (you’ll only be using a couple of sheets).

Now cut out the faces, and glue each one onto a separate washer, using normal glue. It’ll stick just fine (though keep an eye on them; mine tend to curl up after I first apply the glue, so I have to press them down once more).

And, boom. You now have dozens and dozens of custom NPCs.

And if you’re in the middle of a game and need a bunch of faceless antagonists, turn your tokens over. The undersides do very well as blank representations of bad guys.

Genius, isn’t it? I just wish I’d thought of it first, in a way. Not that it matters, really, now. I want everyone to know about ’em and start using them.

I’m working on a role-playing campaign setting — a whole city, ripe for adventure. I plan to publish it as one big document, complete with maps, locations, characters, etc.

I decided this setting would benefit from a few appendices that list statistics for the major antagonists, according to several popular role-playing systems. That would mean less work for gamers when they encounter that antagonist.

What systems to use? I wanted popular ones, so I chose D&D 4^th edition, D&D 3.5, and GURPS. Creating the D&D stats was easy, as there are several online character generators for that. But I couldn’t find a good character generator for GURPS.

So I made my own. I’ve posted a GURPS 4^th edition character generator, which includes the complete list of attributes, advantages, disadvantages, and skills listed in the current edition of GURPS Lite. With this, you can roll up a character for a GURPS adventure in less than a minute.

The generator uses relatively simple Javascript, allowing you to save the webpage itself locally to your own hard drive for access if you don’t always have a net connection. It generates the character sheet as a separate page in a separate window. I’ve tested it in Google Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Safari.

As always, feedback is welcome.