Saturday, December 31, 2022

Campaign Wiki and More Cool Things

 

Links to Wisdom logo
An incredible resource compiled from across the OSR Blogosphere from wayback-when to right now.



Campaign Wiki is a site that allows you to set up and maintain a wiki for your gaming needs for free. You don't need to make an account. You're not locked in. You can download and migrate your data elsewhere any time you like. Not sure if this is something that is right for you? No problem. There's a handy article on What is a Wiki? right there on the home page, along with another article that goes into the details of Why you might want to use a Wiki. Then there's a handy guide to help you get started, if this sort of thing appeals to you.

Links to Wisdom This is an OSR House Rules Wiki and it is an incredible shared resource that compiles articles, posts, and resources from across the OSR Blogosphere. As explained in the About page, this was set up to serve as a repository of blog posts and forum posts that either clarified a particular rule or proposed a House Rule, all organized around the classic B/X contents page, as a shared resource open to anyone who wishes to share a link with the community. There is a handy article provided to help make Adding Links Easy. This really is something of an OSR Hive Mind and makes for some fascinating reading.

There is also a secondary wiki for Links to Adventures and another for Cool SciFi House Rules. Both are well worth checking out.

In addition to the wikis, there are a number of Apps hosted at Campaign Wiki.
  • Gridmapper lets you draw out a dungeon map in your browser and export it when you're done so it can be used offline or whatever.
  • Textmapper lets you randomly generate a number of different types of maps based on the text you enter. This is a really nifty tool, but can quickly get a bit overwhelming. Luckily there is a handy reference that walks you through how to modify your text to get decent results. This is a really cool project. There is also a bot for Textmapper on Mastodon that posts weekly random example maps.
  • Hexdescribe is another tool that generates random Mini-Setting Booklets that can run up to hundreds of pages, all drawn from various random tables and open to your tinkering, tampering or customization. This tool compliments Textmapper above. There is also a bot version of this tool on Mastodon that posts weekly links to random Mini-Settings.
  • Face Generator is a dedicated generator for making random faces based upon the artwork submitted by participating artists. In light of the ethical debates raging around AI Art, this might be a cool project to get involved with and they are open to new contributions.
  • Name Generator is pretty much what it says on the tin; a fairly basic name generator, at least until you look at the Help document...this looks like it could be modified to produce some really interesting results.
  • Megadungeon Mapper is a generator of Megadungeon maps to be fed into Gridmapper, but it is still kind of raw and a bit clunky. Maybe with some encouragement Alex might revisit this tool?
  • There are random generators for Gems and Jewelry usable for B/X, Labyrinth Lord or AD&D. Granted these do not provide details or descriptions, but rather they essentially roll up the random values so that tediousness is taken care of, so either one could come in handy in-game.
  • Traveller Subsector Generator This tool can be integrated with Campaign Wiki for setting up a Traveller (or Cepheus Engine, possibly another SciFi RPG) campaign. It lets you roll up either a Sub-Sector or Sector, generating the UWPs. If you designate a URL each system will be linked to the appropriate page. Very handy.
  • There is a Character Sheet Generator for Halberds &  Helmets...which is Alex's own version of Classic D&D as inspired by B/X via Labyrinth Lord, and informed by many of his blog posts. There is also a Halberds & Helmets wiki and a Podcast as well! 
  • Planets are aggregators for Blogs. Indie RPG Planet is for the more modern-ish games (mostly not OSR), while Old School RPG Planet collects the majority of the OSR blogs out there. RPG Planet is a sort of free-for-all that combines the previous two and adds a bunch more blogs to the mix, and then there is the RPG Podcast Planet for, well, podcasts. Kinda self explanatory. If you are interested in Joining the effort to keep the blogosphere alive then by all means click over there and submit your blog's name and url.
  • Speaking of blogs, there is a page dedicated to the lengthy Lists of OSR/RPG Blogs various people have compiled over the years. You are bound to find something interesting if you go poking around and clicking through any of those lists.
  • There is also a very helpful Online Archive for the One Page Dungeon Contest. This archive goes back to the beginning in 2013 and has links to every submission. A real treasure trove!
Whew! That might be everything, but then Alex is a very busy guy so there might well be a few other things lurking about the Campaign Wiki site that I missed. In any case there's a ton of really cool things to play around with or explore: lots more than just wikis or the Links to Wisdom!

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