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The Lost Archives
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The Servants of the Scrolls busy themselves with the daily chore of keeping the lost archives alive. Here they gather all the odds and ends, the useful extras, and the bonus bits that are the essays, user contributed lists, free utilities, roleplaying humour and more. Explore the shelves below. Enjoy yourself... but don't get lost.
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User contribued lists |
Music for Roleplaying
Music playing in the background is a great way to add more flavour to a roleplaying session. The GM can turn the music down so it’s almost inaudible or crank up the volume suddenly to make players jump or mark the start of an important action scene. What about giving reoccurring NPCs their own musical theme? Your players might start to cower whenever the evil Warlord’s music is played. The bad news is that finding that perfect piece of music for your game or character can be very hard. The good news is that the Wyrdlings have been compiling a list of their suggestions in a searchable database. Why not check out the suggestions, read the notes or even make a few recommendations of your own?
Clichéd Character Concepts
For one reason or another White Wolf's Word of Darkness continues to be one of the most popular choices for the online text roleplaying games that are MUSH and MUX. Over the years some concepts have been done to death. In fact, they've been done to death, poorly resurrected and then done to death all over again. Some character concepts are just so clichéd that a Barbarian called Conan would wince. Other character concepts were just cheese to begin with. Now, after too long, here's your chance tie down these crappy clichés and vote for the worse ones. Enjoy.
Famous Last Words
Sometimes struggling heroes are more famous for the very last things they said than all of their brave feats put together. Where you a “Trap? What trap?” or did you have time to ask, “Master, how do you unsummon a daemon lord?” before the trouble really started. There’s a very good reason why not many successful Rangers advise, “Oh don't worry. The poisonous ones have orange stripes." Vote for your favourite or add your own.
You Know Your GM's Evil When...
There's a breed of Games Master (Dungeon Master, Storyteller, etc) out there who thrive on being big meanies and on terrorising their players. You might be one. Evil Games Masters like to keep their players on their toes, tormenting them with cunning traps, wicked villians and devilish plot twists. It's important to realise as quickly as possible that the game is being run by an Evil GM, only when you know what you're dealing with can you introduce a suitable amount of paranoia. GameWyrd users have collected a list of clues that'll help you spot an Evil GM.
Wyrd 404 Errors
You've seen the dreaded 404 error: File Not Found. Take heart! Not even the vile 404 is safe from the GameWyrd touch. Here you can add your own custom designed Wyrd 404 error messages and vote for other Wyrdling's efforts!
Ride the Riddles
If you're a busy GM then get straight to the list of ranked riddles and their answers. If you're up for a challenge then ride the riddles one by one and see how many answers you get right.
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Resources
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Latin spell names
It's a sad thing when the mystery and thrill of magic in a game becomes tiresome and mundane. It can also be embarrassing to have a powerful mage shriek out a worried "Protection from arrows!". GameWyrd has a working list of Dungeons and Dragons spell names that have been translated into Latin. The arcane touch lets you add a bit of flare to your game or character. "Cingi Aversabilis Sagittae" does sound more magical than frantically complaining about those pesky arrows. Of course, there’s a lot more to spellcasting than just the name of the spell.
Random Name Generator
Gwor darn it! Fed up of scratching your head while you try and think up yet another character name? Perhaps your GM who has a party of players who are prone to stopping and talking to each and every NPC they meet? On the other hand you might be a player who just needs a suggestion or two to come up with a truly great name for your next character. GameWyrd’s name generator lets you pick a suitable style for the sort of name you have in mind and then lets you randomly produce hundreds of variations.
Keyboard Runes
The following rune language was devised for the Shifter Sphere on a MUSH. The language had been lost to the local Ratkin but the plot plan was to allow them to rediscover it and because of that the runes were "coded" to be fairly easy to crack. The design was simple; two symbols each composed of no more than two straight lines formed the language. The idea was that this design would reflect claw marks on stone and wood and would be actually be possible to draw using standard keyboard characters.
Calendar Maker
The calendar maker is designed to help you quickly throw together a calendar for your game world. The system is plugged into GameWyrd's random name generator to increase it's scope. You can also use the generator to watch for when a full moon is due to occur and you can do this for up to five different moons. Multiple full moons? Scary. Once you're done you can print the whole thing out.
Game Search Box
Adding a search box to your website is a free and easy way to improve your content. You're giving your users the ability to search for their favourite games and this will encourage them to remember your site and come back more often. There's more; any visitors that subscribe to GameWyrd as a result of using the search box are counted as allies from your website in just the same way they would be if they'd clicked on a GameWyrd banner on your site. Want more? Okay. If your website's part of the Cyber Nexus then any incoming hits from it count as referrals and will put your site on GameWyrd's front page.
Random wallpaper
Wizards of the Coast released three tempting wallpaper images for Monster Manual II at the start of August 2002. You can find them here. They each come in three different sizes and picking the right size for your screen is easy. The tricky part is working out whether you want the Death Knight/Undead wallpaper, the Loxo/Crimson Death wallpaper or the Deathbringer wallpaper. (No prizes for spotting the death theme). The script below is designed so that Window users don’t have to pick! Why not have your computer pick a random one each time you start your computer?
RPG news ticker wallpaper
Do fancy having up to date and even breaking roleplaying industry news on your computer’s desktop? Watch as the latest headlines scroll passed and be able to click on those ones that interest you and have the full story load into your internet browser? Perhaps you just want a cool looking desktop wallpaper? Check this out.
Cleromancy
Cleromancy is the ancient divination method of throwing dice, casting lots or small objects. The precursors to dice were astragali. Astragali were commonly carved from sheep or goat knuckle bones and were four sided. Greek dice were sometimes rudimentary modelled on the human form and had labels one through six on important parts of the body. In the Roman pantheon Mercury was the patron of the dice-throwers and has been depicted using a set of five four sided dice or three six sided dice to predict the future.
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Essays |
Banner Buggers
Don't be a banner bugger; people will hate you. This essay offers up some tips and tricks on how to get the most out of a banner exchange. It also looks at the temptations and misuse of these exchanges which if you succumb to will end up ruining your site's reputation and your standing in the RPG community.
So, you’re thinking about starting a RPG site?
You've got an idea for a website? You want to join the online RPG community. There are all these ideas running wild in your head and you'd like to move them to the internet. This essay aims to provide some tips and tricks to get you started.
Find Time For Time
A short essay on the importance of keeping track of the days, weeks and months in your game. Use the calendar to hook the history and mythology of the world to the current time.
The Friendly Face of Fear
People like to be scared. Roller coasters would be a multi-million dollar waste of engineering excellence if that weren’t true. People like to go watch horror movies and authors like Stephen King and Dean Koontz sell their books by hundreds of thousands.
The chances are that your players could do with a good scare to. It’s the exhalation of the unknown that inspires many players into action and it’s the satisfaction of coming out trumps despite the odds that energises many other players. Therein lies the rub; in comparison to making the audience jump when the digitally enhanced monster suddenly lurches into sight it can be frightfully hard to scare confidant players who know what they’re doing.
PDF RPG? Huh?
You might well have noticed a different sort of RPG web site or even a different sort of publication for roleplaying games that are becoming more and more common these days. Perhaps you clicked on an interesting look banner or a hyperlink reference to a game that sounded interesting and found yourself on a site that invited you to download the latest .pdf. I know I have. This short essay has been written the intention of explaining what is going on and then continues to take you through an example of a purchase at the e-mall RPGnow.com.
Conpulsion 2003
The Wyrdmaster's report on Edinburgh's RPG convention: Conpulsion 2003.
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Humour |
Cthulhu Spring Cleaning?
Cthulhu sleeps in his watery kingdom, the great city of R'lyeth. The alien god's dreams reach out across time and space, warping the mind of everyone they touch. Now and then the Great Old One tosses out a scrap of unwanted flesh for mankind to find. This an actual newspaper report of such a discovery.
The Newbie and the Ranger
A Ranger struggles to describe his character class to a newbie with a lot of awkward questions. Is a ranger just a fighter with some magic or a wizard with some combat skills?
Your Monster Name!
Oh come on, you have to know your hidden monster name. What if someone asks and you can’t answer? It’ll be terribly embarrassing! Help it at hand. Here at GameWyrd we've constructed arcane and powerful rituals that'll transform your name into a monster name. Are you an Orc? Are you an Ankheg, deary me, perhaps you're a Succubus!
How Stupid Do You Think I Am?
Are those adventurers who answer those Help Wanted signs on notice boards all across fantasy continents the sort of suckers who’d fall for spam email in the 21st century? You decide.
Cool... Not Cool
A wise man once said that for everything cool in gaming... there was the dread Not Cool!
Sapphire College for Elf Maidens
In August 2003 Wizards of the Coast introduced strict new quality standards for the use of the d20 logo. ... And how we mock them!
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