Fitz's Roleplaying Stuff

Campaigns Old and New: These are some of the campaigns I've run (or played in) over the decades. There have been a lot of others, but these are the ones for which I've maintained campaign journals with greater or lesser dedication.; The Terran Empire This is my current campaign, revived after a long, long hiatus. The campaign journals for this game have been shifted to a Blogspot Blog for ease of updating.
Genre: Sci-fi, System: ~~Hero System~~ Basic Roleplaying; The Thursday Nighters This is information for the players in my recent AD&D campaign, plus the occasional campaign journal.
Genre: Fantasy. System: AD&D / OSRIC; High Fantasy Hero
Genre: Fantasy, System: Hero System; The Gaean Reach
Genre: Sci-fi/Space Opera, System: Star Hero; The Despicable Doktor DePravo
Genre: Pulp PBEM, System: Hero System; Sir Fnord's (fragmentary) Diary — bits transcribed from very incomplete handwritten notes, probably of interest to nobody but me.

My World: Here are the maps of the game world I've been using for fantasy roleplaying for many, many years. The first maps were drawn up about 1982, but I've prettified them considerably since then. The page (linked to above) shows small scale maps, but there are links to considerably larger and more detailed JPG and PDF files.; Random Name Generators — For the major human, dwarvish and elvish groupings in the explored (mostly northern) regions of my campaign world.; Miscellaneous Maps — This is where I put scans of various old dungeons, cave complexes, islands, towns and so forth. I usually write a few instructions to myself on my maps, but apart from those few pieces of information, these maps aren't keyed.; How to find the area of a hex — a Simple Explanation suited to the Meanest understanding, by a Learned Gentleman.

Basic Roleplaying

Chaosium have recently released their excellent Basic Roleplaying system under the ORC licence, opening it up for the world to use. The official ORC document PDF can be had here.

I have made a stab at reformatting the document to A5 page size in LibreOffice, and I've split it into three sections to make handling it a bit more manageable.

Eventually I'll get around to printing and binding them, but for the moment they're just ethereal strings of data.

There's also a single-volume PDF of Everything available; it's a tad over 8MB.

If you feel a burning need to reformat the whole shebang to suit yourself, there's a zip file with the three fully styled A5 .ODT files here. It's about 950KB.

AD&D Stuff (Also OSRIC): OSRIC is an excellent AD&D retroclone. I've made an html page-set of it and put it here, including my own ever-changing house-rules.; AD&D character sheet (PDF, approx. 25 KB). This was my final design for an AD&D sheet. It was also the very first I laid out on the computer, just in time to stop playing AD&D.
This one is the same basic design, but updated for use in my current campaign (as of December 2016).; These are a pair of 4-page hybrid 1e/2e AD&D character sheets, designed to be printed as folded booklets — Acrobat does this automatically via its "fit to page" dialogue. Links are to 163KB PDF files.
This one is A4 (print on A3 and fold).
This one is A5 (print on A4).; AD&D Spell Book, also suitable for OD&D, B/X and the like. A4 landscape format, with spaces to record spell level, name, casting time, components, and notes on material components (or whatever you think is important to remember). At one spell per line, there's room on each page to record up to 25 spells.; AD&D DM's Character Record Sheet (PDF, 17.5KB). This is a single A4 page with tables to record the basic information for four characters. It means the DM can keep track of things like stats, saves, special abilities etc. without having to rely on memory or keep asking.; AD&D Character Generation Wheel (PDF file, 21.3KB, opens in a new tab or window) for generating characters in my fantasy game. It's a single A4 page, and instructions are included. It's pretty quick and simple, and gives players a decent range of flexibility in choosing decent characters without constantly churning out superheroes.

Swords & Wizardry Stuff: Swords & Wizardry — Fitz's Version — my house-rules and occasional campaign-relevant information.

This is a so-called "retro-clone", a rewriting and reorganisation of D&D from its earliest incarnations in 1974. There are others available (Labyrinth Lord for one) but this is my favourite of the ones I've seen so far. It's a very rules-light, free-form system, simple and easy to learn and play, and lacking the byzantine complication and restrictions introduced in successive editions of the game.

I've become quite interested in these retro-clones lately. They seem to have the potential to make roleplaying a lot more fun and a lot less work than has become the case with the gigantic, encyclopædic rulesets that have become fashionable in recent years.; Character Generation Wheel (PDF file, 21.3KB, opens in a new tab or window) for generating characters in my fantasy game. It's laid out with two A5 pages on A4, and instructions are included. It's pretty quick and simple, and gives players a decent range of flexibility in choosing decent characters without constantly churning out superheroes.

D&D Stuff (5th Edition and 3rd Edition)

Fitz's D&D5e House Rules. For the most part I'm reasonably happy with 5e, but there are (in my view) some pretty glaring faults, and some points that I think could be altered to better reflect my own campaign feel. This is where I'll keep and collate all those changes.

D&D 5e DM Screen (PDF, 6 pages, 263 KB). I only have the first 4 pages permanently mounted; the other two I've printed double-sided and laminated, and keep them with — but not of — the screen.

D&D 5e Character Generation Wheel (some assembly required). This PDF needs a circle of acetate or clear plastic pinned to it, to be written on with dry-erase marker. Instructions for use are printed on the sheet, along with racial characteristic adjustments. It comes in plain black and white, and fancy full colour versions.

CHARACTER SHEET DESIGNS (links open in a new tab/window)

This is a very, very simple A5 (landscape) character sheet. 38KB PDF.
D&D 5th Edition Character Sheet (Mk.1). This is a double-sided A4 sheet. It's pretty simple, but it should do the job, and it can also be printed quite legibly with both pages on the same side of the sheet, leaving the other side blank to use as a jotter.
D&D 5th Edition Character Sheet (Mk.2). This is also double-sided A4, but this one is designed to be printed and folded into an A5 tent-fold. The inner pages are just lined; write whatever you want in there.
A5 4-page booklet-fold Spell Book, to record spell level, name, casting time and components. Suitable for both any edition of the rules. Print both sides of an A4 sheet and fold down.

Converting D&D3.5 monsters to 5e on the fly, reformatted for my site from a system originally presented by jamesmanhattan on the EnWorld D&D5e forums. I've got a lot of D&D3e monster books, and James' system seems to work pretty well so that I can actually still use them.

The Size of Money in my D&D campaigns. In case it's ever actually important to know such things.

HERO System Stuff (4th & 5th Editions)
Instant Fuzion — A very simple generic RPG system from the same lineage as Hero.

FUDGE Rules: FUDGE is an excellent free RPG system by Steffan O'Sullivan, now being marketed with resource material and what-not by Grey Ghost Games. The rules themselves are available from their site (among other places) as a free download in plain ascii text. I have reformatted and massaged the ascii into html, with extensive interlinking, which make the rules much easier to navigate. The aim is to create a ruleset which can be used on a laptop; it's mostly finished, but it's still a work in progress.; FUDGE is highly user-configurable, which has enormous advantages, but it does tend to mean that the GM has to put in a lot of work initially to set it up for the style of game he or she wants to run. I haven't used it a great deal as yet, but on brief aquaintance it seems to me that it works best for short-run scenarios and pick-up games rather than for extended campaign play. However, for a one-off session or two, its ease of character generation and simple mechanics are really good.

Tabletop Models and Mapping Resources: This is a small (but growing*) collection of hex papers, mapping modules and paper models which can be downloaded, printed, cut out and assembled for use as props for tabletop gaming. The range, of course, reflects my own gaming interests, and is therefore primarily appropriate for medieval historical or fantasy gaming.
Quick Conversion Ruler — Feet to Metres, and Vice-Versa.: If you live in a civilised, rational metric country and have trouble visualising exactly what is meant when, say, a spell definition gives you a range of 225 feet, here's a simple little visual aid to let you see at a glance how many metres 225 feet actually is. It's not scientifically accurate, since I've used a very rough equivalence of 1.5m to 5', but it's good enough for roleplaying purposes.

Some of my painted minis: Here are a few of my painted wargaming and roleplaying miniature figurines. Now that I'm the proud owner of a digital camera, I'll start uploading more examples as I get around to it.

Miscellaneous Tables of Things: Tables. Of things. They're miscellaneous. So very miscellaneous.
Random Generators of Things: …that I have put together in the process of trying to teach myself a little bit about Javascript. Which, incidentally, I am finding really hard.
10,000 Random Magical Effects: These lists are taken from one of the many NetBooks of This and That floating about, this particular one derived from work by someone called Orrex, of whom I know absolutely nothing. I use them for my Wands of Wonder, a magic item for which I have an enduring fondness. Also handy if you need some Wild Magic surge effects.

Miscellaneous Resources: Character Generation Wheel (PDF file, 21.3KB) for generating characters in my fantasy game. It's laid out with two A5 pages on A4, and instructions are included. It's pretty quick and simple, and gives players a decent range of flexibility in choosing decent characters without constantly churning out superheroes.; Quick NPC Personality Profile Generation 3d6 and this table are all you need to randomly generate personality profiles for any NPC. It's fast! It's easy! It's fun for the whole family!
December 2008: My friend Morbid (David Thompson) wrote this nifty javascript implementation of the generator to semi-automate the process and avoid all that tedious dice rolling. Thanks Morbid :); How Do We Know Each Other? This is a d100 table for generating relationships between PCs on character creation, or maybe for connections between PCs and NPCs.; How Far Can You See? Simple formulae to work out the distance to the horizon depending on the observer's height and the size of the planet he or she is looking at.; Substance Weight Chart This chart details the weights of various stones, metals, woods, and miscellaneous substances. If you want to know how much a cubic metre of diamond or a cubic foot of platinum weighs, the information is right there waiting for you.

NEW! Now updated with (probably) more accurate (maybe) conversions to pounds per cubic foot!; The Salic Laws of the Franks These excerpts from the Salic Laws of the Franks might help you to figure out just how much to fine your PCs for rampaging through that small town bar and chopping the legs off half a dozen locals.; An Absolute Beginner's Guide to Roleplaying Ballistics This page is designed to give a little information about the way that ballistic objects — that is, unpowered projectiles — act. The information is geared more towards roleplaying than real life; I wouldn't try using this information to determine your next artillery barrage. However, if you want to know how high you have to throw that school bus to get it to land on Target Boy 600 metres away, and how long it will take to get there, here's the information you need.; A Child's Guide to the Undead This essay was originally written many years ago to provide some concrete information to my players about the way that undead would be handled in my campaign. I deliberately omitted any system-specific references, since it was supposed to reflect character knowledge of the subject, not player knowledge. I've added and deleted bits and pieces here and there, but hopefully it's still comprehensible and entertaining.; Not HERO or D&D related, but well worth taking a look at for its excellent design and wonderful Empire of the Petal Throne resources is Tekumel — the World of the Petal Throne