Role Playing Content Generator/Inspiration Tool
Community Forums/Showcase/Role Playing Content Generator/Inspiration Tool
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| Hi folks, I've decided on one of my projects for the next 6 months. It is a web based tool for generating imaginative content for fantasy role playing adventures. The general flow is this: Page loads a random set of data including: 3 pictures - hand drawn by me - of a character, location and event. 3 paragraphs of text relevant to the pictures chosen at random. The purpose of the page is as a tool for role playing game masters and potentially anyone wanting a bit of creative input to provide a setting, an event and a character relevant to those components. The basic mockup of the page looks a little like this:  |
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| What makes it different to existing tools/ char creators? Why should others prefer your tool? Is there much desire for these kind of tool? Answer this for yourself before diving into dev for months. Just want to avoid that you spend months and at the end you get sad/angry for nobody being interested in it. Bye Ron |
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| Thanks Derron. |
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| I think this sort of thing is great, but tabletop RPGers are no so many as new players, I think you should expand it, as it is you just may aswell draw 3 random cards, if you added a choice maybe, like I'm feeling lucky, or I am in a questioning mood, or I want to have fun. and then the display could be random but based on a few choices. I think an undressed figure, where you add cloaths and equipment could be a good part of this, so you can see an rpg character, you could draw bits of the cloaths and mix and match by just layering them on. it would be fun to draw this too. it could also effect your events and location etc... this I think would make it more interesting, and more enjoyable to draw the stuff |
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| Here's a sampling with a tiny number of pictures so far...drawn by me last night (aiming for 150 pictures, have 10 currently.....) http://www.mattiesgames.com/rpg/ |
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| Maybe aim for a constant "rectangle/area" of the pictures (so same dimension for all). If you create a good looking "frame" for the pictures - you might consider overlaying the pencil drawings - so it looks as it was drawn on old paper (paper scrolls ?!) or on wooden panels. For wooden panels you could manipulate the image with a "scratch-overlay" (which "deletes" pixels where the scratches are). Maybe you could create a "crayon look" with it (or charcoal). That way you wont need to invest so much into the drawings but could sketch out a bigger mass of pictures. locations: - swamp - old/burned down church - witch house (in the fairy tales of my youth - think it were some Russian ones - the witch houses stand on a single big chicken leg ;-)) - graveyard - old burned down castle - abbey / cloister - forest - cave - tent camp in the wilderness - hell characters: - butcher, bakerman (sweets for the children :-)), miller (ouch... that's no wheat in the bags) - fallen/former priest (nope, that was not "god" you praised) - ranger - scout - barbarian - dragon tamer - black widow (forwhatever reason she wears that black clothes and the veil forever) - swamp monster - undead knight - amor/weapon smith (muscles and that leather-blanket/skirt) - miner (used to use his picking axe for everything softer than the metal it is made from) ... Sorry if you already have your brain full of ideas, just wanted to assist a bit - so feel free to ignore them. bye Ron |
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| No they're good Derron - I'm more than happy to accept additional ideas....I've got a list of about 150 items so far to be drawn, I will sketch them quite quickly with a rough appearance similar to what is already there - your items are good i'll email them to myself and add them to the list...take it to about 170 items (I have some of yours already).... I will look into filtering the pencil drawings through some kind of automated filter once I have them all - or perhaps put a frame around them or something.... It's good - happy to accept more ideas, the more the better....I think you get the idea from what I've done so far which is great.... I drew 10 pictures last night in about 4 hours...I think I could probably pump out that amount of rough sketches regularly...probably about 3-4 times a week meaning I'll be able to create about 200 pictures in a little over a month probably... |
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Images I already have are these....only 10...but will keep adding to them every night after work (or most nights:)          |
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| Matty, do you want to be doing the drawing, if you enjoy it that's great, but you could take snaps and filter them into pencil drawings, I don't want to put you off drawing I bought a surface pro for the pen drawing feature. your drawings have a nice style already, I would change the refresh button as it says to me reload the current web page, and refresh dosnt suit the app, I would put maybe "moveon" can you make them into moving pictures like gifs? that may be a good idea to try, I know your already on a path, its just an idea. |
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| @Mainsworthy - yes I enjoy doing the drawing, I'm also doing it as practice for my drawing skill improvement, yes...will change refresh to something like 'new random stuff' or similar... Nahh..animation will add far too much effort for this....I'm hoping to draw 150-200 images and to animate each of them would be far, far too much work. |
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| Learn about what tablets and digital painting can do. Get some books on photoshop and learn about cutting images up, re colouring, layered and blend modes. Use filters to add or subtract parts of the images. Here's a 10 minuter mash doing what Mainsworthy suggests and repainting and cutting/layers the results.  do a pic. rotate it 180 so it is upside down. Now color it. This will give you a different thought process ;) |
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| that's a great idea Adam, not much work to achive it. |
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