In celebration of 20 of these damn things, I'm doing a throwback to the halcyon days of 2021 and Slushpost 8.5, where I shared a bunch of links from my Firefox bookmarks. Except this time it's links I saved in my notes doc to get back to later (and, of course, rarely have.)
Many of these links are for books I haven't purchased and games I haven't played - they're included here because I thought they were interesting enough to include. You can also see where I suddenly got really invested in one particular niche for a day or two.
There's a LOT of ground to cover on this one (and I have, of course, only added more to the original doc since I started compiling this), so let's get rolling.
RPGs
Illustrated Bestiary - A Cairn bestiary by Oozejar that comes packaged with 145(!) CC-BY-SA monster illustrations.
Plight - A solo-oriented hack of Cairn
Triple-O - A player/PC emulator for running solo RPGs as the DM
Solo Gaming Sheets - Variety of character sheets and printable references.
The Creation of Wonder - Tarot game about making an masterwork, themed after the Book of Kells
Open Quest SRD - Rule-clone for Runequest under CC-BY. Putting this on my radar is dangerous.
Cthulhu Eternal - Rule-clone for Call of Cthulhu under OGL. Frothing at the mouth that it isn't CC, because that would make cross-compatibility with Open Quest so easy.
Player Emulator - An oracle / framework for simulating players for your PCs during solo play
Not one but two lists of all Mothership modules on Itch
Shakhàn - An extremely obscure RPG that seems to have been very heavily inspired by Tekumel (long prior to revelations that Barker was a Nazi). It's an interesting artifact, at the very least.
The Origin of the Monsters in Dungeons and Dragons - This is Part 10 of the series, which contains links to the other 9.
Star Viking rules - I don't know how or where I found this.
Primal Quest Essentials - Gonzo and grotty prehistory
Destroy all Dungeons! Death to all Dragons! - Play as dwarves who have escaped slavery and are working to free their fellows from the draconic overlords.
Monolith - Sci-fi Cairn hack
Universal Survey - 1-page space exploration solo game
Kal Arath - Solo hexcrawl. Cover has a dude with a sword, two moons, and an angry dinosaur.
Ars Magica Open License - A github containing a WIP project to convert all the 53 Creative Commons licensed books of 5th edition Ars Magica to markdown. Certified hero behavior.
FORGE (Fantasy Open Roleplaying Game Engine)
31 Days of Solo RPGs
Exclusion Zone Botanist
30 Days of Sci-Fi RPG tools
Mountain Resonance - Mothership rules applied to mountain climbing.
The Land of Zurth: An Antarctic Hexcrawl
Tales From the Gods by Axo Stories - Myth-building solo game based on Thousand Year Old Vampire
Resources
Periapsis - Solar system generator
Delta Green Scenario Workbook - perfect pairing with the Shotgun Scenario Generator
Map of Pandemos - A public domain (!!!!) fantasy world map based on the geography of Venus. Krita file is included.
20 CC0 Planets
13 Engraved Textures - Free for commercial & noncommercial use
K.M. Alexander's Public Domain Fantasy Map Brushes - All pulled out of historical maps from around the world.
Pixel Art Portrait Generator - Good for both commercial and free projects
Strangers vol 1 - Some very good No I'm Not a Human style folks. CC-BY 4.0
Ombremonde Landscape Illustrations - CC0 public domain
Forever Open Source Jam 2023, 2024, 2025 - All entries had to be based on and released under open licenses, and the hub pages have pretty sizable resource lists.
とり夫's Javardy art - So this guy, Birdman (I'm fairly certain that's the transliteration of his name), made a bunch of character and monster art for a Java version of Wizardry and then just released it for free for anyone to use. There are a few monsters that can't be used in commercial products, but beside that it's all free as a bird. There are multiple games on Steam already using it, and for good reason: high-quality stock art is a precious thing.
Yogwiki - The old Yog-Sothoth.com wiki, recovered and rehosted by the Ethulhu Eternal folks. It's a fun artifact of a specific scene in an earlier age, where citation policies were lax and crossovers were plentiful.
QGIS - A robust FOSS map-making program
World Orogen - Another procedural planet generator
Root Ring - The hot new way to share your RPG blog. Still need to figure out how to use it.
Free Libre, and Open Works - A database containing what it says on the tin. Solid RPG selection, even with the link rot.
100 Sci-fi RPG faces - CC-BY 4.0
Scripts, Ciphers, Fonts
Project Astra - A script based on Gallifreyan, but more directly about drawing solar systems.
Atlas of Endangered Alphabets - A database of real-world minority scripts.
Tumani script - One of the many scripts for Trent Pehrson's conlang Idrani; the original link I had is dead, and the website itself seems to still be under renovation (only the homepage and about page have anything at the moment) but Internet Archive has my back on this one.
Ka’atsia - A gratis script by u/Zhestasi
Karmakhaz - As above
Bradley DJR (font) - A blackletter font that I really like the look of, but it is also you get what you pay for ($24 of font, specifically)
Vniversall Alphabet (Omniglot) - An attempt by one Thomas Harriot in the 1580s to make a script that could be used to write Carolina Algonquian. I think it's easily one of the worst scripts I have ever seen, so it gets a slot.
Hedhgadē (Omniglot) - A script for PIE which is neat. Appropriately antique, like it's writing from before this whole literacy thing was figured out.
Kryptonian - Straight from the Silver Age of comics.
Life Day AF (font) - The font for the Star Wars Holiday Special is cooler than you'd expect.
1999 Language (Warframe) - Warframe's got a handful of fun scripts, this is the newest of the bunch.
Bodigari (Omniglot)
Scrollex (Omniglot)
Maps
High Frontier Mission Planner and Reference Map - Indispensable tools if you want to play 60 Years in Space
Updated Map of the Hyborean World
Terraformed Venus with realistic climates
Most Detailed Star Wars Legends Galaxy Map Ever
Upscaled Map of the Star Wars Galaxy (Disney Canon)
Expanded Game of Thrones world map
Using Azgaar's Map Generator to make a space map
Deciphering the Hashihara Castle Town Map: The Imaginary Town of Motoori Norinaga - An analysis and reconstruction of a fictional town Norinaga mapped when he was 19.
National Geographic map of Cretaceous-era North America
Spec Evo
Specualtive Evolution Seed World Generator
Future Evolution Generator
Your seeded neighborhood challenge
More Future Evolution in Japan
Man’s Natural Predator - This one's incredible, definitely worth porting into a game.
Speculative evolution of R’lyeh
Some immaculate weird little guys
Blogposts
Using Punnett Squares for Monster Design
100 Twisted Settings for Mothership
Mothership Last Marches Open Table Extraction
Stranger Stars #01: Putting Canon Back into the Anti-Canon
How I Ran Gradient Descent as a Black Box
Alternate History of the Space Age 1.0
Against Metroidbrania: A Landscape of Knowledge Games
Conan and the Little People - An eye-opening read of how tropes get built up.
Sword and Sorcery Ethnonym Generator
Bludgeoning, Piercing, Slashing - An analysis of damage resistances across monster types in 5e.
The Many Mysteries of Darwin IV, Part 1 - Exegesis of one of my favorite books / specumentaries.
Har Deshur - A harder-science version of the pulp fiction solar system.
Everything you can do with your stats
Fiction
"Why one small American town won’t stop stoning its residents to death”
Ex Libris Miskatonici - A sobering reminder of how easily works are lost.
Tloque Nahuaque
The Faraway Bride (Standard Ebooks)
The Shaman, the Outsider, and the Diet of Worms - Interactive fiction via fake wikipedia article about a book that doesn't exist. I should learn how to do this...
Naomi Erlich - Second verse, same as the first.
Art
The Lunar Deity Grappling with the Storm - In-universe fantasy art like this is so woefully underutilized (outside of Runescape, it seems).
Vampire hunter but make it classical - The note from the artist specifies that she's a hunter of lamias and their kin, which feels like an immensely underused bit of the fantasy milieu: monsters that target infants and newborns are basically universal in world folklore (because, you know, mortality rates) but despite being in basically every edition of D&D they just don't have a presence in the genre imaginary.
Dwarven cleric character art - As your friend and mine Johnny Bravo would say: "Whoa momma!"
72 Disco Elysium Custom Skills
Music
Dorohedoro original soundtrack reissue
Videos
Elephants react to digeridoo - Guaranteed to make your day better. We don't deserve elephants.
Street Fighter 3rd Strike Tribute - Have you ever considered that video games are good, actually.
Remember. A SIGNALIS Fan Animation - Spoilers, naturally.
Making My Own Hominids - Stone age spec evo
You've Been Lied To About Cavewomen - Stone age not-spec evo
The Art Journal Of A Lunatic Trapped On Myst Island
Ancient Americas: Forgotten Crops - Ancient Americas is a relatively recent addition to my Youtube rounds, and long overdue.
Video Games
Cypher - A language game
Lekta - A different language puzzle game
Infra Arcana - A Lovecraft country classical roguelike
Memes, Jokes, Gags and Sensible Chuckles
The SCP Wiki's place in the Delta Green universe
What your preferred phonetic values for the three PIE laryngeals says about you
Miscellaneous
Seedship - A browser game where you play as the AI overseer of a likely-doomed colony ship.
British Library Acquires Five Rare Medieval Manuscripts
We Never Burned Witches. We Burned Slaves - Fred Clark does it again
Death Generator - Quick and easy way to mock up famous video game screens with custom text
Talmudifier - LATEX package that formats a document like the Talmud. Won't say I'm not tempted.
Spotify Playlist Analyzer & Exporter - In case you, like me, ever want a CSV of all the hundreds of songs in your one playlist.
Forvo - Pronunciation dictionary for a wide variety of world languages.
Malazan Mad Libs - I swear I'll fill this out feventually.
A guide to the lore of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
There Should be More Books Like Mass Effect
Firefox udm14 - An extension for Firefox that adds the AI overview-killing string to the end of all your searches. Hope it still works.
R'lyehian orthography and phonology - Putting my feeble attempts to absolute shame, this is some seriously impressive work of turning some meaningless kyeboard smashes into a coherent system. It is almost made by someone with the username weedmaster6669, who is the current title holder for the platonic ideal of internet handle. See also the variant made by triste_0nion here and here
Relativity and FTL Travel: special provisions
An interview with Leigh Brackett
What are your favorite scifi books that are in the public domain
Compostband monster descriptions - In case you need a LOT of monsters
Star Trek Planet Classification Guide
Mo - Tibetan Divenation System
What the Caves are Trying to Tell Us
Estevanico: The African Explorer Who Crossed North America
Worst part of these posts is having to double check all the links work.
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