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Downloads
GAMING AIDS
Polyhedral Dice Colocator. New players often can't identify polyhedral dice. Simplify their gaming experience with this dice caddy Download the Colocator (31 KB, GIF format).
Instructions for use are printed on the image in the upper right corner. Once you download it, print it "Fit to page" in Landscape/Horizontal mode (the graphic applications listed next are all capable of doing this).
GAMING AIDS ELSEWHERE
- Fiery Dragon productions offers free hex and graph paper. Click Downloads and Links.
- Fictional Reality is free Gaming Magazine available in PDF format. You can check it out at http://fictionalreality.dfxwebs.com/.
- Paper and Cardboard Gaming Miniatures and Models.
- Free, downloadable paper dice. (Well, somebody had to do it... and these are numbered. If you just want the shapes, try Platonic Solid Fold-up Patterns)
- Windows, Mac and Linux electronic utilities. From character generators to die rollers to tools that calculate how far you can jump, there's a load here. Now if someone would write a calculator to determine how long a bag of chips will last based on the number of players...
- DungeonFXAdd Sound Effects to your gaming sessions - beta for windows, but still pretty cool.
- A Ton of Links to a ton of cool sites
TIP: These are just the (unusual) tip of the iceberg. Go to your favorite search engine and type in "d20 free pdf" and you'll be amazed at the free adventures, monsters, prestige classes, and more that you can find.
GIF PRINTING AND VIEWING
I recommend come freeware/shareware apps to help you best view and print the map (and colocator, above). Here are those links:
- Windows Users: Irfanview (freeware) is at http://www.irfanview.com and there is GIMP (GPL'd) for Windows, too http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32//. If you use Irfan View: when you print, make sure you configure your printer for a landscape print job (File -> Print -> Properties Button -> Features Tab -> and click the Landscape radio button in the Orientation box then click OK twice). The next dialog box you should select the Best Fit to Page under image size and Center image on Page under Miscellaneous then print. Paintshop Pro, Neopaint for Windows, and Lview Pro (all shareware) also have the required printing features.
- Mac Users: Graphic Converter (shareware) can be obtained at http://www.download.com. Graphic Converter version 2.8 works on OS 8 and version 4.2 works on OS X. (Optional: Under the File Menu, choose Preferences. Select General and Print tabs and set margins to 0.30 inches; click OK). Open the GIF. Select Print Setup, click on the horizontal icon and click OK. When you choose Print from the File menu, click Enlarge/Reduce Area to Fit Page. Click on Print in the dialogue window. Do not adjust the resolution or depth. This should work with a StyleWriter II. There's also MacGIMP for OS X (Gnu Image Manipulation Program for the Mac; the GIMP is GPL'd) www.macgimp.org
- Linux Users: You probably already have the GIMP (GPL'd) http://www.gimp.org, but here's AhraPaint (GPL'd) http://www.arahne.si/. Regardless which app you use, set it for landscape/horizontal printing and make sure the program is set to fit to page. Using GIMP version 1.04: Open the image using the File menu and choose Open. Select the image and press the OK button. Once the image loads (and my Pentium 166 with 32 MB ram and trident 9660 <2 MB video card> did load it), right click the image. Choose File. Choose Print. Media Size should be letter. Orientation = Landscape. On Scaling I click the PPI (Pixels Per Inch) radio button and then adjust the Scaling Slider to make it fit (Note: unless there's been an update, you can scale down, but this will not crop an image). There is much more info at http://manual.gimp.org/. (Mac and Windows users savy enough to read this far: I recommend the applications listed above because these instructions are for the Linux version of GIMP. The Print functions in the Windows Version of GIMP 1.2 lack the scaling feature (that I can find); Mac users, I suspect your OS will have its own printing routines).
PDF READER
If you need a free PDF reader, click the box; for Mac, Linux, Windows, Pocket PC, Handhelds, etc.
Linux Users: If you don't have Acrobat Reader, please download it; Ghostview is nice, but the fonts looked much cleaner after I installed Acrobat 4.05 on my Linux Box (just remember to run ./INSTALL from a shell prompt and not from within XWindows...Adobe wants you to read the license agreement).
ZIP ARCHIVE UTILITIES
- Windows Users: Info-Zip is free http://www.info-zip.org/pub/infozip/ and offers the source code if you're into code.
7zip is also free and has a nice interface. Commercially there is Winzip and PowerArchiver
- Mac Users: Dirk Haase has a free port of Info-Zip http://www.haase-online.de/dirk/maczip/. Commercially, there is http://www.maczipit.com/. Additionally you might check out http://www.umich.edu/~archive/mac/util/compression/
- Linux Users: if you have KDE, ark is a good archiving tool (My linux box has version 0.5 and a single click on a zip file launches ark to open the archive). If you don't use KDE or want something different, go to rmpfind http://rpmfind.net/ and search for "zip archive"; I found 93 matches.
OTHER
- Many of the graphics in my ebooks (even the wallpaper, above) are raytraced with the Persistence of Vision RayTracer. POVRay is free and works on MS-DOS, Windows 95/98 and x86 NT, Linux, Macintosh, SunOS, Unix, and Amiga. http://www.povray.org
- I primarily refer to MacFarlane's Dictionary for Gaelic, which is out of copyright and searchable at http://www.ceantar.org/Dicts/MF2/. However, MacFarlane's doesn't list duke, so I've also relied on the Faclair dictionary
http://www.sst.ph.ic.ac.uk/angus/Faclair/ and MacBains
http://www.ceantar.org/Dicts/MB2/ for the Peerage sections in Map One.
- Freeware and Shareware Rennaisance and Fantasy Fonts - some are TTF and some are Type 1
- openanebook.org offers free fiction, non-fiction, reference, children's books and educational books. The Current Fiction section has "The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries" and the Reference Section has samples of Paris and London's Rough Guides (which might help if your game takes place on Earth...
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Project Gutenberg has a plethora of free online books in text and/or html format. Their servers can be slow at times. Some of interest are:
- The Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle
- Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
- Le Mort d'Arthur Volume 2 by Thomas Malory (i.e. King Arthur)
- Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England by (Traditional)
- The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle by James Ingram
- History of England, James II> Vol. 1 by Thomas Babington Macaulay
- Beowulf, Anonymous, Translated by Gummere
- Cavalier Songs & Ballads of England by ed. Charles MacKay
- Adam Bede by George Eliot (post-Rennaissance setting, but details of life in pre-industrial England, especially a party at the local lord's manor, carpentry and farming)
Gutenberg also has a decent collection of Greek, Latin, Arabic and other texts as well, including some of Edgar Allan Poe, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, William Shakespeare and too many more to list concisely.
Slated for Feb 2004 is Celtic Literature by Matthew Arnold.

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