Aid to DMing Laziness

 

There aren't any random encounter tables in the AD&D2e core books, as there once were in, for example, the AD&D1e Monster Manual II.

However somebody, and I don't know who that somebody is, put together a whole bunch of tables from a whole bunch of AD&D2e sources:

• Monstrous Manual
• Forgotten Realms Appendix
• Fiend Folio Appendix
• Monstrous Compendiums, volumes 1-4

I think, though I don't remember for sure, that I grabbed the PDF via Dragonsfoot*. But maybe somewhere else; I don't know.

 The main issue with this excellent piece of work is that it included no Table of Contents, or page numbers, so a bit of page-flipping was necessary to find anything.

I laboriously copied and pasted the whole thing, column by column, from the PDF into LibreOffice, and applied styles to everything so that a ToC could be generated. 

Then I printed it in 16-page signatures, stitched it together, and gave it a simple wraparound card cover, itself covered in my home-made book-cloth. In the process, I gave it a classy ribbon bookmark and a cover graphic I whipped up in CorelDraw, printed and laminated, and glued to the front.

'Tis a small thing, but mine own. Sort of. 

 

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* I did get it from Dragonsfoot. From here, in fact: https://www.dragonsfoot.org/php4/archive.php?sectioninit=SE&fileid=400

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steampunk in GURPS-ish Style

 

Quite a few years ago, I printed a PDF of GURPS Steampunk, as I had some idea about running a late Victorian 1890s campaign involving an alien invasion, weird scientification, and the rescue of Queen Victoria. I did run that campaign, but I used the Hero System, not GURPS.

Until now, that printout has just been sitting in a rather bulky plastic sheet display book, and since I have the capability, I thought I might as well turn it into a proper book.

The bookcloth is some stuff that I made a few days ago; some printed cotton impregnated with a paste/acrylic medium mix. It works pretty well.

I used Affinity Photo to cobble together a vaguely Steampunky illustration for the front cover, using bits and pieces snarfed off the internet. I laminated the result and glued it in place, along with a spine title cartouche.

I used a retro poster on heavyish matte paper for the endpapers. The illustrations have nothing whatever to do with the book's subject matter, but they're bold and colourful, which is mainly what I wanted.

The pages were edge-glued in a double-fan, but I also drilled and cross-stitched the spine for extra strength. That means the book will never lay completely flat, but since I'll probably never be using it as a reference book at the games table, I don't care too much about that.

It doesn't show in this photo, but the original printout was single-sided, so each printed spread is followed by a blank one. That means that the book is twice as thick as it really needs to be. I suppose I could have reprinted it double-sided, but I really couldn't be bothered.

The cover boards have an issue: the piece of 2mm grey board that I cut them from had its grain running the wrong way. That means that with all the moisture from the gluing, they bow horizontally instead of vertically, making the book look distinctly tubby.

The condition has been somewhat ameliorated as it dries properly, and with ruthless pressing, but it will never be permanently 100% flat — it's likely to show itself again with changes in ambient humidity. However, since it's unlikely to spend very much time out of the bookshelf, I doubt that it's going to be a major problem.

Renewal

 

Many, many years ago, about the turn of the century, I dismantled a couple of RPG sourcebooks because I thought it would be a good idea to put them in a 3-ring binder. Sheer madness.

Anyway, zoom forward to the present and I have rescued them and re-bound them. Their covers are somewhat more restrained than they used to be, and also they're now hardbacks instead of the softcovers they once were.

I thought I'd lost them, maybe loaned them to somebody and never got them back, and since I wanted to use them for an upcoming BRP space opera campaign, I ordered replacements from Hero Games' webstore, where they have them for cheap — twenty yankeebucks for the pair of them (PoD plus PDF), and about the same for postage. Naturally, the instant I ordered those, I found the originals.

So now I'll have two copies of each. Hey-ho.

M-Space Binding

 

Because I wasn't expecting my copy of M-Space to arrive for a while yet, and because I'm starting a space opera campaign fairly shortly, for which I wanted to use the rules, I printed a copy from the PDF and bound it.

Because of the unusual format of the layout, the finished book, when the signatures are printed on my A4 laser printer, is only about 148mm square. I've found it to be an unexpectedly comfortable size for a RPG book — it takes up very little room, and doesn't get in the way on the table, while still being pretty readable. The page count could have been dropped quite a bit with a traditional page dimension I think (and by leaving out the huge black toner-eating full-page illustrations that I think are there mainly for padding) but the 240 pages of this one are a manageable size.

I just used the heavy brown manila paper from supermarket bags for the covering, over 1mm grey board (2mm would have been better). I screwed up the paper first and then ironed it out flat again, to get the crumpled surface texture — I think that if I'd also given it an acrylic glaze over the top it would probably look quite leathery. Maybe I'll try that another time.

The rather light 1mm grey board warped quite a bit under glueing. I'll just live with that I think.

The actual publisher's copy arrived unexpectedly early, so I have that now, but this one will be very handy I think, for slipping into a bag or pocket.

Binding BRP

 

More adventures in bookbinding.

Some time ago I got a copy of Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying when the PDF was on sale at DriveThreRPG for 99c.

I printed it full-size and bound it in a fan-glue binding (the green one). The BRP Quick-Start rules were free, so I did them too (the floral cover, on the left). Both of those bindings have been around for a year or so, and since then I've also bought a PoD paperback edition of the rules.

Recently I thought I'd like a copy in a more compact form, so I printed the Big Yellow Book in A5 signatures, and stitched and bound it into a Little Big Crimson Yellow Book, on the right.

Now Chaosium have released a shiny new edition of BRP, with an editable RTF text block available under the ORC. However, even without any illustrations, and with all the text at 10pt, an A5 production of that comes to somewhere around 700-800 pages, so it might be a while before I get up the gumption to lay that all out and print it in signatures.

More Bookbinding Shenanigans

 

I've been experimenting with cloth-binding a book I put together recently, printed from Chaosium's 99 cent DTRPG PDF of their Basic Roleplaying book.

A couple of significant issues in cloth-binding are keeping the cloth stable while it's being glued (i.e. not distorting or stretching the weave) and preventing glue from oozing through it.

This stuff, Heat-n-Bond UltraHold provides an easy fix for both those issues. It's an iron-on adhesive film, which can be ironed on to the fabric, and then with its backing sheet removed, the fabric is ironed on to a paper backing — I just used some brown paper I had lying around.

The paper keeps the fabric stable, and provides a good gluing surface. It also stiffens the fabric, making it easy to trim and fold into place.

I've used an offcut of batik-patterned cotton for this one. Linen would be better, but this should serve the purpose for as long as I'm around.

Now, if I could just find the patterned paper I was going to use for endpapers. It must be around here somewhere.

Later on...

I didn't find the paper I had planned to use for the endpapers, so I went and got some other paper, which looks fine I think.

Regrettably, I didn't think ahead when I was gluing and sewing up the text block. I should have added an extra blank page front and back for the endpapers to glue to. In the end I just glued them into the inside covers. Maybe next time I'll remember.