Yesterday Michael Curtis posted about fontcapture.com, a easy online service for creating your own handwritten fonts.

As I’ve been working on factions for my Mutant Future Mutantbox campaign, I decided that to help flavour each faction I’d design them a custom handwritten font each.

For starters I penned in a nice superior feeling font for those ever present Knights of Genetic Purity.

Custom Knights of Genetic Purity font

That can be used for a handout or two, and it’s a style that all the Knights can use, as it’s the handwriting they are taught during their training. Here’s a handout I knocked up in five minutes. A simple subtle paper background and this font are all that are involved. No torn edges today, the Knights have decent pads of fresh paper!

Letter to the College

Other factions not stolen from GammaWorld, are pinched from Carl Nash and modified a bit. I also have warring ape tribes in my underground military base megadungeon. In this case the two tribes are the Cybonobos and the Gorillaborgs. They have been at war for decades, sectioning off parts of the base between each of them. They have reached a kind of cold-war status quo, and just execute small raids on each others territory.

The Cybonobo chimps scribble warnings on the walls with mixtures the nearest bodily fluids. Their style is somewhat childish and underdeveloped, apologies to my daughter but for this I’ve scanned her handwritting.

Cybonobo scrawlings

The Gorillaborgs on the other happen to be in a section of the base where the gaffa tape is stored so they write their warning signs by taping letters to the walls.

Gaffa tape, ever handy stuff.

If anyone wants a copy of the font files just leave me a comment.

Comments: 2 comments

Tags: Handout, Mutant Future, Photoshop Tips, Resource

Today I didn’t finish my map in my break. Firstly because I plan for it to be rather large, and secondly because I’m learning new techniques.

This is a map for a megadungeon in my Mutant Future game. I’m trying to simulate here the kind of visitor floorplan you see in hospitals or universities. I did search around on the net as Carl Nash suggested and didn’t find any plans online I liked, so I decided to go for it. Here’s the first three floors.

Mutant Future Megadungeon

Continue reading…

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Tags: Cartography, Map, Mutant Future, World Building

Today an example of how a hurried handout can generate plot hooks and choices for your players. A handout such as the one below need not take more than a couple of minutes to create. Most of the time goes into the content. See my previous post for a tutorial on parchment making.

Not at all subtle I know!

If you quickly make a good looking handout then players take it more seriously, even though you may have only spent a couple of minutes on it. When writing this letter I had not planned out in detail what might happen if the players chose various paths, it’s fun first to watch your players decide what they are going to do with the information.

In the case of this letter, the players had discovered it in a sword-case that they were supposed to deliver to an obviously fake name in the next port.

Some players wanted to ignore it and not deliver it, or warn the Mayor of Copperbottom. Others wanted to do the job themselves and claim the 2000gp. After postulating faking the assassination and claiming the cash, they for some reason decided they’d deliver it and see who collected it.

So they sat and waited and tailed the woman who collected the sword-case, she came to the docks and asked around for any ships heading for Copperbottom. So in the end they offered her a lift! Because they could make some money out of it!

When they got to Copperbottom they did warn the Mayor, but did nothing about stopping the assassin. Which leaves me with the future possibility of her finding out and coming to seek revenge.

All this from a couple of throw away sentences on a handout that took five minutes to make.

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Tags: Handout, Player Choice