Mappadux

Overview

Mappadux is a free, browser based virtual tabletop built for in person play, often referred to as "VTT@Home". It needs no account, no server, and no install. It runs entirely in the browser, and the maps and assets a GM uploads stay on their own device. The aim is a tool that sets up immersive maps in minutes and stays out of the way during a session, rather than one that becomes an evening prep job. Built originally by the creator for their own table and needs, it offers a streamlined solution for anyone with similar goals.
Mappadux is system agnostic and designed to be used for any in person RPG, fitting a playstyle where the same game system is rarely used twice. It does not enforce any rules, but it does contain general purpose GM tools applicable to most games, such as scaled maps, measuring tools, clocks, timers, initiative trackers, and map markers. This VTT is about adding immersion and setting a mood. For in person games, these elements are far more important than managing movement, actions, or other busywork. Setting the mood and getting players immersed in the game with audio and visual effects without getting in the way is the central design philosophy. Allowing the GM to manage everything during play with a couple of clicks or by pressing a touch screen is key; needing to reach for a keyboard during a session is considered a design failure. On the GM side, Mappadux covers usual table needs without menu hunting mid scene: fog of war, painted shader effects, animated backdrops, markers, motion trackers, atmospheric and positional audio, and immersive visual filters like parchment, hand drawn, or CRT phosphor. Image maps, animated maps, composite or layered maps, and rich text map handouts like letters, posters, and journal pages all sit side by side in one library. Players are not passive participants unless the GM wants them to be. While phones or tablets are not required at the table, connecting them unlocks optional Player Voice functionality. These features give each player a named identity with their own draggable map token, map pings (a quick 'look here!'), two way secret note passing with an optional LLM assisted reply for the GM, and a way to submit initiative easily. Everything a GM builds, including maps, audio, splash screens, and themes, travels in a single .mappadux pack file that can optionally be encrypted. This allows a prepared session to be handed to players, posted to a Patreon, or shared with the wider community as easily as forwarding a file. Mappadux is attribution focused: every map and sound carries its license, source, and creator, and the asset library can copy a ready to paste credits block.
Its defining trick is peer to peer screen sharing over the local network. Any phone, tablet, TV, or laptop on the same WiFi becomes a fully functional second screen by scanning a QR code or entering details manually, with no HDMI cable, no dongle, and no app to install. A GM can run a laptop as a control screen, lay a tablet flat on the table at true 1 inch or 25 mm scale as a mini battlemap, and face another tablet at the players for handouts and reveals. This creates a complete three screen setup that fits in a bag. Mappadux includes accessibility features such as screen reader compatibility for handout text blocks on both GM and player views, and feedback for improvement is always welcome. Mappadux is open source (MIT), free to download, modify, and use, and remains under active development with a community on Discord for feedback and bug reports.

Links

mappadux.com https://mappadux.com/ - Mappadux website github.com https://github.com/FrunkQ/dynamic-map-renderer-v2  - Github page discord.gg https://discord.gg/UAEq4zzjD8 - Discord server ko-fi.com https://ko-fi.com/frunkq - Support the project

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Traveller 2E (2016)
Tabletop Roleplaying Games

Traveller 2E (2016)

TTRPG
English
Sci-fi
Traveller 2E is a sci-fi tabletop roleplaying game system, that was published in 2016 and updated in 2022, by Mongoose Publishing. It involves the characters adventuring through star systems, engaging in (space) exploration and engaging in battles both on ground and in space. The system it directly evolved from is classic Traveller (1977) Description The characers in Traveller can be humans, robots, aliens or of a genetically engineered species. Each character is distinguished by their occupation - whether they are a civilian, military, a noble, a young cadet or a veteran. Each type comes with their own strengths and weaknesses. To further expand on the sci-fi aspect of the game, some characters are prone to extra-sensory abilities, such as telekinesis, telepathy and others. System Overview & Key Features Lifepath Character Creation When creating their character, players roll to determine their character's background, education, and career history. Characters will acquire skills, allies, enemies and physical injuries. No Classes or Levels Characters do not have traditional classes, and they do not gain experience points to level up. Progression is entirely material and narrative. Characters improve by acquiring better gear, installing cybernetics, buying larger starships, and finding lucrative trade routes. The Trade and Commerce System A massive part of the game involves interstellar economics. The rules provide deep, robust systems for buying speculative cargo on one planet and selling it at a profit on another. Players must factor in fuel costs, jump drive maintenance, and life support while managing their massive starship mortgage. Lethal Combat Gunfights are incredibly dangerous as the characters have very low health pools. These are directly tied to their physical attributes like Endurance, Dexterity, and Strength. A single shot from a laser rifle can instantly incapacitate or kill a character, making armor and cover absolute necessities. Hex Crawling and Subsectors The game provides incredible tools for the Game Master to procedurally generate entire sectors of space. Using a blank hex map and the core rulebook, you can roll up planetary environments, government types, law levels, and starport qualities to create a completely unique sandbox galaxy. Additional links mongoosepublishing.com - Official Mongoose Publishing website travellermap.com - The Traveller Map (An interactive map of the official Third Imperium setting)

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Covering the basics: Making a character
Guides & How-to

Covering the basics: Making a character

Covering the basics
“Covering the basics” is a easy-to-follow set of articles helping players get through the first steps of the game. You found a game to join? Well done, but now what? A character What makes a good character to play? Is it optimizing your stats to be the most overpowered character? Picking the right skills, feats, powers or spells? For some players, yes - that is important. And at the end of the day, you don’t want to end up with a character who will be outdone by everyone else in your party. But at the same time, your character should be more than just useful - they should be interesting. They are more than just “Human Fighter” or an “Elf Ranger”. When creating a character, what is important, but to create a character the other players and the world will want to interact with, focusing on who is even more vital. We will not be focusing on the intricate details of how you should create your character sheet, instead the article will serve as a guideline of how to flesh out your new hero (or anti-hero). /images/general-media/1776695082_Yb187gsl.jpgYour character should be more than just a two-dimensional adventurer. Make them real and the game will treat them as such. Who is your character? To start weaving your character into someone interesting, you need to find that core concept to start building around.   For inspiration, think back at some characters from a book, movie, tv show, game or real life. Find someone that has that core essence that you feel would be interesting to roleplay. Perhaps Rincewind the tourist from Discworld, Beorn from The Hobbit, Donna from Doctor Who or perhaps Esquie from Clair Obscur. Whichever character comes to you as someone you’d like to somehow pay homage to, can be worked with. Think of what makes that character interesting to you, is it their attitude towards problems, other people or nature. Are they clumsy, perceptive, analytical or indifferent towards things? The way they see the world is a great direction to have. Now the end-goal is not to copy the character 1 to 1. That is almost never going to work. The nature of the game is likely to be very much based on random outcomes, no matter how well-planned and foolproof your approach is. As dice determine the success of various attempts, it is best to keep that in mind.   A bad roll can turn your James Bond into Johnny English. Flesh them out If you have a core concept, you can start working on making them more real. Ask yourself various questions about them. “What made them like this?” “Why would they be adventuring?” “Is there a problem they are running from?” “What is their favourite dish?” Yes, even figuring out their favourite food can be a great process of figuring out who they are. It might not be a fact that would ever come to play, but can be a good stepping stone to actually understanding them. Knowing their favourite dish or colour can be helpful when diving deeper into that answer. Their favourite colour is pink - why? Did they grow up in a house that had pink wallpaper? Or was there an ever-blooming cherry blossom tree that they have fond memories of? Where was that tree? Does it hold some significance to them? Was there another person involved with that fondness? What happened to them? And so forth. Just like actual humans have preferences that don’t derive from nothing - neither should your character. The more you ask, the more real they become through this. It is highly recommended to write those points down - so you have a written understanding of them. And you can later refer back to the document to remind yourself of who they are. /images/general-media/1776695107_mBmxHoQ9.jpgWhat made them like this? A tragic event in their past or a goal they haven't yet reached? Backstory Ask your GM questions about the world and the setting. The more you understand, the easier it will be for you to place them there. If your GM is willing to work with you to flesh out the world around your character’s past, you will end up adding towns, locations, events and traditions to their world.   You may find it difficult to write your character’s backstory. You are not a writer, at least thats what you keep telling yourself. Doesn’t matter - your GM is hardly expecting you to write an eloquent piece of literary history. And that is not really that important. What is, is to know where your character came from - do they have a past that slowly catches up to them. A debt that will eventually have to be repaid. Or a goal that they are striving towards, as they have set out on their adventuring path. You shouldn’t try to aim for a 7-page backstory from the start. Some GMs might find backstories that are too detailed and long to be counter-productive. But setting where they grew up, with whom they interacted back then - how they grew up and mark down some important events that formed them as a character. Think back to the core concept of your character - and reverse-engineer your way towards the events and reasons why they ended up that way. Generative AI Now that various AI tools exist, players might find it easy to prompt the LLM with something like “Write a backstory for my elf ranger. When they were young, their parents abandoned them in a forest. There, wolves adopted them. But the wolves also abandoned them. Now they trust nobody. Their aspiration, though they keep it a secret from others, is to open a bakery.” And AI will give you a long backstory to work with.   But you are not done. Don’t just copy-paste it into a document and send it to your GM for approval. While using Gemini, ChatGPT or any other AI tool is useful for fleshing out some ideas, you need to make sure they are your ideas. You can take the draft you have been provided with and start working on the details - AI is unlikely to understand your character perfectly - what it is, that got you interested in them in the first place. Remove, add, rewrite and polish the initial draft. Make sure it is consistent with the world your GM has given you. And once you are done with an initial version, take some time and read through the whole backstory. Does it make sense to you? Do they feel real? And is the core idea still present? At the end of the day, it is your character. Using various tools to help you flesh out is helpful, but you should know them better than anyone else. Consider making a short summary section for you and the GM to reference later. Highlight various bits that are important to you. Connecting people Your character doesn’t have to be a lone wolf in the world. At times it can be better and more convenient to connect your character with another player’s.   Talk with your party before the game and see if you can find some common ground with some other character. Perhaps they were childhood friends, but drifted apart. Or perhaps they met once on opposite sides of a battlefield. Creating a connection to another character can make it easier for your GM to connect them to their world.   A shared past can be a great framework to make sure your party ends up as a cohesive group, not just “written together”. Your Game Master will have their hands full with various aspects of running the game, they will appreciate it, if you hand them characters that have a reason to adventure together. /images/general-media/1776695187_W8cxu9E4.jpgYour character's journey is just beginning. A good backstory is a great foundation to build on. Work in progress Your character should not be something that is completed once the first session rolls around. Instead feel free to add bits and pieces as you discover the world through playing. You are bound to find new aspects of the world, that your character could be connected to. Of course make sure that your GM is notified of these additions. And that it still fits with their vision of the game. Find your story If you have a great idea that you want to play with, but haven't found a game to play yet. Look at the games that are looking for players. Or post your player profile and find a tabletop rpg group to play with.

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Goblin Points
Actual Play & Podcasts

Goblin Points

Draw Steel
News
Interviews
News and interviews about Draw Steel and MCDM. New episodes twice a month. Hosted by Jon de Nor. Episodes drop on the 5th, a roundup of all the news from MCDM, and features from the MCDM community, and on the 20th, interviews with people from the community. Links goblinpoints.com - Official website youtube.com - Youtube channel spotify.com - Spotify feed podcasts.apple.com - Apple Podcasts feed

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