We’ve started a new campaign using Roll20. The rest of the fatbeards want to explore the Caves of Chaos (Keep on the Borderlands, module B2). I’m happy to oblige, having recently visited the caves in my solo play using Pits & Perils Rpg.
This time, we are using the B/X edition of the Dungeons & Dragons Basic game but with the Old School Essentials rulebook (a modern layout that is in essence the B/X rules). In addition, we are adding the Advanced Fantasy Genre rules (with some new character classes). So far, my pal Doug is running a female dwarven veteran (race is a class in B/X) and a male druid.
This past weekend, Doug and I ran a quick session, the other fellows were unable to join us this weekend. Lydia, the dwarf, and Fodder, the druid (gotta love that name!) made their way through the front gate of the Keep and quickly found the tavern.
None of the characters or establishments are named in the module. I decided to call the tavern the Egg & Goat. This is in honor of Egg Barkley and Goat Bentley, two of the henchmen I played in my Pits & Perils solo game.
Anyway, the tavern has a notice board (and grand place to hand out rumors and adventure threads). I’ve seen some nice looking tavern notice boards (obsidian portal has an example and drivethrurpg sells some pre-made boards) but I wanted to make a good looking board that I could customize.
Using the internet and MS Paint, I was easily able to make the board (pictured above) in little time and no cost. I searched online for “textured wood background free” and found a few sites that had images without watermarks. Here’s an example. Instead of downloading any image, I just snipped it using the snipping feature on windows 10. A screenshot would work just as well.
I dropped this into MS Paint and then did a search for parchment paper images. I snipped a variety of these onto my paint workspace. Make sure you open the cavas up extra wide to allow you to give you room for the images.
Once I have the tavern board and the parchment, I made a duplicate tavern board to keep blank for new projects. I then had a neat idea to use the free-form select tool in MS Paint. This allowed me to make the rough and jagged edges of the notes that I post on the tavern board. Make sure to click transparent selection as an option when copying them.
Add your text and you’ll be all set. Just select the finished tavern board and paste in a new paint file, save it, and use it for Roll20 or print a handout for the table top. It really was a lot less work than I thought it would be, and I’m really happy with the results. I know that this and so many cooler things can be done with other drawing programs but this is free and simple to use.
Let me know what you think and how your make your own tavern notice boards.
More later and thanks…
John
Damn Elf Press 