As a game master, have you ever thought about turning some of your homebrew content into a published, stand alone module? I know I had that thought. I was creating dungeons and layouts for one-shot adventures, and figured someone else may find it useful, even if only to draw inspiration from. After spending countless hours reading blogs, Reddit, and watching YouTube videos, these are the tools that I used to start my journey.
Writing
While you can use really any tool to write your content, I prefer to use Obsidian. Obsidian allows you to create notes, organize them into folders, and use markdown to style them however you want. I’ve found it to be really flexible to use, and with tons of community plugins to extend its functionality and different themes to customize how you want it to look, it’s a great tool to have. They also updated their pricing recently so it’s 100% free to use, however I do recommend supporting them as it’s an awesome tool that they keep developing.
Images
As someone who only writes and cannot draw a picture to save their life, finding and creating artwork are the bane of my existence. Below are the resources that I’ve used:
iStock
iStock is a great resource to find videos, photos, illustrations, vectors, and music to use in your creative projects. Their catalog is extensive and covers pretty much any type of content or subject matter that you would want to find. They offer either a subscription service or credits that can be purchased which can be redeemed to download images. They have a generous license agreement for their catalog, and will offer free downloads for new accounts from time to time.
Unsplash
Unsplash is another stock photo library that is great to browse. While their images are free to download, their catalog can be limited at times, however it is always worth browsing when working on a project.
DriveThruRPG
DriveThruRPG offers an extensive library of publisher resources in addition to the rest of their catalog. Ranging from stock images to full document layouts, almost anything can be found there. Since each creator sets their own license for their content, it’s a good idea to double check the license they’ve chosen, however most are very permissive in what you can do.
Itch.io
Itch.io is another great resource to use to find publisher resources. Although the site is mainly focused on video games, there are still a multitude of creators who publish their work there. There’s many collections, and a simple search for ttrpg design resources can turn up many great assets.
Software
Now that you’ve got your artwork picked out and your story written, you’ll want to lay out your creation! While some people use word processors such as Google Docs, Microsoft Word, or LibreOffice, professional design software is really the tool of choice to use. I’d mainly recommend using either Affinity Publisher or Adobe InDesign. Both offer free trials, so try them both out and see what works for you.
Final Word
These are just a few of the resources that I’ve found helpful for myself. I hope this helped! Let me know in the comments what resources you like to use or that you’ve found helpful.
