Topic: Useful GM Help Online

[arakish]

Did not see a thread for this...

Here are some helpful links for GMs.  These were originally posted at Real Role Playing.  I have consolidated them into one post.  I actually have many, many more links in my Bookmarks file, but I have pulled out the ones I use most often.

Others, feel free to post your helpful links.

An excellent article by Patricia Wrede at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer's Association website:
Fantasy World Building Questions
If you answer every last question in this article, there will almost be no question your players can ask that you cannot answer immediately.

Magical World Builder's Help

Language Creation Kit

Herbs and Poisons

Almost EVERYTHING you could want to know about over 4442 mineral species:
Web Mineral Database

Common Minerals and Usages:
Mineral Information Institute

mindat.org - the mineral and locality database
40,391 mineral names (inc. synonyms, varieties, etc).  224,659 different localities.  403,630 member photos.

Nice thing about this one is if you know the name of a mineral (such as padparadscha, corundum, andradite, spodumene, etc.), you input it into the Mineral Name search box.  Once at the page for the mineral, about a screenful down (depends on monitor resolution), you have a link for finding images of that mineral using Google Images.  Once at Google images, you get a couple hundred images of the mineral in natural form, polished form, gem cut form (if applicable), etc.

Make your own star maps with ChView:
http://members.nova.org/~sol/chview/chv0.htm


And here are some GrumpyOldFart posted in the same thread.

More gods than you can shake a stick at:
http://www.godchecker.com/

The Handbook of Applied Cryptography:
http://www.cacr.math.uwaterloo.ca/hac/

The Labyrinth (Georgetown Univ. Medieval Studies webpage):
http://labyrinth.georgetown.edu/


And some more I found in Bookmarks later.

Various densities of materials:
http://www.simetric.co.uk/si_materials.htm
There are other links for liquids, metals, woods, etc.

List of Elements at Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_elements

This one is probably posted elsewhere, but...
Map Making
http://www.cartographersguild.com/

Medieval Demography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_demography (and links to other articles)
Nice Javascript App: http://www.rpglibrary.org/utils/meddemog/
Original Article above app is based on: http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/demog.htm

General World Building at Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldbuilding

Omniglot - the online encyclopedia of writing systems and languages:
http://www.omniglot.com/

rmfr