Meatshields!

On my last blog post, I pulled in a piece of art from Google images, and used it for the image of a bundle. Turns out that even though it wasn't shown wherever I got it from, the picture comes from an old-school hireling generator, Greg Gillespie's "Meatshields!"

Meatshields! has been out for quite a while: this isn't the announcement of something new. But the program deserves to get pushed back into the public eye, because it's a really cool resource. It's doubly neat because I had the pleasure of actually meeting Greg at North Texas RPGCon. He is one of the people who absolutely give to the hobby with all their hearts. Greg did Barrowmaze at no profit to himself. The Meatshields generator is an awesome piece of work, filling a missing piece for the DM, free, and with artwork good enough that out of the whole internet I happened to pick out one of the illustrations.

So please go and take a look not only at Meatshields!, but if you want to see a master painter and terrain-maker, Greg happens to be one. Look at his blog, Discourse & Dragons.

Greg is one of the builders. In my family, that's one of the biggest compliments we give. Some people build.

Dak Ultimak needs to get mentioned in this regard as well. There are some people who make things, really cool things like Reverend Dak's 'zine, which is called Hack! (Exclamation points are a theme in this post, clearly). The last copy of Hack is excellent, starting with a Jason Sholtis cover and rolling right into gunfire. It's a whole bunch of pages about getting firearms into a game of old-school D&D, whether that's OD&D, Swords & Wizardry, OSRIC, LL, or Basic. It's loaded (ahem) with fun.

Again, one of the people who builds, rather than tearing down.

Let us all lift a glass to both of these excellent individuals, in thanks for their generosity of spirit and nobility of character!