RPGFU

The military’s plan to regrow body parts. - By William Saletan - Slate Magazine
Yesterday the Department of Defense announced the creation of the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine, which will go by the happy acronym AFIRM. According to DOD’s news service, AFIRM will “harness stem cell research and technology … to reconstruct new skin, muscles and tendons, and even ears, noses and fingers.” The government is budgeting $250 million in public and private money for the project’s first five years. NIH and three universities will be on the team.

Hopefully some of this will trickle down to us mere mortals, but it’s still a cool plot point.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | US army develops robotic suits
The lightweight aluminium exoskeleton, called XOS, senses Rex’s every move and instantly moves with him; it is almost like a shadow or a second skin. It is designed for agility that can match a human’s, but with strength and endurance that far outweigh our abilities.

The future doesn’t seem so far away now, does it?

Paleo-Future: 2063 A.D. Book (1963)
For those just joining us, 2063 A.D. was a book published in 1963 by General Dynamics Astronautics. The book asked politicians, military commanders and scientists to speculate as to where humanity would be, a hundred years hence, in the great push towards space.

Maybe some ideas you can use in your futuristic game…maybe not. Some are rather hokey.

heromachine

Online Flash application that lets you create your own super hero! No stats, but fun anyway.

squid.org - RPG Tool
Select a template from the drop down list, select the number of times you want to run the generator, and hit “Go” to create a random list of ideas, people and place names.

Another batch of small random generators.

Black Industries

Useful for a variety of games.

Sleepy Dog Labs - Covert Public Messages
To the unaided eye, the mosaic of tinted film squares seems uniform and holds no particular meaning.

But when viewed though a polarized filer (or a pair of polarized sunglasses), the concealed message becomes clear.

Cute idea for passing hidden messages between PCs and NPCs.

Pauper chic TLS

If you’re running a game in Victorian or industrial revolution era England, you may appreciate the details in this article about the economy, clothing styles, etc.

OpenTTD is a clone of the Microprose game “Transport Tycoon Deluxe”, a popular game originally written by Chris Sawyer. It attempts to mimic the original game as closely as possible while extending it with new features.
OpenTTD - News

One of the things I love about games like Civilization, SimCity, etc. is that you can create your own worlds fairly quickly and easily, and adapt them to table top games. This is a free version of Transport Tycoon Deluxe. Just design your world, pause the game, and use it for your RPG.

Seventh Sanctum

Contains many tiny little random generators, for all sorts of things that you’d need in your games.