The other day on Facebook I saw a brief conversation about sites that lends themselves to the creation of props for games. While the conversation centered around Call of Cthulhu, I thought I would assemble a few sites I have used in the past for generating printable props and game advertisements.

Need to create pulp magazine or book covers? Pulp-O-Mizer has you covered! This site has been immensely useful to me over the years.

Everyone can make use of a name generator and while not expressly prop related, it is a useful tool for so many elements of game mastering. Fantasy Name Generator has bucket loads of categories to give you just about any name style you might want.

Oddly, I have found old historical records, nationality aside, to be a good source of “old looking” official documents. There are millions of free documents that include things like land deeds, marriage certificates, church records, etc. The best source of these free documents is a site called FamilySearch. It is owned and operated by the Church of Latter Day Saints and the vast majority of their collections are free to anyone.

Need a background for an online game or want to create old looking parchments and scrolls with ease? I visit My Free Textures regularly and grab parchment and scroll backgrounds for props. This route is not as cool as creating your own old looking parchment from scratch, but it will save you lots of time. They also offer a wide array of different textured images for you to use.

Need mythos inspired inspiration, fonts, etc? Check out H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society for lots of great ideas and inspiration!

One last suggestion for today is using wax seals on letters, documents, scrolls, etc that your players may find during a game. Purchasing an inexpensive wax seal can add flair to your props. Sites like Nostalgic Impressions have moderately inexpensive seals that are versatile for gaming purposes.

~ Modoc

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