Uresia: Grave of Heaven Sampler Edition

The gods have died, heaven has fallen, and man has rebuilt his world on the wreckage. The Elves belong to an ancient demon. The Dwarves can turn to smoke and walk on the wind. Men wage wars of trade for the emeralds which fuel the most powerful sorceries, and the Satyrs sail the high seas ... to stage panty-raids. Beneath it all, the dungeons are the crushed remains of heaven itself. This is Uresia, the acclaimed, eccentric, and basically good-natured fantasy world by S. John Ross. The free Sampler Edition is a 48-page chunk of the book; snag it and enjoy!

The Day That Love Came To Play

Another foray into text-adventures, but this time into the highly-nichey subform of single-move games (a form invented in a game called Aisle, by Sam Barlow, and occasionally visited by those mad enough to do so). This one's a bit odd, naturally, partly because it's by me, and partly because it's also (part of) a They Might Be Giants tribute. That all makes sense, right? Right?

Eight Cumberland Fonts: Alphabet Stew

This installment of Free Stuff of the Moment is more of a grab-bag than usual, but no less fonty than things have been lately. I've been on an energized font-kick lately for a variety of reasons, and some of the results have become fit to share. This package of eight fonts includes a family of five Gelio Greek fonts (hinted at in the earlier Gelio Greek Diner standalone release), a warm slab-serif font (and genuine-small-caps variant) called Tender Goliath (I've always wanted to do one, but until recently didn't trust my kerning skills enough), and a manic cartoony monster called Shock Shimmy. All are free for private use, as usual, and I hope you groove on them, as I've grooved on making them! Snag 'em and get playful.

Encounter Critical: Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom

In the cruel kingdoms north of the Viraxian Empire, a barbarian seeks treasure - and vengeance! Having escaped the clutches of the Slaver King, he has vowed to pillage the wealth of the kingdom ... then bring it to its knees. YOU are this barbarian. Weakened by your ordeal as a slave, wandering an unfamiliar realm filled with danger, you must use cunning, savagery, and something approximating English syntax to regain thy might, rally an army of friends to your cause, do repeated business with a Delicate Doxy, and do deadly violence unto the Slaver King! The one and only official Encounter Critical computer game is free, so snag it, fire up the z-machine player of your choice, and play!

Rugged Ride: Having Fun Gettin' Dirty

A muddy, weekend-in-the-high-country sort of font, mangled through the filter of off-road tire tracks. Treads are pretty serious stuff to those who make (and use) tires professionally, and many treadmarks are also trademarks (and valued patents) of their inventors and manufacturers ... so rather than trod on another's tread, I had to trot out my very own. To give it an authentic feel (I doubt it would pass engineering muster) I researched mud-tires, all-terrain tires, and tractor tires, because I knew I'd be going for a wet, mud-track look (I also glanced at rock-riding tires and others, but more in an ambling haze of wonderment than as research, because before I began this project I was blissfully unaware of how many types exist). Anyway, snag it; it's muddy fun!

A Love of Thunder: Brother to the Headline

This one doesn't have a complicated origin story. I love the warm stressing on my Dirty Headline font, and I wanted to create a brother-font for it; similarly stressed but with an alternate style, for some mixed graphics. For the base forms, I went to one of my favorite fonts from the 1920s, and dipped it in the same acid-pit (or rather, a very similar one) as DH. The main differences are less stressing on the outlines, a bit more texture and "resolution," and less vertical precision; this one hangs looser on the baseline. Other than that, it's your basic full-keyboard small-caps set with one or two of the usual extras (Euro, Cent, Pound Sterling, etc).

Erthe Gaming Systems: Character Sheet

Once upon a time (a real time this time, not a hoaxy Encounter Critical sort of time), there was a little outfit in the Pacific Northwest called Erthe Gaming Systems. They made character sheets ... I think maybe that's all they made, just one character sheet, for an, ah ... unspecified gaming system. It was my very favorite sheet for whatever game it may have been for, and this is a digital replica of it (an all-new build from the ground up), preserved for the ages, with affection.

Town: Sampler Edition

For several years now, Lisa Steele's excellent Fief has been one of Cumberland's best-selling titles, and it achieves that without much in the way of flashiness or fanciness. It is, simply, exactly the kind of book that Game Masters wished for for a long time: a densely-packed, well-researched guide to real medieval country life, in a gamer-friendly format. It makes a promise to the reader, and it keeps it, and heaps on a few surprises at every turn, as well. Now, Lisa has returned to that territory and topped herself with an all-new companion volume: Town: A City-Dweller's Look at 13th to 15th Century Europe is everything Fief was for rural life, turned onto that most fascinating beast, the medieval city. And of course, there's a meaty 48-page free sample version. Snag it, print it, browse and enjoy!

Dirty Headline Rides Again!

The most successful of the Cumberland stress-fonts is an unlikely typographic hero, released as it was with huge chunks of even the basic U.S. keyboard set missing (it had no apostrophe, for example, and no smart-quotes). Why so limited? I built it for one thing and one thing only, so it only had what it needed. I never expected to see it spread across the globe on buses, TV and movie screens, book coves, web-banners, lottery tickets, signs and clothing. I also never expected it to introduce me to roller derby girls (a whole team of them!), or to hook me up with a pen-pal who means a lot to me, but it's done all those things and more.

Dirty Headline v2.0 is long overdue, and exists mainly due to the patient licensed users who commissioned me, time and again, to expand the font for their needs (this is, of course, a free upgrade, licensed users: email me for the private version). This font (free for private use, as before) includes all-new glyphs inspired by those expansions, and several others I just felt like adding.

Back to Temphis, Smelling of Soap and El Marko Fumes

It's been a little while since I've revisited the Temphis Runes with a freeware addition, but as the production pace mounts on the new Uresia edition, it becomes inevitable that I spend some time each day hashing out new Temphis styles ...

Temphis Laundry Marker is another handwriting style, which the set desperately needs a few more of, honestly (of course, I won't be happy 'til I hit a hundred styles on this family). It's also exclusive to the Uresia Mailing List (considering it's only of interest to Uresia fans, I doubt that'll be a problem), and otherwise free, so snag (from the "Supporter Extras" folder) and enjoy.

Unity Dances: Stressed Font, Relaxed

I've been focusing, lately, on hand-drawn fonts, but now and then I feel the urge to return to the fertile fields of stressed fonts, taking classic typefaces and mangling them in some brutal fashion ... except, this time around, the stressing is so gentle it's more like I've relaxed the type than stressed it:

Unity Dances is named for (and inspired by) a real dancer, and aims for a kind of gentle, airy symbolism of design to pay proper homage. It's a full-keyboard small-caps set that is, very seriously, an expression of admiration. Freeware; enjoy!

Knits and Scraps: Typing Softly

I think it's a general rule that I'm more likely to make a useful font when I have a specific project that needs it, and that's the case with Knits and Scraps, a warm and huggy hand-drawn font (yeah, I do a lot of those) created for a book I'm finishing right now, designed with the basic goal of marrying the normal look of my hand-drawn romans (Apple Butter, Phaeton John, Heirany, etc) to a typewriter-inspired design. The result benefits from the easy legibility of typewriter forms but has the unexpected curves, jaunty serifs, and warm roundness of my more usual fare. I like it a lot; here's hoping you enjoy it too!

Knits and Scrapsis a full-keyboard set without extended characters. The base glyphs were hand-drawn in felt-tip, late one night at Luciano's Pizza & Wings, a favorite hangout of mine here in the neighborhood. The hand-drawn masters were then weight-adjusted, smoothed, and otherwise tweaked in a paint program. Snag it; it's free!