PDF Pad: Infinite Graph Paper

At the heart of every Game Master’s obsession with roleplaying games there stirs a very basic passion: a deep and abiding love of graph paper. Yes, I know it’s weird that a sheet of tiny squares could elicit such affection, but it’s true. For all dyed-in-the-wool GMs, each sheet is a new dungeon, a new adventure, a new world…

Okay, maybe I’m getting a little worked up. Let me cool off.

Don’t be deterred by its bare-bones layout, the website PDF Pad is straight from the realm of simple genius. It allows you to print graph paper, customized exactly to your specifications, as PDFs. No more running to Office Depot before gaming sessions, no more trying the guestimate distances on loose-leaf.

But the uses to roleplayers don’t end there. Prefer hexes to grids? They’ve got hex paper. Need to create a campaign calendar or know the exact date of the third Wednesday in November in 1926 (the 17th) for your Call of Cthulhu game? They’ve got calendars printable by the year. Also, less useful for gaming but still neat, there’s printable flags from counties across the world, randomly generated Sudoku puzzles, and even these amazingly intricate “Smith Charts” (I don’t even want to know what mad science these diagrams are used for). All well, well worth taking a look at here.

If you’re looking for something a little more stylish, though, check out my favorite—the squared notebooks from Moleskine—here.