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Nico de Gallo's TTRPG Resource Guide

The Human-Made
Alternatives Guide

A curated resource guide of practical tools, free art libraries, and incredible human artists.

Index & Contents

What You’ll Find Here

Designed and collated by Nico de Gallo

You Don’t Need Gen AI for Your Games.

– Nico de Gallo Linktree

This page is a constructive, AI-free alternative for tabletop creators. Many people do not know how gen-AI tools are trained or their environmental cost, so instead of shaming them, share this guide and point them to human-made resources.

Featured · Artist Directory

The Artist Guild

Verified AI-free artists available for commission, homebrew, and supplement work.

Visit →
I

Free image libraries, icon sets, and marketplaces

This is the best off-ramp from AI art for creators who need usable visuals quickly.

View Resources →
II

Places to find artists

When close enough is not good enough, these communities are better than prompting for approximations.

View Resources →
III

Writing prompts, random tables, audio, puzzles, and handout tools

AI gets used for ideation because people do not know where the real tools already are.

View Resources →

Free image libraries, icon sets, and marketplaces

This is the best off-ramp from AI art for creators who need usable visuals quickly.

New School Revolution

A massive public-domain art index that points to broad archives and specialized illustration libraries.

See also

Includes general archives like The Public Domain Review and Wikimedia Commons. Includes niche sources like Old Book Illustrations and Old Book Art.
Visit
Pulp Magazine Archive

A huge archive of pulp-era magazines that can be mined for public-domain mood, collage material, and design inspiration.

Visit
Medieval Image Sources

A giant link list of medieval images and full books. Very strong for manuscripts, heraldry, borders, and historical texture.

Visit
The Noun Project

A large collection of human-made icons and simple illustrations for handouts, sheets, interfaces, and quick visual signposting.

Visit
Game Icons

A deep icon set in SVG format that is especially useful for VTT modules, cheat sheets, and tokens.

Visit
Flaticon

Free PNG icons with paid SVG access. Useful when you need fast visual support assets without illustration work.

Visit
OpenGameArt

A broad library of community-made art, sprites, textures, sound, and interface material intended for reuse in games.

Visit
Openclipart

General-purpose clipart and illustrations that can fill gaps for diagrams, signage, and handout visuals.

Visit

Places to find artists

When close enough is not good enough, these communities are better than prompting for approximations.

r/ICanDrawThat

A broader request forum that works well when you need sketches, props, creatures, or visual concepts beyond character portraits.

Visit
r/FreeArt

Artists and requesters meet here for no-cost art exchanges, especially useful for personal campaigns and prototypes.

Visit
r/DrawForMe

Not every post is free, but the free-offer filter is a good place to catch artists volunteering time for requests.

Visit
r/OriginalCharacter

A community where artists regularly post creative offers, especially useful for OC-focused prompts and one-off collaborations.

Visit

Writing prompts, random tables, audio, puzzles, and handout tools

AI gets used for ideation because people do not know where the real tools already are.

Handout Maker

Create in-world letters, notes, and faux documents without touching image generation at all.

Visit

Better tools are out there.
Point people to them.

If somebody is still using AI in the TTRPG space because it feels convenient, this page is the redirect. It shows the practical alternatives without turning the conversation into a fight, and it points them to verified artists when the right solution is collaboration.