Kron'thul Font

Artist Umut Comak has posted a brand new font that's ideal for prop documents.  Best of all, it's absolutely free.

Hey folks,

I’ve been experimenting with alien scripts and visual languages lately and ended up creating this brutalist-style font called Kron’thul. Think forgotten monoliths, ancient AI cults, or strange glyphs etched into derelict starships.

It’s completely free to use for personal or commercial projects. All I ask is that you credit me and shoot me a quick email if you use it anywhere. Would love to see what you do with it!

 You can download the Kron'thul alien language font at his site.

 

Common Talislan Font

This brings back memories.  The Common Talislan font was put together by Michael Dolan from the scraps of text included in the various editions of the Talislanta tabletop role-playing game.  It's ideal for re-purposing for prop scrolls and documents.

As an aside, it's pretty amazing how much the default Dungeons & Dragons setting has come to resemble the high-entropy, multi-racial milieux that games like Arduin and Talislanta pioneered.

Bel'Arian Fantasy Font

Dardaniell is a fantasy world created by Pieter Rottiers. It features a number of constructed languages, each with their own grammar, phonic structure, and custom alphabet. One of them is Bel'Arian, which features this wonderful font. Just click through to download the TTF file. You'll also find links to the other languages Mr. Rottiers has crafted.

Brausepulver Font

Over the years Peter Weigel has made dozens of classic fonts available over the years.  Brausepulver is an adaptation of one from the Brause type catalog.  It's a nice, faux-handwritten font suitable for documents in a fantasy tabletop game.  Browse around his other offerings and you'll find some real gems.

Dwellers in the Dark

If there's one thing I've learned over the years it's that evil is spiky.  This wonderful Dark Magic Codex font was originally created by ProjectWarSword and recently expanded and digitized by NecroTechno.  It's perfect for any kind of magical text or scroll.

Vanquish Fantasy Font

The Vanquish fantasy font comes to us from Designer Jean-Pierre S. Sullivan.  It features wonderfully flowing calligraphic glyphs and is available free for personal use under a Creative Commons license.  Just follow the link and click on the "Download" button in the upper right hand corner to download the TTF file.

Nirichaen Font

Pieter Rottiers is the creator of the Nirichaen alphabet, a conscript based on one of the languages in his personal fantasy world. Created glyph fonts like this are ideal for prop use, since they're obscure enough to be unrecognizable while still mapping directly to conventional text characters.

Vesperian Font

Cherry Chain brings us the Vesperian font, based on the characters used in the "Tales of Vesperia" computer RPG.  As with most of the fonts featured here it's ideal for being repurposed for paper props. Just click through the link above and then click on the "Download" button in the upper right hand corner to download the zipped font in TTF format.

Qvasi Fantasy Fonts

Norwegian artist Stein Strindhaug brings us a collection of fonts based on his self-created Qvasi language. He originally designed the glyphs for a conlang project that didn't pan out. Boutique fonts like this are a great resource for paper props because they're totally unrecognizable. That helpfully avoids what I call the "Curse of Futhark", where the immersiveness of a prop falls apart because the font is wildly overused.

Tkon Font

Over the years "Star Trek" has spawned dozens of alien languages that only appear for a few seconds.  It's a credit to the show's designers that they go to the trouble of cranking out alphabets for all of those scenes, and to the fans that they painstakingly fontify every one.

Tkon is a golden oldie from the TNG days.  The font appears on relic computer monitors from the  "Tkon Empire" in the first season episode "The Last Outpost".  The character set has a nice visual weight and would make convincing lettering for all sorts of fantasy scrolls and grimoires.

Update:  There appears to be a potential exploit on the original hosting page.  I've uploaded a copy for download over here- Tkon Font from Omega Designs.  Just click the download arrow in the upper right hand corner.

Iokharic Font

Before his death the late Neale Davidson of Pixel Sagas created dozens of fonts based on games and media properties.  Many, if not most, are perfect for occult and fantasy prop documents.  His Iokharic font is a good example of how useful his work is.

Iokharic is a Mandarin-stylized runic typeface based on the language described in Wizards of the Coast’s Dungeons and Dragons: Chromatic Dragons book. The glyphs in this face are extremely similar to those found in the Chinese language. Includes canon characters. Includes bold, italic, and bold-italic weights.

Gozerian Font

 "Ghostbusters: The Video Game" is widely hailed by fans as the true "third film" of the franchise.  It features voiceovers from the original cast, an intriguing story that builds on elements from the original picture, and slavishly accurate recreations of original props and locations.  It also happened to have this nifty font used by Gozerian cultists.  Lunoki was kind enough to digitize it and make it available on his DeviantArt page.  Just head over and click the download button in the upper right corner.

Tenno/Orokin Alien Language Font

The Tenno/Orokin written language was developed as part of the worldbuilding for the "Warframe" video game.   Competitive first person shooters aren't my cup of tea, since I'm old and have terrible twitch reflexes, but I just love the work that went into this fictional dialect.  The character set has the feel of an alien Arabic, with very stylized glyphs and formally arranged characters.

You can download the full font from Dylexy's DeviantArt page.  Just click on the "Download" link in the upper right corner.

Even better, "Warframe" fan Clarvel has created TennoTyper, a web app that automatically converts text into Tenno/Orokin characters and formats a downloadable .png for use.

Drow Font

The fun little font comes to us from Urhixidur.  Browse through the rest of his collection for some other fantasy and science fiction sets you may like.  "Drow Rounded" is a modified version of the font originally created by the Elven Kingdom of Arèthane online roleplaying group.

Gerudo Font

Sarinilli brings us the Gerudo font, based on the characters used in "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time". As with most of the fonts featured here it's ideal for being repurposed for paper props.  Just click through the link above and then click on the "Download" button in the upper right hand corner to download the zipped font in TTF format.

Hellraiser Glyphs

I've been fiddling around with some of my old Hellraiser designs and came across these glyphs.  They make nice fillers when you need some kind of magical symbol. 

Runic Inscription

Runic fonts aren't anything new.  What makes Temphis from Cumberland Fontworks different is that it comes in multiple distressed versions.  Standard rune fonts can be tough to use because the glyphs look too clean.  Temphis is considerably more convincing as something you would actually find in a prop document.

Baybayin Font

Norman de los Santos brings us this custom font for Baybayin, an ancient language used by South Seas islanders.  Like all obscure language fonts it's easily re-purposed for prop use.

Ancient Etherian

Ancient Etherian is the rough Latin analogue of author E. H. Kindred's "Seven Wars" series.  In addition to crafting a full grammar and syntax she created this nicely done font that would be ideal for prop use.  As always, I don't mean to trivialize the efforts of art-lang makers by re-purposing their work.  I merely advocate the use of obscure fonts to avoid the use of glyphs the audience may be overly familiar with, what I call the "Curse of Futhark".

Goblin Runes

Neale Davidson of Pixel Sagas brings us this nicely done faux-cuneiform font.  It's based on the goblin language from the "Kingdoms of Kalamar" tabletop RPG setting.  This would be handy for printed props, but would be awesome for a real engraved tablet.  Custom laser cutting from online shops like Ponoko is surprisingly cheap using materials like MDF and hardboard.

Update:  Derpa derp.  The font so nice, I posted it twice.