10/30/2017

Free GM Resource: FastStone Photo Resizer

Free GM Resource: FastStone Photo Resizer
This week's Free GM Resource (I am aware I missed last week) is another great tool that has absolutely NOTHING to do with gaming, but has been quite useful for me in game prep.

FastStone Photo Resizer is a free program that doesn't have any adware/spyware/limited features for use.

Yes, on the surface this program resizes photos....and it would be worthwhile if that is all that it did. Why would a GM need to resize "photos"....or more appropriately graphics? Well if you are running a Virtual Table Top (VTT) game, FastStone Photo Resizer can take all of your 300 DPI graphics and reduce them to something more appropriate, like 100DPI.

Now the cool thing about this program.....well, there are quite a few cool things, but as far as resizing goes, you create an input list of files to tweak. This means you don't have to have all the original files in one directory. You can not only resize your graphics, but you can rename them AND change the file types (.JPG to .PNG, etc). You can have the new graphics be dumped into a folder of your choosing and/or have the old files over-written (which I wouldn't recommend).

You can also use FastStone Photo Resizer to simply rename a batch of files, which is quite useful as well. What I like to do is get everything I need for one encounter together in one place, not a folder, but an input list, tweak as needed, and then have the encounter in a new folder with appropriate names.

FastStone Photo Resizer is really worth a download!

10/16/2017

Free GM Resource: Trello

Free GM Resource: Trello
This week's Free GM Resource is a project-management tool I thought I had shared well over a year ago, but I guess not since I can't find a reference to it anywhere here.

Trello is a pretty simple online tool that lets you organize "Boards" (projects) with "Cards" (tasks). There are some cool plug-ins, but you are a bit limited as to the number of plug-ins you use in the free version.

The paid version, Trello Gold, is $5 a month ($3.75 if you pay for a year in advance) and lets you add 3 plug-ins (called Power Ups) and upload HUGE attachments.

For most GMs I think a single Power Up per board will suffice, and 10MB attachments will work out fine. Here is a nice overview of Trello from Lifehacker.com


10/09/2017

Free GM Resource: Faerun Map

Free GM Resource: Faerun Map
This week's Free GM Resource might be a bit limited in usefulness, but as the Frugal GM is sick, he's also a bit limited in usefulness.

Actually I love this idea and really want to see what it would take to replicate this with another fantasy map. Real-world maps have several options out there, but I couldn't find anything with a quick search.....I have stated I'm currently a bit limited....

Anyway, Faerun Map is a cool interactive map of Faerun, which is really the main setting for most of 2nd Edition AD&D. It is cool to be able to zoom in on an area and get some information about the locale. What I really liked, and maybe this is just my über-dorkiness rearing it's ugly head, is the citations each entry has. Too cool.

If anybody knows how to be able to make these maps for my own gaming campaigns, please share the details. Until then I'll just drool of this Faerun Map.

10/02/2017

Free GM Resource: Mixmere Audio mixing Software

Free GM Resource: Mixmere Audio mixing Software
This week's Free GM Resource is a bit off the beaten path, but I assume if I'm looking to do a specific thing for my home game then the odds are good that one of my twelve readers is, or has, devoted some small measure of brainpower to trying the same thing.

One thing I've done in the past, and am thinking of making better for the future, is incorporating sound into my game. I've got a couple of options, some cheaper than others, but I haven't quite nailed it down yet.

One of my many old computersAs I'm building my dedicated game room I'm trying to decide how to incorporate sound. Since I'll probably have a dedicated computer, or three, beside my GM chair I have to consider windows-based options. This is where Mixmere comes in. There are a few other options out there, but in addition to free, Mixmere has some other good benefits. It runs on Windows NT/2000/XP, and supports WAV, AIFF, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Flac, and Mod audio files.

Free GM Resource: Mixmere Audio mixing SoftwareThis means I can pretty much use any old-assed computer I have lying around (and I have quite a few)....even my really old touch-screen "laptop" that hasn't seen the light of day for years now.

I'll probably end up going with a different direction, but we'll see. The Mixmere interface is a bit dated, but it is much more concise than some of the paid options for doing the same thing.

If you need/want to have a free sound-effect player for your game and you have an old computer (not that a newer one wouldn't work), than you might want to check out Mixmere.


10/01/2017

A Bit of a Freebie Post, but With Some Ads (Fat Dragon Games Kickstarter)

A Bit of a Freebie Post, but With Some Ads (Fat Dragon Games Kickstarter)
First off.....I wasn't asked to make this post and to a certain extent it (this post) goes a bit against what I consider fair/appropriate/normal because I'm going to direct-link some freebies from Fat Dragon Games.

I'm going to counter-balance this by shilling for Fat Dragon Games current Kickstarter. In all fairness you should know that this benefits me directly because if more people take part in the Kickstarter, the more bonus files I get from my pledge level.

Two things you, dear reader, should do, is to head over to Fat Dragon Games and not only sign up for their newsletter, but go ahead and download their free stuff.

A partial peek at the Dragonlock 3 Kickstarter from Fat Dragon Games

Have you seen enough of the Kickstarter yet?

OK, here is the Dropbox file dump for the assorted freebie 3D Printing files for the last several months. FDG is unlikely to do a single point of collection for these freebies in the future.....BUT....if you sign up for the newsletter you can get the ones coming out in future months.

9/30/2017

Frugal GM Review: Dice Roll Zine #1

Frugal GM Review: Dice Roll Zine #1
Last night I was gifted with a download of Dice Roll Zine #1 and I have to say I was pretty impressed.

This 36 page zine came out originally in print (which is available from this link) it is now available digitally from the likes of DriveThruRPG for a measly $3 (looks like the regular price is $4).

1st off, I was quite surprised at the digital offering because I expected a single PDF...anything above & beyond was just a bonus. included with the PDF were a number of files, mostly .PNG versions of the maps and an alternate cover.

I do wish the .PNGs were larger full-page-versions of the maps, but they were rather odd sizes/resolutions. Tweaking the files in Photoshop they came out roughly 300 DPI at digest-sized pages. I'd have preferred at least letter-sized pages, but these were pure bonus, so no big whoop.

The PDF also didn't come with bookmarks and it is locked-down, presumably from DTRPG. Normally I would mark down a rating based on the bookmarks, but that didn't feel quite right since this is a zine and not some other type of gaming supplement. My assumption is that this was fully intended to be printed out at home to enjoy, not to "consume" digitally. I'll be printing this off for my own use instead of keeping it just as a digital file.

Layout is great and I loved the consistency in style through the various articles, which...unfortunately, isn't as common as you might think. The writing was pretty good too, I enjoyed the overall "tone" in this zine. I think I found a whopping 1 typo, but I wasn't really looking for typos...they just usually jump out at me when I'm on my second read-through.

There are a wide variety of articles and I enjoyed almost every one of them. Not a huge fan of the adventure presented, but that is really because it just wasn't my style.....I didn't find anything wrong with it and thought it was presented rather well. I really liked a couple of new/alternate game mechanics presented and my favorite article was just a few tables of random dungeon stuff. That one I haven't quite figured out yet (why I like it so much), but I'm not sure I need to do anything but roll with it!

Frugal GM 5 Star Review: Dice Roll Zine #1 Overall I think Dice Roll Zine #1 is definitely worth $4, so being able to snap it up for $3 is a good deal. I'm looking forward to printing this off to read through a couple of more times. I'm looking forward to future issues.



9/27/2017

Free Map071: Another HUGE Cave

Free Map071: Another HUGE Cave
It's been a while since I've put out a free map....

This map is the 1st level of what I intend to be a rather large 3 level cavern map for an adventure I'm writing up. I haven't decided on just how fleshed-out I want the adventure to be because the maps are quite fricken large and it might be better to put together some tables to make it into more of a random dungeon crawl that uses a specific map.

There are a few ideas percolating at the moment.

The original map this free map is based off of is rather large at 90" by 30". I wanted it to be even larger, but this thing took me a good 10 hours or so as it was....

Another HUGE Cave on Patreon
My patrons get the PDF map at A1 size and a bunch of PNGs so they could print it out to create the huge physical map (or tweak it for a VTT).

As usual, click on either graphic in this post to go to the free map, or use this link.

9/26/2017

Free GM Resource: Paper Miniatures Link Collection

Free GM Resource: Paper Miniatures Link Collection
Missed getting this up yesterday...

This week's Free GM Resource is a link collection of sources for paper miniatures from "Zen Seeker's Home on the Net". The miniatures are grouped by category, with each category having it's own sub-page.

As is the case with this sort of thing, some of the links from these pages are dead, so you are forewarned. On the bottom of the main miniature page is a suggestion to try the Wayback Machine.

Even if every mini link was dead (they aren't) one of the pages has a rather useful scale converter.