Free Monster Ecology: The Carnivorous Caterpillar

So yesterday I published what I think was a bit of an odd Tweak & Toss, because it seems a bit....well sometimes our real-life adventures don't quite add up or seem to be what we expect....and I'll leave it at that.

In conjunction with The Eaters of the Dead Tweak & Toss I did a write-up for a rather benign creature, just something interesting to inhabit a little corner of your game world.

The Ecology of the Carnivorous Caterpillar is available for free off of DriveThruRPG and also on my Patreon page. Clicking on either graphic or using this link will take you to DTRPG, while this is the Patreon link.

New Frugal GM Tweak & Toss: Eaters of the Dead

With all of the unexpected curves that life like to throw at, well everyone, it has been far too long since I've out out a Tweak & Toss OSR Adventure Seed.

FGM044a: Eaters of the Dead is a short little adventure seed that has the party trying to investigate something that the villagers cannot. It could be a rather trivial thing, or not....just depends on how the GM wants to take things.

This download drops on Tuesaday, November 7th and I'm writing this post in advance, so if there are any problems it might take me a couple of hours to figure it out, but figure it out I will.

These kind of items hit my Patreon page earlier than they get released on DriveThruRPG. Patrons also have access to better/larger maps used for my Tweak & Tosses....

Like usual, you can click on either graphic in this post or use this link to go to the appropriate download page.

Free GM Resource: Reddit D&D Maps Page

As far as I can tell I'm not re-hashing this Free GM Resource, which is odd because I have a graphic that I evidently created last year, but I cannot find the post...

Anyway, I was surprised to find a Reddit D&D Maps page. Now I'm not a big Reddit fanboy and have only popped on once or twice in the last, well ever actually, so while this might be old hat for some of my readers, I'm willing to bet that it is news for plenty more.

I'm a big fan of the search function which you can limit to the D&D maps page....

Free Map #72: Another Lake!

I posted another freebie map on my Patreon page and pretty much forgot to post it yesterday.

For someone who doesn't swim (much) and really doesn't fish or boat I have to say I love the water. The home I'm living in was chosen mostly because the back of my property line is the center-line of a year-round creek (quite uncommon here).

When I'm making maps I start with an interesting water feature and work backwards from there. I had a particular area in mind for a Tweak & Toss adventure seed and I got about 1/2 way through making the map when I realized that I really wasn't going to be able to add the features I wanted, so I scrapped that map and started over again. On these style of maps I'd rather have it turn out the way I want even if it takes a fair bit of time.

Anyway, this map was close enough to a specific paper size that I went ahead and cropped it to an inch under tabloid size so the finished map would have a 1/2" border all around. This map is more than just a lake, it is a small village by a lake. Some of the village is in the marshy wetlands around the lake and there is just one road in/out of town. Another road just winds up to a center-point of the lake.

My Patrons' map is the same size but a better resolution (higher PDF production settings) and is layered, so certain features can be toggled off if desired. As a last-minute thing I reduced the resolution of my base file from 300 DPI to 100 DPI, but I tripled the size and saved it as a .PNG file so the GM could slice it up as desired for a VTT.

Like usual, click on either graphic to go to the map's download page, or use this link.

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!

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

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.

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.

As 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.

This 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.