Frugal GM Review: Tavern Keeper

Tavern Keeper is an interesting online campaign manager that really isn't for me, but I can see a lot of good use for some folks out in the RPG community.

I see the most use of this campaign manager being for those that run a game online and/or those who like to be able to keep a few things going on with the group between sessions. This is not to say there isn't some good stuff for the strictly table-top GMs either.

I like the ability for GMs to throw out a schedule for their next game and for players to check out new games. The interface is relatively easy to use and updating information seems to be easy.

To check it out I started entering information from my Return to Garweeze Wurld campaign. I'm several sessions behind in updates, largely because it was frustrating to me that my links on the blog went to crap. I'd been using Blogger, which is good for everything I'm trying to do except using links to be able to jump around the site. That Tavern Keeper has a wiki seemed like a good idea.

I had no problem setting up the initial game parameters, dumping in info regarding my game. I really liked I could categorize it as a mature game. Starting a new wiki page was as simple as it gets, but this is where things started breaking down for me.

The system Tavern Keeper uses isn't what I'd really call a wiki. Instead it is more an easy-to-organize hierarchy of pages. Linking between the pages isn't really going to happen. This is a bit of a disappointment to me because this is really the missing feature I wanted. Shuffling individual pages around is quite easy though and I think for a lot of folks this is exactly what they need. I really liked how the GM could put some "secret" notes for GM use only on the pages. This is a nice addition I think I'll miss elsewhere.

When playing around I did have a problem with my game showing up as "seeking players" even

though I had turned the option off. Since I already have a campaign log going and I really need a true wiki to migrate, I didn't really try to fix this. Another sweep through the settings didn't resolve the issue, so I just made the campaign private, sent in a bug request, and left things at that.

While Tavern Keeper isn't going to be meeting my specific needs, it seems like a great resource for many GMs to keep track of their own campaigns. Even if I get my wiki going, I may very well come back to Tavern Keeper to help my players keep in touch and to help disseminate information.

Free Map 017: A Small Cave Complex

On my lunch break Monday I doodled a small cave map and when I got home I was able to use some recent lessons learned to whip that map into shape!

I had a second section to this map, part showing a long ladder from the one interior room that led to a small tower high above the mesa this cave was in.

It looked like a three year old drew it.....

....and not a creative or talented one at that.

I'm not even being overly-critical, it just plain sucked. First time trying to do a cross-section view and it came out bad. I'm not losing any sleep over it.

Because it didn't take long to scan and clean up my map I was able to spend a bit of time playing with
the layers and adding some background  color. Not much, just colored in the rocks and used a dirty stone texture to place behind the cross-hatching. Having that hatching as a file doesn't even come close to doing it by hand, but it saves me a ton of time and looks better than it would otherwise, 'cause I'd just forgo anything in there.

I'm happy with how it turned out and I actually had fun creating this map. Sometimes mapping feels like a chore so this is a pleasant change.

I hope you get some use out of this.  As always, you can click on the post's lead-in graphic or this link for the hi-res file.

Free GM Resource: More Generators!

This week's Free GM Resource isn't a whole lot to look at as it is pretty much all function over form.

www.mathemagician.net is home to four online random generators;
          Town Generator
          Treasure Generator 3.5
          Weather Generator
          Treasure Generator 3.0

I found the Town and Weather generators to be the most useful. I like the notes listed on the Town generator, especially the suggested racial mixes (feel free to use your own) and the expected generation time. It is always nice to know about how long it will take the server to create your locale. A metropolis could take two minutes....so it's nice to know that the program hasn't simply crashed, but a server is busy gronking away on my new mega-city.

As far as the weather generator goes....I just don't see that many weather generators so anything is a bonus. I particularly liked the ability to switch off between Celsius & Fahrenheit. I may be able to get my head around liters and kilograms, but Celsius is largely a mystery to me.

Documentation on the site is rather sparse. There is a credits page where the author thanks a few folks and the weather generator lists a Justin Dunmyre as a point of contact for questions. I'm going to assume that Justin is the author of this website and while I'm not a huge fan of the bare-bones delivery, he's put a couple of good tools out there for the community to use. Good job!

A "Work in Progress" Map

I've been completely inspired by the likes of +DysonLogos and +mattjackson both sweet map-makers whose style I really love. Both these guys have Patreon campaigns you should really check out.

This week Matt added a top-down map that also featured a profile view of the cave complex. While I've seen both style of maps before I don't think I've seen them married in such a cool fashion.

Also this week Dyson started a step-by-step progression of his latest map. While I have sketched out a rough map to help me determine how to proceed with the rest of the map, I've never even considered actually drawing the final map over the top of the scribbled rough map.

Of course, now that I think of it, I've seen artists do this type of thing all the time. If you look at any "how to draw" book you see this natural progression. It seems like a no-brainer, but was well above my level of ability. You see......how do I put this delicately.....I'm no artist.

I'm not trying to detract from any natural ability I might have. I'm trying to state the painfully obvious. While I can think of what I want something to look like, the actual creative process, much less the steps to get from point A to point Z pretty much elude me. In order for me to come up with any type of map at all I have to play to my strengths, which usually boils down to breaking a process down into steps I can manage.......and not be too afraid to screw things up experimenting as I go about things.

If I can, I like to document the process so I can attempt to replicate what worked well and improve upon what I think did not live up to my expectations.

Frugal GM Review: Desktop Dungeons

I realize I'm straying off the path, so to "speak", with reviewing a video game, but sometimes a GM needs to just waste some time in order to recharge the batteries. For some that means getting to sit down on the other side of the table and for others....well we sometimes we just need to KTATTS* and don't have a table to sit at.

Enter Desktop Dungeons. This is a game currently in Beta development that lets you solo various small dungeons. The Beta is $15 or $25 dollars and can be run through Steam or played in your browser.

The Alpha version of the game, the one I've been having fun with, is absolutely free as a download. It definitely has an an old-school 8-bit vibe going on and is good for messing around for a while. You basically get to pick what race (Human, Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, and Gnome) and class (Fighter, Thief, Wizard, Priest) you want to play and off you go. If you manage to defeat the "simple" dungeon you get some other options unlocked and you can try again.

So far I've only unlocked a couple of new classes, and only because I've gone straight Human Fighter.

The interesting thing is that this game seems to be a straight-up hack-n-slash, and in many ways it is, but the reality is that the game is actually much more of a strategy game than it appears to be. The most important aspects are laid out right in front of you and the game even tells you if your next attack against a foe will lead to your death.

You have to be strategic about combating your enemies and being in a position to face off against the final boss of the dungeon. You need to balance out your resources and exploration because you regain health and mana by uncovering/exploring new areas of the map.

Desktop Dungeons is a fun little free game that is well worth the download.

*Kill Them and Take Their Stuff

Free Terrain Piece: 5' (Scale) Diameter Log

I've already started on my next map and this time I decided to take my time and not rush things. I'm using better supplies and even going through the motions of sketching some rough ideas/notes out before hand.....

....and I've started a new job where I have to be in training from 5:30 AM to 2 PM. For a night owl like me this is a huge change from my norm and it is taking some time to compensate.

What does this mean to you? Well, no map this week....sorry. I do have a few other table-top props and map helps lying around that I'm more than willing to share.

This week I went ahead and played around a bit with a product idea I had done a lot of work on
before abandoning it almost finished. The idea was a simple way to make some in-scale logs/timber as terrain pieces. I started with actual picture of bark that were played around with and displayed with a sizing sheet. The sizing sheet let you cut out the length and diameter you wanted and then either wrap the print-out around an appropriately sized dowel, or just glue some end caps on the logs.

I got to the point where I was finishing up the end caps. The work I really needed to do was clean up the cutting/gluing guides, finish he end caps, and then start messing with the PDF layers so you could add the cut-off branches and pick the diameter of your printed out logs. I also figured you could just print this to sticker-stock and wrap around appropriately sized cylinders. The end caps were going to be two different types to give another choice on how to proceed.

For this download I just made one choice of diameter and put one type of  end cap on there, squeezing it into one page. If there is any sizable request to finish this project up I probably will, but I don't expect it, especially in this particular format.

This was an interesting experiment, which is about all I can say at this point.

Free GM Resource: Map Folio 3D

I've got one for you....

...have you seen a company take an in-print product, add content to it, and then give it away for free?*

I can think of at least one other occasion, but in general, this doesn't happen. This week's free resource is something I thought I had shared before, but evidently not.

Back when I first started trying out paper modelling I purchased the Map Folio 3-D from Wizards of the Coast. The models looked good and were relatively easy to cut out and put together. I was a bit hesitant to do so since I only had one copy of the Folio and some pieces I wanted more than one copy of. I was quite happy to find that WotC had added a few files and made it available for free on their website.

Now you can get as many copies as you need printed up and assembled. Sure you'll have a little bit more work having it printed and then cut out, but the files are free, which goes a long way towards getting things done.

2014.01.20 Edit:
Someone sent me a note saying that they didn't think these files were the actual Map Folio files. I went ahead and looked at my assembled models and while a couple of the files look the same, it is evident that this collection isn't the Map Folio +additional models like I thought it was. I have a Blacksmith shop and a couple of regular houses that aren't on the list of files. You can see pictures of some of them in the photos they used, but the files aren't there.

Sorry about this....the free files are still free and still useful. I do wish the houses were in with those files though.

Frugal GM Review: Sandbox Resources Hex Map Pack

This review for New Big Dragon Games Unlimited release of Sandbox Resources: Hex Map Pack could just as easily be posted as a Free GM Resource, because it is, but I thought if I posted a review a few more people might see just how good of a product this is.

Before I get into the review I want to note that I borrowed the graphic for this post from the publisher's blog, which you should take some time to visit. There's a little something I found there I'll have to see about posting about at a future time.

If you are not familiar with New Big Dragon Games Unlimited , they recently put out a hugely successful d30 Sandbox Companion Supplement. Evidently there was a file/page in that supplement that garnered a lot of comments so they expanded upon that page, turning it into this free supplement.

Now I find that cool enough on its own, but they just had to go and step it up a notch. Basically this product is a set of three hex map tools. One page is just a grid of small hexes, another is those grids clumped together into a collection of larger hex grids, and the third page is a worksheet for detailing the contents of the larger hex grids. The real meat of the pdf is this third worksheet, which is organized simply and quite effectively.

Now this sounds great as-is, but the über-cool aspect that geeks me out is that "pages" two and three, as I described them before, have been done up three times at three different scales! The larger hex grids are either 4, 5, or 6 smaller hex grids across. Evidently the author had been using a 4 grid scale for some time, but the publisher products have been using a 6 grid scale while some producers "back in the day" used a 5 grid scale.

It is really this tiny extra attention to detail that takes a great product and makes it even greater. After seeing this file I went back to DriveThruRPG and went ahead and put some of their other products in my wish list.

Free Map 016: A Quick Attempt

This week I decided to try and make a quick 15' map. Since it took an hour I pretty much failed in that regard, but seeing how many times I started over I think the problem wasn't so much my time limitation, but the fact I really didn't have an end-result in mind.

Overall I took an hour, but I ended up restarting this map several times.

I started off with a USGS map of my old hometown. I cropped into what I thought was a good section of the 7.5' map I downloaded and cleaned off the elevation markings after deselecting the map options I wanted. After putting in the roads I scrapped everything and started over again.

After another failed start I decided I didn't like the underlying map as much as I thought I would and

The background is white...

chose to instead take that map and stretch it out some. What I ended up doing was taking the map at the scale I liked and then cutting it into pieces that were placed farther apart. While I could have used a paint-brush to reconnect contour lines I opted to cut and paste parts of existing contour lines and then use the bubble-warp feature to finesse those cut & paste jobs into place. Then in went my roads, originally straight lines that were bubble-warped to give some gentle bends and wobbles I'd expect in non-paved roads. The buildings were a brush setting I had made. I thought I'd use the buildings I had given out earlier, but I thought it would take too much time and even though I was already over time I figured I'd at least stick with the spirit of my attempt.

The end map had some interesting artifacts from my cut & paste jobs and the use of the brushes. I noticed my eye catching on some odd color jumps or minor gaps here & there. Some quick use of the blur feature smoothed in some issues and for the rest I just copied my finished map into Adobe Illustrator and had it do a Color 16 tracing. This last bit evened everything out to my liking.

I think next time I might try to make the underlying USGS map look a little more hand-drawn with the use of some filters and then add in some vegetation. Some of the maps you can get have shading you can use giving more of a 3D effect that is pretty cool. I have an idea for a small border fort & town I may have to put together for a future map.

As always, you can click on this post's pictures for a copy of the map or use this link.

Free GM Resource: The Story Games Names Project

If I've said it once, I've probably said it one-hundred times, I'm a sucker for random tables. While technically not a collection of random tables, The Story Games Names Project is a huge collection of lists, lists of names to be precise, all numbered 1-20. There are a little over 100 categories of names, most of which have multiple lists per category.

The PDF, hosted by the folks over at Bully Pulpit Games, is a good 280 pages long. In case you wanted to pull out the text for insertion into your random table generator of choice, the folks over at www.random-generator.com have already done a lot of the heavy lifting.

Frugal GM Review: Howler

This free levels 1-3 module from Random Order Creations really surprised me. It is their first offering on DriveThruRPG and not something I'd normally be so quick to pick up because it is listed as a d20/3.x adventure. I tend to stay away from those because it is usually too difficult for me to alter them for use in my low-fantasy HackMaster game.

I have to admit that the cover art of Howler drew me in and made me give this a once-over before putting in in my cart. I absolutely adore the attention to detail on the art for this adventure. The front and back cover have been "aged" to look like something you've had sitting around for ever. The art style inside isn't completely consistent, which in this case is a good thing, even though it was all illustrated by one guy. It really looks like a couple of different artists were used.

The choice of fonts and some of the art, like the map, reminded me (for some odd reason) of Groo. That's probably just in my head, but it really made this a nostalgic adventure and I was just reading it for the first time.

The layout is simply great, starting off with a full-page monster battle sheet for everything in the adventure. This is a great touch I don't see often enough. The adventure was well written.....everything made sense within the scope of the adventure and it wasn't heavily scripted. There was a good amount of randomness to the adventure that two different groups playing this would pretty much have the same adventure, but the GM side of things wouldn't be identical.

I don't want to put in spoilers, but I will say if you have a group that tries to pry every last copper piece from an adventure......you might want to get back at them with this adventure. I have the distinct impression that the writer either has an evil group or just a bunch of thieving bastards that go so far as to strip the dungeon doors off their hinges.

Although written for d20, this adventure will not take me a lot of effort to convert over to my
preferred system and it could almost be run as-is for any OSR game. There's a lot of good meat on the bones of this free adventure......you won't have to pick at it to make it useful for your table. The price is free and you should go and download this adventure today.

Great job and I hope to see more from J.V. West and Random Order Creations.

Experiments in Stippling

I've been working on some mapping, but not necessarily some maps.....

As much as I like to make maps, I don't consider myself that kind of artist. While it is fun to create, it is also often painful for me to do so. I just cannot spend a lot of time drawing things out. It doesn't take long for my hands to cramp up or for me to go into some sort of OCD "thing" where the physicality of what I'm doing starts driving me a little crazy. It's usually the repetition that gets me, so the nice little touches, like hatching a map, that are near impossible for me to do.

Free GM Resource: Blue Boxer Rebellion (Dungeonteller)

Last week I reviewed Ten Battle-Ready 25mm Dungeon Maps, and I hinted there would be another post gleaned from that download file...

Doug Anderson, the creator of the Dungeon Maps, has a blog where he discusses his projects and this blog is the topic for this week's Free GM Resource.

Blue Boxer Rebellion may or may not be to your liking as RPG Blogs go, but Doug has been really generous with some free downloads that you might find interesting. Of course, I won't provide direct links to these downloads because, well duh..., but if you go to his blog you shouldn't have any problems finding them.

In case I'm completely wrong about this.....
          ......here is a helper graphic.

Most of the downloads are for some simple maps and geomorphs (I have always been a sucker for geomorphs), but there is one particular gem I thought people would really enjoy.

That gem is a small RPG!

Doug came up with his own RPG which he calls Dungeonteller. I've only given it a quick once-over and I'm loathe to give an actual review to RPGs I have run & played, unlike far too many other people, but at first glance it seems to be a relatively quick & easy rules-light game. Just from what little I saw I think it could be a good game to introduce people to RPGs.

I recommend heading over to Blue Boxer Rebellion and checking it out for yourself.

Frugal GM Review: Ten Battle-Ready 25mm Dungeon Maps

This review of Blue Boxer Rebellion's 1st set of "Ten battle-ready 25mm dungeon maps" was a bit more difficult for me than I had expected. First off, I thought this map set had a huge "WOW" factor and it is still pretty cool. Unfortunately the set falls just a little short of anticipation and while still a good series of maps, there are a few touches that could make it great.

As an aside, the second set just came out and it looks like at least one concern of mine from this set had already been taken care of.

The letter-sized PDF file is 20 pages long and a whopping 71.4 MB is size. It starts off with a cover and introductory page, some of which I will inevitably cover in a later post (in other words some great freebies!), and the next page is a series of thumbnails. I really appreciated the thumbnail page and think more people need to include these in their map packs.

The PDF then starts getting into the good stuff. There is a town map, region map, and then an overall dungeon map (separated into two parts), all with labels. None of these maps are "battle ready" and while you pretty much need the overall dungeon map, the town and region maps are pure bonus. There are technically 11 "battle ready" maps, with one map shown twice with different options on each page. The PDF rounds out with two more "duplicate" maps, the region and town, without any labels. The last page is a series of notes on each "battle-ready" map.

At first glance the slight isomorphic view of the battle maps is pretty fricken cool. Not only does it have an old-school feel to it, the maps just seem like fun. I couldn't wait to print these out and see what it looked like to throw down some minis. I printed out a test page on my black & white laser printer at 600 dpi.....

.....and the resulting page was a bit more than "OK".

My print of page 7 (Room 1) is definitely usable, but quite a bit lighter than expected. This is where things seem to fall a bit short. I would have preferred a much darker print with higher contrast so everything will be easier for my players to see. There were some unnecessary graphics added to most of the pages, this one included. I don't need arrows and labels pointing out tunnels, nor do I need dashed lines showing where players could jump from point to point. The art, not to mention the overall dungeon map, does a great job showing the relationships within and between map sections. If you think you need to put all this extraneous information on the pages, then put them on a layer so people can simply choose to deselect that layer and print the map without it.

On my print out you can also see the edges of the paper the sketches were originally made on and you can tell that the original sketch was scanned into a computer and edited somewhat.. Ugh.....this is really unforgivable in my opinion. If you are going to do any editing in Photoshop or the like, removing the scanned edges is one of the first things you should do. If, as an end user you want to take a crack at fixing these things with the map in Photoshop.....probably not going to happen because the file is secured.

Finally, I wish this was a bit larger than 25mm. This is a minor quibble, but with more and more minis coming in at 28 or even 30 mm, I think a 28mm scale would better accommodate a larger range of minis. Of course it would be easy enough to have a printshop print this at a slightly larger scale on 11x14 paper.

Overall, for $2.50 it isn't a bad set of maps and with a few tweaks could be a really great old-school map set to use for an adventure. I think more than anything this 1st set hints at some great potential, some of which I can already tell has been unlocked in set 2.

Free Map #15 The Beer House

It's been about time that I got off my duff and presented my (mostly) finished tavern map. In my home game this locale is serving as the base of operations for my players. I tend to run a relatively poor campaign, as in I don't give out a lot of cash....hopefully the campaign is a rich (content-wise) as my players wish it to be. "Adventurers" don't really exist so my players are a bit of an anomaly and living "on the road" can be expensive. Fortunately for them one of the PC's families has connections in the city of Twin Forks and that connection, the Dwarf running this Beer House, is willing to let them bunk in the cellar.

Now this map is a bit on the sparse side because I haven't filled in the Dwarf's living quarters, the brewing equipment in the main level, or the multitude of barrels of beer in the basement. In my game there is also a rack of Honey Brew (think low-grade alcoholic/medicinal healing) and a secret entrance to some long-forgotten tunnels. I have, however, added the most notable pieces of furniture of this establishment which are the enormous tables and benches the Beer House patrons sit and drink from.

These enormous tables were built in-place outside of the main level, originally in a large beer tent. The frame of the tent was sided in with wood and now the wooden structure is being bricked in with field stone. The Beer House has some giant wooden doors and a generous helping of fireplaces to keep the drinkers nice and cozy.

In my game the Beer House only brews & sells beer. They make almost all of the beer sold in the city, made to the individual tavern's specifications. It is important to note they do not cook any food whatsoever. The Beer House has a decent number of urchins who serve as runners for the patrons, getting them whatever food from other sellers as demanded. They work for tips only and are honest to a fault since any who stiff the Beer House patrons get banned from the premises.

The scale on this map is the standard 1 square = 5'. I realize this makes the levels about 80' across, but this Beer House was converted from an old guard tower from when the town was much smaller. Hopefully you'll find this map useful and if you end up getting some good use out of it, please feel free to drop me a note telling me what you did with it!

As always, clicking on either graphic should take you to the file on my Google Drive. The map is a 300 dpi JPG and 11" square.