Free GM Resource: Hand Drawn Map Association

I like maps.....I like to draw maps.....the problem is I cannot draw worth a damn. Meh, I'll draw maps anyway. Maybe I'll get better, maybe I won't.

In-game I find two good uses for hand-drawn maps: For the GM and for the players.

As a GM I love a good map to go with my adventure. The whole "picture is worth 1000 words" rings true so often. In general I find my map needs as a GM are pretty strict because I need to use it as a tool to guide the adventure for the group.

As a player I really dig a map as a handout. Cool props make a game more interesting, as long as they aren't overused. Getting a prop/handout often requires a lot of effort on the GM's part, especially if they have to make one up during their prep time.

"A lot of effort" can mean time, but it can also mean inspiration. The Hand Drawn Map Association can really help. Essentially a large collection of hand-drawn maps that you can see online, they've just put out their first book (on their website, click on the source for the graphic above, or use this link).

I've found the HDMA a great resource for seeing different styles of (often) real maps. If nothing else, it makes me feel better about my own chicken-scratches......

Maps for Heroes

OK, this is just a cool idea and I have to share it where I can.

An Internet Associate of mine.....I don't have a better way of putting it, likes to draw maps. I like to draw maps too, but he's just much better at it. I used to be in the military, working with the Army, but he's actually in the Army. I like to think I do things to help others, but once again I find myself falling a bit short in comparison.

I'm OK with that as I've learned I have nothing to gain by comparing myself to other's standards, but enough about me.....

Matt Jackson has decided to put together a cool little fundraiser for the Wounded Warrior Project. It is a cool organization (though I wish they wouldn't limit themselves to just helping post 9/11) and Matt decided to organize a bunch of respected RPG map-makers to contribute a map for his fundraising campaign:

+Mike Schley 

+Carl Bussler 

+Gus L 

+Simon Forster 

+Monkeyblood's Model & Map Mayhem 

+Rob Conley 

+Logan Knight 

+Tim Shorts

Now putting together this effort is cool enough on his own, but Matt has also decided to donate any of the July proceeds from his Patreon campaign to the fundraiser as well. The goal is $1K, very reasonable.

I'll go one step further than just suggesting a donation.....I think you should donate at least $8. Eight map-makers, at least eight maps, at least $1 a map. Totally reasonable and it will only take 125 of us...maximum..to make that goal.

Come on....you do have $8 lying around, right? It is totally a Win-Win here.... 

Frugal GM Review: Gygax Magazine #4

This last week I've had the dubious "pleasure" of having to restore and attempt to re-organize a ton of my RPG files from a couple of backups after a computer crash. As I was filing away my collection of RPG Periodicals I discovered I didn't have Gygax Magazine #4...yet.

A quick trip to DriveThruRPG solved that issue and now I can review this latest issue.

Free GM Resource: Coat of Arms Designer from Inkwell Ideas

After playing with Inkwell Ideas' RPG Poster yesterday I decided to poke around their site some more. I didn't realize they made the Hexographer program, as well as a few other cool programs.

One program that you might not find frequent use for is their Coat of Arms Design Studio. There is a free version and a more robust paid version. I played with the free version a bit and while it worked fine, albeit a bit slow, for my needs that isn't the whole usefulness of this design studio.

If you've ever thought of designing a coat of arms for your campaign the various terms for the assorted aspects of a coat of arms gets real confusing fast. I don't know about you, but I don't necessarily need a comprehensive guide to the in-depth meanings of each individual aspect, I just need to know what they are. What the heck is the fess? A Sinister Baton? Do I want anything sinister....? I just need some basic explanations and there is a great drop-down primer on heraldry basics. Anything more and I can go straight to the source: A Complete Guide to Heraldry by Arthur Charles Fox-Davies and Illustrated by Graham Johnston, originally published 1909.

Frugal GM's One Day Sale!

Today is a "special" day for me....I'll let you guess, but for one day I'm making the Frugal GM's already inexpensive offerings 43% off at Drive Thru RPG.

Interesting RPG System Map

I woke up way too early this AM and thought I'd get a head-start on tomorrow's post, but I ended up just doing some random link-hopping, which is often a pleasant pastime unto itself. One place I ended up on is Inkwell Ideas, specifically on their Tabletop RPG Poster page.

Basically it is a 2' x 3' poster of just about every RPG out there right now. I'm sure it is missing some and the organization needs a little work, at least for my preferred games, but my games are in there. Unless you've played them all you are bound to miss some/misplace some. Of course this is only as current as 2012.

The poster is $14, which is a good deal if you've ever priced out getting 6 square feet of full-color map printed. It also comes with a pack of stickers marking what games you've played (or maybe would like to play?). You could also use this map to try and pick a new game to try. For some gaming groups the $14 would be well spent if it cuts down the decision time on selecting a new system to try.

I didn't think I've played many different games, but when I plotted it out I was a bit surprised. This won't blow up enough to see the games, so you should just head on over to Inkwell Ideas to see the map for yourself.

Frugal GM Review: Noteboard

One of the more unusual items I came across at the Origins Game Fair was a little portable noteboard aptly called Noteboard. It didn't stand out much at the Pro Fantasy (Campaign Cartographer) booth, but I quickly recognized it as an old item on my mental "check it out when you can" list. I remember some brouhaha when it first came out...whenever that was. These days it probably would have made it to a Kickstarter.

Anyway, the Noteboard was much cooler than I recalled. My only complaint is I wish it was a bit bigger.....ok, a lot bigger. Instead of 35" by 15" I wish it was 35" x 30". Everything else about it is cooler than expected. Basically this is an easily folded whiteboard surface that is gridded (and how!) on one side and pure white on the other. This isn't a series of notecards pushed up together like it might look like at first glance. Instead it is a whole sheet that has been strategically die cut and then laminated on both sides in such a fashion as to allow the whole thing to fold up to 3" x 5" x .75". The die cut is important because it makes the grids possible.

Origins 2014 Convention Report

Technically I just got back from the Origins Game Fair today, since I didn't get home until after midnight this AM. After way too little sleep due to overly gracious pets I've managed to get most things unpacked and some things put away, but I wanted to get some version of a Con Report on the blog today.

Free GM Resource: PosteRazor

This week's Free GM Resource is a useful tool allowing you to print out your own poster-sized graphics files at home.

I'm not sure if you've ever  priced out large-format printing at FedEx Kinkos or your local office supply store, but it isn't cheap. Black 7 White isn't too bad, especially for a special project, but color printing....right out unless somehow you have your players paying you to GM.

If that is the case, please let me know where to sign up!

PosteRazor basically lets you set the parameters for taking a large file and slicing it up into smaller pieces that you can stitch back together once it has gone through the printer in a more manageable state. You can set paper type, amount of overlap, borders.....it has it all.

The creator even has a little demo YouTube video, but I didn't think it was necessary to post it here.

Frugal GM Review: The Alienage District Map (HârnWorld) from Columbia Games Inc.

The Alienage District Map is a large (27.56" x 19.68" @ 300DPI) map of the foreign quarter of the City of Cherafir, one of the many (many) locales in HârnWorld.

Now I don't play Hârn, but I have and it is an über-detailed game & game world that pushes the "realistic" RPG pretty much to the point of absurdity.....but the people who play Hârn love it and if you're like me, you at least have to give Columbia Games Inc. credit for going all out on the crunchy bits.

This huge map is so full of detail you could almost use it as a VTT map.....almost. The map is so big and so....locked down, that it is essentially unusable. Instead of giving us a graphic file a GM could use any number of ways, this map is presented on a big-assed PDF. Unless you wanted to take it down to FedEx Kinkos and pay through the nose for a large-format print of the file, the best you could do is look at it through your PDF viewer.

This would be a great map if it were worth using beyond viewing the PDF. Even if the PDF wasn't password protected then maybe you could import it into a graphics editor, but as it is the best most GMs could handle is printing it off at less than 40% to fit on a sheet of paper.

It is really a shame because they did make a helluva PDF. The layers were used to good effect so you could turn off things like the elevation markers, ceiling height (seriously, when was the last time you saw a ceiling height indicator on a RPG map?), etc.

If this map were just a little more user-friendly I would probably have given it 5 stars, but since the most I can do is look at it in my PDF viewer, it gets knocked down severely. I think just changing one setting (page extraction) would have made all the difference.

If I wanted I could always zoom in about 300% or more and take some screen shots then stitch the shots altogether in Photoshop, but that is more work than I'm willing to do. Hell, if the map were available to purchase in a better state I'd consider it......

Dagnabit...I Fumbled Again!

Here we are, just a scant few days before Origins and my trusty laptop decides to try and die on me. I've got it going again and basically had to do a fresh install of everything...after backing up my files.

Everything seemed to be ok, I was only missing some emails and passwords I had stored in Outlook, but when I went to restore my RPG directory the overwhelming majority of my files weren't on my backup drive!

Oh crap!

Evidently my backup of pretty much all of my paper models and all of my digital tokens are gone, as were gigs of PDF files. My backup's backup has most of the files, and some of the missing files I can either transfer from the physical medium I have or DriveThruRPG. The biggest thing I'll be missing is a plethora of digital tokens I've collected over the years. Somehow they didn't get saved to either backup.

I think this will be a good week for vacation....starting last Friday. I have posts lined up already starting this Friday. I'll be spending my free time trying to recover and reorganize my RPG files....and doing multiple backups.

Free Map 031: A Micro Campsite Map

I'll be the first to admit that today's free map isn't a lot to look at. I've been playing around a bit with attempting to add in some colored pencil "effects". Some time ago I scanned in some large spots of color derived from scribbling with a set of colored pencils. Instead of using any given Photoshop effects I basically just insert my colored file behind the layer I'm working on and erase the top layer of color to expose the irregular colored pencil layer.

I like the effect, but I thought I might toy with it a bit to see what kind of tweaks I could achieve.

While I don't particularly care for the end results, especially factoring in the extra time (way too much extra time), it was worth the shot and I learned from the effort.

If only I could say that about all my endeavors.......

Here is the original file, a tiny campsite map that I was creating for #MicroMapMonday (next week obviously):

Nothing fancy, just a small clearing with a log, campfire pit, and some space for a tent or two. I think I'd normally not draw the outside edge of the tree ring, but I wanted more border to work with on the coloring experiment, which also involved some extra use of Adobe Illustrator.

This was my end result:

A bit "meh" for my tastes.....I quickly re-did the original map a second time, pretty much following my original methodology. I did do a quick pass-through Adobe Illustrator and copy back in some of the resulting AI file. I like this version much better, and it took maybe 1/4 of the time:

I think some of the color variation I was going for with my experiment already existed in my colored-pencil scans, which explains why I took too much time and didn't get the results I was looking for.

At least now I know better......

Since there are two maps on this post I went ahead and put both of them up for sharing. I linked the one I like best to the intro-graphic, but you can get it here and the first attempt here. 

Free GM Resource: Bonus Goodies from & Magazine!

It feels like I'm completely dipping back into the well, since I posted about & Magazine almost a year ago, but news about the beginning of a mega-dungeon hit my in-box yesterday.

While Castle Trikelion is the new kid on the block, & Magazine has a few more other downloads that are worth checking out. At the time of this post there are two adventures, two supplements, and an "unofficial publication", in addition to the Castle Trikelion.

The magazine website has had a facelift and while it is working a bit slow for me (I'm assuming there is heavy Monday morning Castle downloads.....), you should check out the downloads page. Unfortunately the downloads page doesn't actually have any download links....odd....but there is a link to the newest & Magazine page and the horizontal menu has drop-down links to the individual section pages.

Frugal GM Savings Opportunity: Dave Graffam Models

This morning I woke up a bit earlier than usual and did my normal web surf, only to find that Dave Graffam Models is having a HUGE sale over at DriveThruRPG (thanks Mark CMG for the catch!).

I featured the trio of Dave's free model bundle nearly two years ago and his work has only gotten better in the interim. Hell, I'd argue he's the best paper model maker out there...and I really like some of the other guy's work!

I have no idea how long this sale is going on for, but it is a great opportunity to pick up a lot of pieces at a almost-stealing price.