Get This Awesome Map for Only $1 (Limited Time Offer)

Just a quick note that Heroic Maps is selling a cool 20" x 30" battlemap for only $1 in celebration of International Tabletop Day.

I have no clue how long this sale will last, but at a buck you need to jump on this thing. Great for printing off and VTT use!

Click on any of the graphics in this post or use this link.

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Free GM Resource: Les' Wash Recipe

I'm being quite selfish with this week's Free GM Resource, which is basically just some free information that will cost you a little bit should you try to use it, but the results are well worth the price.

It's selfish because I had completely lost track of this information so when I needed to use it I was back to square one and not having a clue how to use the materials I had acquired.

The free info is how to make some awesome mini/terrain washes. The details can be located at a couple of different places, but if you don't save/print them you can be totally lost when the time comes.....much like I was.

These washes were for sale and then they weren't and then maybe they were, but the links I checked were no good....

WASH RECIPE:

You will need:

• Distilled Water (grocery store)
• Liquitex Matte Medium
• Liquitex Flow-Aid Fluid Additive
• Plastic Squeeze Bottle
• Daler-Rowney FW Acrylic Water-Resistant Artist's Ink
• Large Plastic Squeeze Filler Bottles
• Recipe notebook so you can write down custom mixes
• All recipes use 1 oz bottles. Adjust to whatever size you decide to go with.

Preparation:

1. Fill 1 filler bottle with Matte Medium, the other with a 10:1 Distilled Water and Flow Aid.
2. Fill the 1oz Dropper Bottle half way with Matte Medium then fill the rest of the way with the Water/Flow Aid mix leaving a little room for the ink drops so you dont over flow.
3. Every bottle uses this combination to start with.
4. Shake inks well before adding them to the mix.

Colors:

• Soft Body Black: 20 drops Black
• Heavy Body Black: 60 drops Black
• Parchment: 40 Drops Flesh Tint
• Flesh Wash: 40 Drops Burnt Umber
• Dark Sepia: 40 Drops Sepia
• Blue: 40 Drops Rowney Blue
• Green: 40 Drops Dark Green
• Purple: 40 Drops Purple Lake
• Stone - 60 Raw Sienna: 20 Black
• Ruby - 60 Flame Red: 20 Black
• Armor Wash - 60 Sepia: 20 Black
• Sapphire - 60 Rowney Blue: 20 Black
• Baby Poop - 60 Flame Orange: 20 Black
• Alagae - 60 Dark Green: 20 Black
• Sewer Water - 60 Burnt Umber: 20 Black
• Amethyst - 60 Purple Lake: 20 Black
• Concrete - 60 Flesh Tint: 20 Black
• Storm Cloud - 60 Turquoise: 20 Black

If you want to see examples of these colors, check out this page (this is the guy's blog, so poke around for some other awesomeness while you are there).

Free GM Resource: Swords & Wizardry Light

This week's Free GM Resource is a companion to another Free GM Resource from back in 2015...over three years ago.

Swords & Wizardry Light is a labor of love from none other that Eric Tenkar (of Tenkar's Tavern fame).

Technically this "freebie" is a PWYW and a bit of a twofer. 1st you have the 4 page Fast-Play Rules and then you have these Character Cards.

The whole ruleset is already "out there" and featured back in March, 2015, but the cool thing about these two products is that they are really stripped down versions of the game, perfect for introducing to newbs or running a real quick one-off.

My "Work-In-Progress" Wizard's Tower

For the last few months I've been collecting supplies to build some towers for terrain pieces. The idea was to make them out of pink insulation foam and to use old booze bottle tubes (they probably have a proper name that escapes me) as the base. I currently work at a liquor store, so these basic supplies are easy enough to get.

While I was collecting supplies I went and built...and rebuilt...a hot wire foam cutter that works pretty decent. I think I'll probably save up to buy a proper cutter only because I think it'll be faster and even more precise than what I have now.

This morning I finally finished my 1st tower and I'm calling it very much a "work-in-progress" build, even though this stage is done. The idea was to have a somewhat "wonky" wizard tower. I think I accomplished that with the tower, although the way I did the build proved difficult to paint & seal properly. It doesn't show up that bad in normal light, but there were a lot of cracks and crevices that still show pink foam. The top of the tower was definitely "wonky" before I started tiling it, but the tiles covered it up too much. The tiles themselves are too think and didn't paint up the way I wanted them to, so it's back to the drawing board on them. I already have another idea to try out. I was going more for wood shingles, so there is a brownish base (unpainted cardstock), greyish/weathered parts, and a light coating of green to represent moss.

The top actually comes off fairly easy and the inside could be used for storage. What I'll probably end up doing is figuring out the new roof and simply replacing this roof with one I like better.

Free GM Resource: Warped Clips YouTube Channel

It might be germane to note that I don't watch on-air television, I don't have cable, and *gasp* I don't even have Netflix. I do watch a lot of movies, some cartoons, and a lot...I mean a lot...of YouTube.

This week's Free GM Resource is another YouTube channel. This time around it is Warped Clips. What I like about Warped Clips is that most of the builds are things I haven't seen elsewhere and the clips themselves tend to be quite short.

Take this short video on making mini candles for your terrain. The guy pretty much makes actual mini candles and the finished result is simply brilliant.


Warped Clips isn't a big channel, so it has probably skipped most people's radar.....

Free GM Resource: Vulpinize Your Maps!

This week's Free GM Resource is another one of those "have I used this before?" things that I had to take some extra time to check out. I'm not adverse to re-visiting earlier resources, but I like those re-visits to be deliberate and not too-often.

These Map Tutorials are a series of Blog posts over at the Observations of the Fox, which is Michael Weman's blog.

Personally, I suck at drawing maps so tutorials like these have really helped me out in the past, serving as a base that I can use to work off of as I try to figure out my own style.

Example Graphic

Each post has a graphic outlying the info from the post. It's clearly a scan of a page, but it is useful to save the pics. I only wish they were higher resolution so I could print them out into a booklet for me to reference when I'm trying my hand at drawing (which I don't do often because....well I already stated I suck at drawing).

The Map Tutorials are definitely worth checking out!

Free GM Resource: Village Map Generator

This week's Free GM Resource is an online Village Map Generator from our old friend over at Inkwell Ideas.

This generator is on a bit of a back page that has probably been forgotten about for some time, bu I think it could be rather useful for some GMs. There are something like 9 options you can force onto the generator, or just hit some random seed.

The only problem I've run into using this Village Map Generator is trying to save the resulting generation. There are some brief instructions on the page, but that was a bit cumbersome and just didn't work for me. I ended up just taking a couple of screen shots and stitch them together in Photoshop. While I was there I screwed around a bit to get rid of the gradient in the background.

Before:

After:

These maps might be quite simple, but the real value is the fact you can tweak the settings to get something that can be quite useful....and quick. I think the Village Map Generator from Inkwell Ideas is worth bookmarking.....

I've Decided to Get Back Into Patreon...for Reasons!

A couple months ago I pretty much gave up on Patreon and...surprise, surprise it has had a negative impact on my creativeness and straight-out production.

In short.....I've done diddly squat RPG-wise since "quitting".

This is not good. Evidently I need the motivation. This is why I'm jumping back on the Patreon bandwagon again, but I'm going to change things up:

1st off I will only have one Patron/Reward tier and that is $1 a month. Oh yeah, instead of a "per creation" model I'm switching over to a monthly model. The only problem I have with this change is that it appears that Patreon's only option for a monthly campaign is an up-front charge, which I do not want because that could incentivize me to not produce, which is kind of the point in the first place.

I'm hoping that I can do a bit of a work-around by officially not making any changes until after the beginning of April. If I make the change mid-month before I post anything then my Patrons would get charged in May, technically for the month of May, but good enough for my purposes.

Since I want to do a monthly model my goal is one map, one Tweak & Toss, and then one "other" thing a month. Get back to d30 Tables, maybe another map, bonus monsters, or just something altogether different.

I still have some work to do on the actual Patreon campaign page, but you can check in if you want to see what I'm attempting to do.....