New (Free) Frugal GM Product at Drive Thru RPG

I'm happy to announce a couple of new free products from the Frugal GM available through Drive Thru RPG.  Both products are essentially the same, being Thank You Cards for the most important person running a Role Playing Game: your GM/DM.

          FGM010G Game Master Thank You Card
          FGM010D Dungeon Master Thank You Card

I'm in the process of sending off Thank You Cards to the GMs who ran for me at GaryCon.  Usually I'm sitting on the other side of the table and it does often seem to be a thankless job.

I've found, in my own case at least, that a little bit of gratitude goes a long way.  Visit Drive Thru RPG and get your own Thank You Cards today.

*If you GMed for me at GaryCon I guess this post is blowing the surprise.....surprise!

Free GM Resource: Convenience Store Floorplans

This week's Free GM Resource is a little specialized and is probably only of use to those of you playing RPGs in a modern setting, or perhaps some post-apocalyptic RPG.

I wish I had these available when I was running Final Days because I like the idea of being able to battle undead in a familiar setting.

This collection of Convenience Store Floorplans comes from Supermarket Services Company.  I don't expect anyone here will be needing them to design your next grocery store, but if you are a retail tycoon looking to expand....

This just goes to show you that there are a lot of great resources out there in the wild for Frugal GMs to discover.  I'm thinking you could probably use one of these plans scaled out as a variant of Zombies!!!

Frugal GM Quick Craft Tip: Aging Wood

Just a quick craft tip for some of your hobby project that may involve building terrain with wood.

Before you assemble your wooden pieces, consider aging the wood by painting it with a strong tea solution and after that dries brushing on some vinegar that has had some steel wool resting in it for at least 24 hours.

This is relatively quick and easy to do and sure beats trying to paint on the effect of aging wood.  More details with pictures can be found here.

Free GM Resource: Greywolf's "Fonts"

This week's Free GM Resource is just a fraction of the collection available over at Greywolf.Critter.Net, which you may want to poke around a bit more than the brief offering I'm highlighting today.

On Greywolf's "font" section there is a rather large collection of graphics that have been mapped as a smaller collection of fonts.

Instead of having to import a bunch of individual pictures, you could just select the appropriate font and type away.  There are a couple of ways you can use these fonts, but I'll leave that to your imagination.

If any of you happen to be going to GaryCon, make sure you try to say "hi".

Another Side Visit to the Craft Store

Lately I've been making a lot of side visits to the craft store.  It always seems like I need another craft punch, or some more magnetic sheeting for my miniatures boxes.  I do like to wander around in that store a bit, looking for inspiration.  I have several future gaming projects in mind, one of which will be a post (and maybe a contest) all on its own, so I won't spoil it here today.

When I go to this particular store I make sure I'm armed with a coupon or two.  Usually there is a 40-50% off coupon for a single regular-priced item.  If you are willing to make trips, you can save quite a bit.  This store is just a stone's throw from the office supply store I get my paper model's printed up and less than a block away from the big-box electronics store I like to visit, so multiple stops into the store aren't an issue.

I casually mentioned the plastic toys in my last craft store visit post, but there were two that really "popped" for me on a recent visit.

Now these figures cost about $20 a pieces, which is pretty high, but if they work for you and you get them for 40-50% off.....they aren't too bad.  Now the giant cyclops is probably a bit large for many games (the height is a rough approximate), but the hydra is right in there...at least for a HackMaster game.

It's just worth checking these figures out because you don't know what gems you may find.  Even at $20 full price the figure might be a worthwhile deal when you factor in purchase price (plus shipping) of a traditional figure and all the time painting it.  I'd probably go with a paper mini, but sometimes you really just want to plop down a cool figure.  I can think of one particular convention game where the players faced off against a hydra.  I'd have paid $20 just to see the look on their faces to lay this mini on the table as their adversary.

That particular day at the store I was looking for mini bases and I already picked up some magnetic sheeting for a good price, but I was hoping for a cheap source of 1" wooden discs.  I didn't find any, but I did come across a tool I will be adding to my GM toolbox (not proverbial, I actually have a dedicated GM toolbox).  This versatile tool is essentially a soldering iron with a variable heating control and a bunch of specialized tips.  I've hacked a soldering iron for use cutting Styrofoam for modeling, but I wanted something a bit more effective.  Someone makes a series of foam cutting tools that are nice, but they are specialized for a single task and are crazy expensive.  I figure with this tool and a dedicated large cutter (available in the floral foam section for about the same price) I should be good to go.  I can also use this to cut & engrave plastic for templates, leather, and wood.

The normal price is $30, but practically a steal with a 40-50% coupon. 

Of course this store has all the normal scissors, punched, papers, and glues.....everything you might need to spice up your home game.

Free GM Resource: Map-a-Week Archive

This week's Free GM Resource is another collection of assorted maps from the folks over at Wizards of the Coast.  Back in the day they used to have this awesome thing called Map-a-Week.

I wish I was good better at making maps because this is the kind of thing I'd love to do here on this blog.  Ahh.....maybe someday.  Until then, I'll just find pre-made maps I can use as needed.

The Map-a-Week archive gives you a listing of eight years of maps!  By my quick GM math that means if you were to print these out and try to carry them around you would be encumbered according to most RPG rulesets.

The most difficult thing you'll have to deal with is simply sorting all these maps into some workable system.  You might not use all of the maps, but I'm certain that any enterprising GM can get some use out of this great resource.

Contest Winner!

As promised I used Maptools to determine who would get first crack at my abundance of paper miniatures.  I will admit that I had to re-do the virtual roll-off because one person was accidentally represented twice when I counted up what number to roll (/r 1dx)...and that person won initially.

Whoops...my bad.  Probably just as well because I don't think that person wants the minis anyway.  If I'm wrong I'll make it up to him in some other fashion.  I'm lucky in that I know a few of my followers "offline" so to speak.

Congrats to Kerry Harrison!

I'll be sending Kerry a note via Blogger, but I'm not confident that those messages get seen as everyone I've sent messages to in the past haven't responded.

Kerry, if you read this (and I would hope that you do), please shoot me an email with your contact information so I can wrap up these minis and send them out to you.  If it ends up you don't want them....no harm in that....let me know so I can try to contact Aaron, who was next on the list.

The best way to reach me is through email, but you can always leave a comment also.  I have comment moderation on so comments don't get posted, but I would be wary of using that and keep it as a last resort.  The Frugal GM email is, unsurprisingly:

I have no clue if using this picture reduced the spam bots, but I had fun putting it together.

Edit: Kerry has been in touch so I'll be getting these off next week.  It appears that comments from blog followers bypasses comment moderation.  I'll have to poke around in the settings.

Frugal GM Review: Fantasy Cutouts Hovel

I finally went and assembled this rather interesting little home....or hovel, from Fantasy Cutouts.

It is a cute & quirky little building that came in a 14 page PDF....7 pages of which were ads.  I don't mind some ads in a free PDF, but when half of the thing is nothing but ads it is a little much.  It isn't a big deal unless you don't delete the ads before having the file printed on nice cardstock at a print shop.

I didn't do that....this time, but I have accidentally done it before.

This paper model is not for the new paper modeler.  The instructions are a bit on the sparse side, consisting just of some pictures of how the parts go together.  I wish that the part numbers had been printed on the parts themselves, possibly in areas where they get glued together?  There were a lot of little parts to this model and I'm glad I had the foresight to mark the pieces up before cutting them out.

This roughly 6" model has a number of parts spread out over five pages.  It seemed quite excessive at first.  The reason there are so many parts is because the walls of this hovel are quite thick, consisting of more than just a front and back glued together.  There are cutouts for windows and two small doors which can swing open.  The fireplace on one end sticks out a bit into the living space and there is a small woodpile that gets glued on to the outside.

I really enjoyed this extra "body" to the model, but I found it a bit difficult to work with.  One window is quite tiny, maybe 1/4" square.  I just had to glue it into the window frame.  On the one hand it was a cool effect, having this tiny widow in the middle of a thick wall....with an actual window frame, but it was a PITA to get everything to fit right.

There were so many parts that had to be lined up just right.  Getting the cuts and fold perfect was impossible for me.  While I thought I was doing a decent job, the finished model had a lot of gaps and bits of blue and white I did not want showing.  I wished that they had not used a light blue color to denote areas where the building pieces were glued together.  I also wish they had basically colored outside the lines so if parts didn't line up perfect the model's color would cover up some of the errors. A light beige or even a darker "wood" brown would have hidden some minor imperfections in craftsmanship.

Overall I liked this model even though it was a bit "fiddly".  I sure wouldn't want to be assembling a string of them, but I could see printing up a couple and maybe mounting the pieces to foamcore instead of building it out completely.  I think if I used two thicknesses of foamcore, I could put the window in between them.  This could shave a lot of time off of assembly and give me a sturdier model.  Of course if I did that then I'd need to Photoshop out the light blue bits.

The added depth of the windowsills and the swinging doors were an excellent touch and even though I had problems with assembly, I would recommend this model for a more experienced builder.  This free model from Fantasy Cutouts really is one of the nicer homes I've had the pleasure of putting together.  I think with a few minor tweaks I could see this being an even better model.