Inked Adventures Contest Bump

Just a bit of a bump for the Inked Adventures Contest where you could win some free DriveThruRPG product from Inked Adventures.

I'm quite surprised by the lack of entries despite the pretty easy entry requirements. This is some low-hanging fruit for those that want to win free stuff.

Contest ends in four days!

Free GM Resource: Dungeon Mastering Adventure Archive

This week's Free GM Resource is a rather large list of adventures compiled by the folks over at Dungeon Mastering.

A bunch of these free adventures are 3.5 and 4th Edition D&D adventures from WotC, which you may or may not already have. The majority of this list of free adventures consists of the 18 (or so) volumes of 5 Room Dungeons, which was an adventure seed contest from the folks over at Roleplaying Tips.

None of the adventure seeds have maps, but they are a great resource for small dungeons, side missions, expansions, etc. I'm a bigger fan of the 5 Room Dungeons because they are not system-dependent.

GM Prep Tip: Spell Effects Templates

To be honest, this GM Prep Tip is just as useful for players, assuming your GM approves.

This tip also assumes that you play using a battlemat or map of some sort, online or off.

In the past I've used soft, flexible craft foam to create spell effects templates. When my DS Invoker (this was 4th Edition HackMaster) started tossing Lightning Bolts and Fireballs around the game could (depending on the GM) crawl to a halt while the GM tries to figure out where the spell effects occur.

Many spells have simple enough areas of effect that you don't need a template. One target within 100'? No problem. 2000 cubic feet starting within 40' and being deployed in a 5' wide and 10' tall corridor? Oh boy, this is going to get messy.

I know a lot of GMs who do not let players measure things out before determining spell effects. I

HackMaster Spell Effect Template

personally try to plot everything out on the battlemat, but I tell my players that this is not a perfect representation and while you think that target is four squares away and the scale is 5' per square, it might actually be 24' 6" away instead of 20' away. Nothing bugs me more than a player tapping the table to count the distance to get the perfect placement.

The fact that I have to catch myself from doing this as a player is not lost on me.

By making some spell effect templates in advance all the GM has to do is figure out where the spell is going to start and set the template down to see where the effects occur. Some spells might require multiple templates (like fireballs for different sized areas). For spells that have the ability to unexpectedly change, like a Lightning Bolt bouncing off of a wall, creating the templates from flexible craft foam let you fold the template back on itself to see how far back it reflects.

These days when I make a template I tend to have them printed out on transparency film and 3-hole punched to be put in my GM binder. If you have the template as a digital file you can re-size it as needed to use with your online games as well.

Creating templates for your NPCs and or PCs can save a ton of time at the table, which helps keep your game flowing smoothly.

Free GM Resource: Syrinscape

This week's Free GM Resource won't be for everyone, but for a few it might be just what they are looking for.

Syrinscape is a pre-arranged soundboard of RPG music and sound effects. You can download the program for free and it comes with two Soundsets: Bugbear Battle and Witchwood. You can purchase more Soundsets for $4 a piece or the whole current lot for $20.

Now I have some minor quibbles about this particular product, namely that the website mentions that "Unlike other soundboard-style apps, Syrinscape uses editable and adaptable libraries of sound files". These files are editable or adaptable only in the sense that you can turn them on and off or change the volume, but this is for a one-time use only. The program doesn't remember any changes you made and you cannot save your settings in any way.

For me this is a deal-breaker, and I'd rather use a program like Softrope, but I know there are a lot of
GMs who really want something simple and would like to incorporate sound-effects into their game. Syrinscape is definitely simple to use and when the Android & iOS versions come out I think it'll add a lot to some GM's game.

Right now there are two free Soundsets to play with and by toggling on and off the various effects I think you can get a lot of good free usage from Syrinscape while you evaluate it.

Free GM Resource: Paratime Design

This week's Free GM Resource is a rather large collection of files generously made available by the folks over at Paratime Design. I was quite surprised at just how many freebies that have, especially when compared to the few products they have available at Drive Thru RPG.

The primary artist, Tim Hartin, makes most everything available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.

Among these files are a bazillion individual maps, many sets of bundled maps, and even an adventure.

There are so many maps that Tim has made available that I'd recommend just bookmarking the various pages and downloading maps as you have need. I haven't read the adventure yet, but I'm looking forward to it.

GM Prep Tip: Handling Magic Items

I used to run a rather magic-heavy RPG, both at my home table and tournaments at conventions. One thing that really seemed to gum up the works was how we handled the loot, especially potential magic items. With a lot of players and/or loot, keeping track of which items were identified, either as being magical or fully identified, was a bit of a pain.

One thing that took a little more up-front effort, but paid HUGE dividends later, was the creation of item cards for an adventure. I'd start off with a stack of colored index cards and regular white cards. I see no reason why you could also just use "plain" white index cards and some colored highlighters.

Every potential magic item (quality weapons, armor, jewelry, etc.) got a white card. On the card I

wrote the common name of the item and a unique alpha-numeric identifier to show where the item came from. It didn't really matter what it was as long as I could look up the item if needed. A simple format and/or a key in my GM's book helped in this regard.

If the item was magical it got another index card, but this one was a different color. All items identified only as having magical properties used the same color. Another color was used for magical items that had actually been fully identified.

The cool part about this three-color coded system was that it was easy to find out who had what. The player holding the card obviously had their PC lugging it along. If the card went missing then that item was lost. When the players started identifying things I'd just have to swap out cards and it made players divvying up the adventure's spoils more of a physical event than it usually was. Many games have Identify Magic work such that not all of the properties of an item are identified. With the cards I could just write down the identified properties as we went along.

Free GM Resource: & Magazine

This week's Free GM Resource is a great little magazine dedicated to "filling the gaps" for old school gamers.

& Magazine is a little gem that had completely flown under my radar until recently, which is good only for the simple fact that there is a lot of catch-up for me to do now. They are up to issue #5 and there are also a couple of supplements and adventures as well.

Really not bad at all figuring this magazine started a year ago.

I'll freely admit I'm still only on my first issue, but that is because I just got this and because I'm actually wanting to read through the issues instead of skimming them. Aside from some production values (ie, not a lot of art), this magazine reminds me of the early Dragon magazines. There were two titles/subtitles that really drew me in on my initial skim which is why I'm now actually reading the magazine:
          85 Points for the Mathematically Challenged
          You Can't Fix Stupid

When I saw these two titles/subtitles I knew I was going to enjoy reading this and I haven't been disappointed yet. I've already found several things I'd like to use in my game and I think a GM would be hard-pressed to walk away from an issue empty-handed.

You should check out & Magazine today.

Another Free Map Product Available on DriveThruRPG

A month or two ago I read an open request for a map overlay. A GM I knew wanted to be able to put labeled hex grids over one of his maps.

I spent an hour or two putting something together, but that wasn't what the GM wanted. He wanted a computer program or app that would just automatically put overlays on his maps.

What I came up with was a huge 60" square PNG overlay labeled from A1 through to BY68. Just because he didn't want it I figured that maybe someone else would. The original one was black on a transparent background and I made an inverted copy of white on a transparent background.

If this is something you might find useful, go ahead and give it a download. The price should be a bit on the favorable side......