Frugal GM Review: Brave the Labyrinth - Issue #1

I have just finished reading the inaugural issue of Brave the Labyrinth, a new quarterly fanzine for Labyrinth Lords.

Looking through my older posts I cannot find anything already written regarding Labyrinth Lords, so *spoiler*....that will probably be up next week.

As a Frugal GM I have always been interested in both official magazines and fanzines that support FRPG games. While not all are high-caliber offerings, there are usually a lot of great ideas to be found that are a bit off the beaten path. Even if you have players that seem to memorize every aspect of the core rulebooks, this "bonus" content is probably not on their radar.

Brave the Labyrinth is a "pay-what-you-want" offering from Small Niche Games that is available in both download and print (print does have a set price) formats. With the notable exceptions this fanzine is black & white and notable without exception is the high quality/production value of this fanzine. It is a little light on art, but I really didn't notice this until I specifically went looking for the art to comment on this review.

Now I don't play Labyrinth Lord and doubt I will. Nothing against the game, I just don't stray too far

from my favorites. That being said, this fanzine is FULL of content I am going to be using in my own game. I really don't see much of anything I cannot use, unless I really want to stick to rules-as-written for the system I'm playing.

I think that the content of Issue #1 is pretty close to drag-n-drop for anyone playing 1st Edition AD&D or one of the retro-clones. It would work well for HackMaster 4th Edition and with just some minor tweaks any other FRPG.

Inked Adventures Contest Winner

The Inked Adventures contest ended Sunday night, well technically Monday morning, at midnight. We only had enough entries to award the 1st place prize of Inked Adventures Hand Drawn Large Geomorph Tiles.

The winning entry is.......(imagine a drum-roll please)....Dungeon Mama. She had a great blog post showing several different Inked Adventures pieces, including some free pieces, and I'm a big fan of how she broke down what she used and where you can get it.

Congrats Dungeon Mama, I hope you'll be able to put the new geomorphs to good use for your "gnomelet".

Free GM Resource: Random Utilities for Random Games

If you've been following this blog for long at all you know there are a few things I'm just a sucker for. Free random generators are pretty high on my list.

Now I do prefer being able to access my random tables offline even though I'm online all the time. The reason for this is because I prefer to be prepared for running games where I don't have internet access because it does happen.

The folks over at Mithral and Mages seem to pretty much have me covered because all of their wonderful tables can be printed to PDFs online and downloaded. That is pretty fricken cool if you ask me. Sure, I can easily print off a webpage to PDF on my laptop, but let's say I was checking out the site on my iPad and needed to access that list later. A few clicks and I'm done.

They have thirty (30!) different generators to check out. I used a few of the generators and I really liked the results. I wish I could buy some of the tables for offline use and at least with some of the name tables you can. You'll have to do some cut & paste and manipulate for your generator, but if the list is long enough and cheap enough (they are) it'll be worth it.

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.