"Wimpy" 2¢ Miniature

One of my more popular posts was for the Hefty 12¢ Miniature. When cleaning out my office I found even more of these miniatures, along with even more of the older Alea Tools markers I thought I had given away.

Not a lot mind you, but enough to make me wonder just where I had managed to squirrel all these things away. I'm pretty certain they were just part of the collection I had separated out for a trip to a game convention somewhere.

In with this stash were a small stack of....what for the sake of this post I will refer to as Wimpy 2¢ Miniatures. I had made a bunch of these up for players to use as PC tokens. They took a little bit more work to create, but were much cheaper and quite a bit easier to transport.

The biggest difference between the Wimpy 2¢ Miniature and the Hefty 12¢ Miniature is that instead of obtaining an cutting up a cardstock card from some collectible card game you are printing the minis at home. There are several options and variations on getting this done and your price might come out a bit more than a couple copper pieces, but even if the most expensive option is used it will be cheaper than the 12¢ miniatures.

1) You need to determine if you can print this at home or you need to go to a print shop. When I made mine I had access to a decent laser color printer. If you go the print shop route, you might need to glue the printed paper to your basing, which will make it more rigid (a plus), but make it more difficult to punch out (a negative).

2) You'll need to determine the magnetic sheeting you need based on your ability to print the minis. I used the same magnetic sheeting I used to make my miniature storage boxes. You may need to use the more expensive magnetic sheeting made specifically for printing. 

3) Get some digital files of the minis you want to print. There are plenty of good ones out there, some for free and others, well others will cost you. Since these files aren't going to be "consumed", the cost isn't factored into the price. A HUGE bonus here is that if you get some quality files, you can use them in your virtual games as well as your face-to-face games. A good place to start is with Devin Night's free tokens, but an even better place is with some of his paid tokens because they are usually at a higher resolution and will print out much better for you. As of this posting Devin has a sale on his new batch of 364 tokens for $35. That comes out to less than 10¢ a token.

4) Manipulate the tokens in your favorite program. Adobe Photoshop is my choice, but if you want a free alternative, go check out GIMP. You want your figures to come out roughly 1" equals 5', but I generally make them just slightly smaller in order to get an action pose come out "right" or to make sure all of the mini is visible. You want to make sure you have the spacing between each figure to be as tight as possible, but still have adequate separation. Using some grid-lines is invaluable.

Also, and I cannot stress this enough, make sure you factor in your printer's required margins. You could lose four whole rows of minis if your fail to factor this white space in. That space isn't wasted though, just make sure none of your printing extends into that area.

5) Once your minis are arranged as you like, print them on your magnetic sheeting using your printer or on paper at the print shop.

6) Using your 1" (or other size) hole punch, punch out your new minis. If you had the print shop print them out for you, I would glue the paper to the magnets first and then punch them out. It will be a lot less messy this way.

Now you have your minis! I recommend using them with 1" fender washers, just like in the Hefty 12¢ Miniature, but since they aren't permanently affixed, you only need enough washers to base the maximum number of figures you'll have out on the table at any given time. This cuts down on the weight and expense severely (mostly the weight). If you use Alea Tools markers, then you can just place these minis straight on them.

These wimpy minis weigh 6% of what a hefty mini weights, at 17% of the cost.

This is what $4 worth of minis looks like (with one red Alea Tools Marker for reference):

Oh...right, you guy probably want to see the math:

$1.49 sheet of 8.5 inch by 11 inch magnetic paper

÷ 80ish minatures per sheet

$0.02 cost per mini (actually 0.018, but I rounded up)

Now I know the printing isn't free, but by my math as long as it costs me 50¢ or less to print a single sheet at home I'm closer to 2¢ than 3¢ per mini.

If you've bothered to read down this far into my post, then you may be interested in obtaining the collection of "wimpy" miniatures from above. Not so much a contest this time as just a simple offer to ship them off to one of my subscribers. Next Saturday I'll reach out to a randomly selected subscriber/follower/member and offer to mail this lot off to them.

Free GM Resource: Free* Graph Paper

The website for what was intended to be this week's Free GM Resource is inexplicably down, so if it comes back online then maybe I'll be able to salvage that freebie.

In its place are two websites where you can download free graph paper:

www.printfreegraphpaper.com

incompetech.com/graphpaper

Both sites allow for some customization, with the incompetech site having quite a few more types of paper and customization options available.

*I know...technically this isn't free graph paper because you still have a cost involved in printing said paper. Please, just learn to deal with it because if this upsets you I doubt you're cut out for GMing. Yes, I went there.

Frugal GM Review: The Village of Cowfold

This is the second item from Chubby Monster Games that I've taken a look at. Shane's Delve was an excellent small map/short encounter area.

The Village of Cowfold is a rather small village that a GM can plop down along a trail for a bit of flavor. This free 31 page PDF features a small map of this 10-building village and details Cowfold's inhabitants. It is intended to be an introductory offering for the upcoming Waypoints line.

One of the problems is that Waypoints 0: The Village of Cowfold has been out for over a year now, so realistically there is nothing to introduce.

This game aid is system-less and really doesn't need much tweaking for a GM to use it at their home table. Of course, "much tweaking" can be a bit relative. I personally found the NPC descriptions a good read, but quite unsuitable for my in-game use. In general they were just too wordy and I felt like I needed a chart for relationships and a little cheat-sheet for NPC descriptions.

The bookmarks for the PDF were hit-and-miss. The village map was decent enough & had hotlinks to the appropriate pages, but the list of actual bookmarks were missing two village buildings. This isn't a deal-breaker by any means, but the PDF is secured so I cannot either fix this or even add my own bookmarks.

What I really liked were the ways the NPCs were inter-related and the fact that some of them had secrets that might never come to light, but could help a GM in running the NPCs. The list of potential
adventure hooks was also a nice touch.

Overall, a decent GM aid that with a little work, less than many other offerings of this type, can yield an interesting little locale for you players to visit. I think with just a few minor tweaks this could be an exceptional little village setting.

Free GM Resource: Digital Tokens from Devin Night

This week's Free GM Resource is a HUGE batch of free digital tokens from Devin Night. Devin has been around the digital table top scene for years now and I've bought a fair amount of tokens from him over the years. Of course a lot of those tokens are now FREE, but I thought they were a good deal at the time.....so I think they are an even better deal now.

I'm not sure why so many of his token packs are now free, but if you want some PCs, NPCs, and monsters for your digital table top, then you need to pick up these free tokens. You'll probably want to go and pick up some/all of his paid token packs as well. Like any artist, his work has just gotten better over the years and the token packs from his Kickstarter campaign are looking pretty good.....

Custom tokens now priced at $7.50 each....well worth it.

I'm guessing that the older tokens are now free just because his work has improved so much over the
years. Earlier tokens were pretty low-res and the newer ones are much larger. As I said I've bought a few tokens from Devin over the years, but I have also purchased some of his custom tokens as well. Three Four (I had forgotten about the Gnome-Titan "Monk" I had made) of these tokens are actually part of his free download, so if you don't like these three figures I guess I'm to blame......

These figures are full-sized as I received them, but in-use they are all the same size. The newer larger sized tokens are much better to work with, in my opinion.

Quick Craft Tip: Liquitex Flow Aid

Next time you are at the Art Supply Store.....you DO know where your closest art supply store is.....right? Next time make sure to pick up a small bottle of Flow Aid. You might want to get a nice squeeze/dropper bottle while you are at it.

This stuff is awesome and will pay for itself big time!

Mark off your bottle into appropriate measures (10 x 1 oz markings work for me) and dilute some Flow Aid to at least 1:10 with water.

This is the stuff!

Use this diluted Flow Aid to make your paint flow nice and smooth. If you combine it with some cheap latex primer from the hardware store you can get a great miniature primer at a fraction of the cost. My rough mental math puts a finished quart of good brush-on mini primer at under $10 and you'll have barely touched the Flow Aid. I have no idea what I would do with a quart of mini-primer, but if I made a smaller batch then I could use the rest of the primer (thinned down as appropriate) for my other hobby projects.

I would recommend using some of the rest of the diluted Flow Aid for your mini paints.

Free GM Resource: Tavern Maker

This week's Free GM Resource is an interesting little database program that quickly generates a tavern for you campaign. While TavernMaker isn't quite complete, there is really quite a lot going on under the hood. You can tell that there is some possible upgrades expected, but I'm not sure how forthcoming they will be.

Still, definitely worth a download.

The generator settings are quite easy to manipulate, consisting of four main variables with some sub-options as well. One thing I think is really great is that when you set up the variables the way you like them you can just save those settings. One way I think this is useful is I can set up the general parameters for an area and just regenerate or quickly tweak things on the fly.

When you generate a tavern you get a short description of all the people at occupied tables, a listing of what they have to pick-pocket, and a map. The map can be printed or saved as a BMP file. While the map is pretty simple, it does give a scale and even a coat of arms for the establishment.

It doesn't take too long to figure out that there is a lot of potential for this program, like adding tavern menus, etc. Unfortunately the project seems to have stalled out some years ago. Still, even in just this limited program offering there is a lot a GM can get out of this. If you need a tavern on the fly, use this to generate one, make any tweaks needed, then just add some names and menus.

TavernMaker can really cut down some of the work of putting together a tavern for your FRPG.

2014.06.20 Edit
When setting up my new office computer after a HDD crash I found I was missing some TavernMaker files and tried to download the program, with not too much luck. Fortunately I did find some help from the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, specifically the last update of 2013: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.tavernmaker.de/eng/men-eng-inf.htm

I've gone ahead and left the original links up in case they come back.....

Frugal GM Review: The Manse On Murder Hill

I'm trying to look ahead several gaming sessions to see if there is some groundwork I want to lay for my group. To that end I'm reviewing some adventures I might want to borrow ideas from.

The Manse On Murder Hill is an interesting adventure from Taskboy Games. Created for Labyrinth Lord, The Manse On Murder Hill is supposed to be the 1st adventure in the Return of the Red Talons trilogy. Unfortunately this adventure is the only full-length adventure available from Taskboy Games.

Still, the price is right....at free, so even if you aren't playing Labyrinth Lord you can get a lot of good use out of this adventure. Unfortunately for me and my uses, I'd have to change too much to fit this adventure into my current campaign. "Too much" in my case means I'd like to use this adventure closer to as-is, which means I simply choose to save it for later.

The Manse on Murder Hill is set for 6-10 characters of level 1-3. Pregens are provided at the end. This PDF adventure comes in at 29 pages (including cover). While the graphics are a bit sparse and there are only two pages of maps, what is present is more than adequate. There are a lot of nice little touches that I think all aspiring adventure writers need to include:

• Good rumor table
• Resolution (what happens depending on how the party performs)
• Extra adventures in the area after this adventure is completed
• Extended NPC descriptions

I don't want to provide any spoilers, but I will say that overall I really liked the story elements with one notable exception. Fortunately it takes next to nothing to make what I think is a needed change. It is as simple as swapping out one monster for another....which is exactly what I would do. Heck, for all I know what I see as an odd discrepancy is simply one of the subtle differences between Labyrinth Lord and some of the other OSR games.

I'm looking forward to the next adventure in the trilogy, but seeing as how The Manse On Murder Hill was written a year ago.....we will just have to wait & see.

TLDR review: Pick it up for free, regardless of the rules you play with, and odds are you'll get some
good use out of it.

Free GM Resource: Complete Monster Manual

This week's Free GM Resource is a rather extensive collection of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons monsters hosted on this German website.

This site advertises itself as a "complete" listing of the various monsters from pretty much ALL the 2nd Edition AD&D settings/game worlds. I was quite surprised at the list because some of these settings I had never heard of. I'm willing to bet that you, and more importantly, your players, haven't heard of all these settings, much less the monsters from the settings:

• AD&D 2nd Editions (Generic Monsters)
• Al-Qadim
• Birthright
• Dark Sun
• Dragonlance
• Forgotton Realms
• Greyhawk
• The Horde
• Kara-Tur
• Lankmar
• Masque of the Red Death
• Maztica
• Mystara
• Planescape
• Ravenloft
• Red Steel
• Spelljammer

With so many folks playing AD&D, HackMaster 4th Edition, or the various Old School Rules (OSR) games, being able to drag out a few new monsters that are already statted (or require little work to convert) is a huge boon.

If you don't play one of these compatible games you might be lucky to find an easy conversion from the 2nd Edition AD&D ruleset. Even if you have to do a lot of conversion work simply having a large store of monsters to start with might prove useful. The websites' page on monster stats might prove quite useful in making conversions.