New HackMaster Form-Fillable PC Sheet

It's been a good six week to two months since I started this latest version of my form-fillable PC sheet, and I've finally finished it.

I ended up making three different versions of this PC Sheet, one for multi-classed spellcasters, one for "regular" spellcasters, and another for fighter & thiefy types. The largest of the trio is only 8 pages while the other two are 6 pages each.

An earlier version had a bunch of spellcards to help track all of a Cleric's or Mage's spell details, but it added too much bulk to the finished product.

Compared to my earlier version which came in at 1.27 MB, this "larger" version that has twice as many pages and better graphics only weighs in at 1.47 MB.

The older version is free while this newer version is $1.99 for all three sheets or $0.99 for one of the versions.

Free GM Resource: Tile Maker 2.0

Today's Free GM Resource is a pretty cool dungeon mapping "program" from the folks over at Project Zero Games.

Tile Maker 2.0 is a rather simple, well....a tile maker. You use the easy web interface to create a single tile which you can print out. There are twenty different room/corridor types and a large number of items to place within each room.

Item placement is quick and simple. You can churn out rooms at a pretty good clip if you want, allowing you to create simple & effective dungeons....

....all for free. If you have a PDF printer installed you can get even more mileage out of this program. I've only made a few tiles to play around with Tile Maker 2.0, but here is a quick & simple dungeon:

Click for a different example

There were two things I noted specifically about this tile program. First was the fact that this will print out at roughly 200 DPI. If you are using this to print out 1" = 5' tiles for actual table-top play you'll get a little bit of detail loss during printing. For virtual table-top use this won't be an issue.

The second thing I found is a bit of a surprise. There are hidden objects for you to use! If you cycle through the rotation of objects using the space bar, some objects with rotate then morph to other objects. The fire pit, for example, will change through several types of fires and then onto torches. The trap door will rotate and then open up.....

This is a pretty cool hidden feature.

Hoody-Fricken-Hoo! "My" Adventure is Now Available Online.

Last GaryCon I was offered a proposal to write a HackMaster adventure for Kenzer & Company. Steve Johansson had a skeleton framework of an adventure (a single page map), but didn't have time to flesh it out. He gave me the rough map with the designated encounters that I was "fortunate" enough to experience 1st hand as a player.

Fortunate might be a bit of a misnomer because the adventure was a bit of a meat grinder for a couple of reasons. A good number of the players played either pre-gens or quick-rolled up characters and I think we all cared more about just having a good time and trying to fling our PC's bodies against the adventure's foes...

....and we did have a good time!

The initial adventure proposal

I fleshed out a full adventure, made a cover (above) and submitted it last April. The adventure map
took me a little more time to do, but I had that done in May. Fast-forward a few months of intense editing and Kenzer & Company has a new adventure to release.

A Sewer Runs Through It is designed for 1st level PCs and can serve as a great start to an urban campaign. Although our experience at GaryCon was...interesting...I think most home groups would have a better go at it.

.....and for the record, anything you don't like about the adventure is due to Steve's edits. The stuff you like....all me.

Free GM Resource: Frontier Explorer

As a nod to last week's Free GM Resource of Star Frontiers, I wanted to make people aware of this excellent fanzine which supports the game.

Frontier Explorer is a web-based magazine that primarily supports Star Frontiers.

If you play Star Frontiers, or are thinking about playing Star Frontiers, you should check out this zine and get involved in the community so they keep on producing new issues.

Free GM Resource: "Old School" Monster Database Project

One thing I've noticed is that as far as RPG "apps" go, iOS gets a lot more love than Android.

This week's Free GM Resource is an Android app with a title that pretty much explains it all......

....The "Old School" Monster Database Project is a monster database for your Android device. Using the database is easy and if you run one of the old school (or original) FRPGs then you can get a lot of mileage out of this app.

"New" Frugal GM Adventure Available on DriveThruRPG

Just a quick post to note that I have put up for sale one of two 4th Edition HackMaster adventures I wrote years ago.

The "Test" was a relatively simple 1st level adventure/tournament that I wrote to help train some new HackMaster players in assorted tactics.

I don't think it translates well to the current low-magic edition of the game, but it shouldn't take too much work for a variety of other OSR games.

Free GM Resource: Star Frontiers

This week's Free GM Resource is another whole game.....and then some. Thanks to one Timoth Norris (AKA  Zane M. Cole), Star Frontiers is available online. Usually when things like this become available you get some free rules and maybe....maybe an adventure or two. Star Frontiers (.com) has a ton of free goodies to include:
          Rules (pretty much all of them)
          Adventures
          Character/Starship Sheets
          Quests

Frugal GM Review: Gygax Magazine #2

Now I realize that I usually review free product that enterprising GMs might find useful at their table, but sometimes I'm simply just impressed by something that might be overlooked by the "I don't care unless it is free crowd."

Gygax Magazine is a quarterly magazine that does a lot more than just pay homage to the classic Dragon magazines that I'm immediately reminded of. The content of this magazine was quite interesting for a number of reasons.