Map 011 With Example of Use (Two Encounters)

This week's free map is something I made up as a bit of a surprise in the middle of a tournament adventure. All of us, players and GMs alike, are creatures of habit. If you are able to see the habits that you and/or your players have formed, then you get to have a little fun at their expense.

Now I don't mean "Killer GM" fun, just a minor tweak or two to catch the players offside a bit.

You know.....like if you players always choose to take right turns when starting out a dungeon, you can work with that.

I know as a player that when the GM throws down a map, things just got "real". To this end I like to sometimes bring out map and/or prop pieces for no reason at all. Sure it can "waste" a little bit of table time, but when you put the players on alert when they aren't expecting it and then something doesn't happen..., well that is a teaching moment.

Normally in a tournament your encounters are somewhat spaced a bit. Throw down a map and the players are expecting to complete some challenge (combat, social, or trap) and move on. With this map I combined two encounters to help throw off the players just a wee bit.

On this map the players are travelling from right to left in an underground tunnel. The tunnel opens up and the players can make out a couple of things: a small pool of water with a post and rope leading into the water, a small tunnel at the back, and an awful stench near the entrance to the tunnel.

As the party checks things out they get attacked, which is the combat encounter. I used Stirges so the party would be engaged/grappled and not try to flee into the next encounter. When the battle was done the party has two options: try the water route or go along the side tunnel. The distance between the two pools was such that and average swimmer could just make it.

The stench? That is an olfactory marker for the inhabitant further along the cave system to know not to take the path. In the path are four Shriekers which cause such a ruckus that everyone knows there is someone at that spot. Setting off the Shriekers turns the next encounter from a combat where everyone can be surprised to an ambush that can really put the party at a disadvantage.

The players were only shown the right side of the map and they assumed that the encounter was pretty much done after defeating the Stirges......

Free GM Resource: Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque

This week's Free GM Resource is a series, well a trio for now, of GM sourcebooks that seems like a huge yearly zine.

Called Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque (say that 5 times fast), this annual compendium of "gothic fantasy" from Jack Shear comes from his blog of the same name.

These three sourcebooks are intended to be used in a custom game setting outlined in the first book, but they are filled with all kind of goodies you can use in any FRPG. Monsters, poisons, spells....you name it.

The first zine/sourcebook is 164 pages, the second is 118 and the third runs 112 pages. That is a ton of content. It took me quite a while just to skim the first volume and I want to go back and read it before moving on to the second, much less the third.

I'm not big on running a gothic campaign and there is pretty much no way I'd run this special setting, but there are lots of bits I will be using, like the "Random Weird Organization Generator" in the first volume. I'm going to put my players up against The Unutterable Cult Of Opheliacs and see how they fare.

Frugal GM Review: Dreamworlds Hex Tile Maps

This review is for the free Hex Tile Maps: Village and Roads Pack from Dreamworlds.

It is a representative example of their Hex Tile Maps line that costs between $1.99 and $6.99 (but most sets are $1.99).

This particular set consists of 20 hexagonal tiles, 5 pages of 4 tiles each. The tiles are about four inches across. The pages are A4 sized, so you'll have to re-size them when printing. Since I was going to have to re-size them anyway, I decided to reduce them in size about 50% and print them 6 to a sheet on 4" x 6" photo paper at the local store.

I was able to get a lot of these tiles made up for cheap this way. I spent less than $1.30 on a total of 60 printed tiles, which seemed pretty good to me. After mounting the pictures to some mat board I had I began the somewhat tedious process of cutting them out. Next time I think I'll mount them on a backing that is easier to cut out.

If printing them "full-size" I think I'd maybe go with some magnetic sheeting or something already suitably thick.

Realistically there are "only" 16 tiles in this set since one full page of tiles is blank. Of course, this isn't so much a stand-alone product, but a free addition to another set. The general idea is that these tiles are "random" and you can pretty much just put them together any which way to make a small village map. Most tiles of this nature are square, but Dreamworlds went with a hex shape.

The big difference between using squares and hexes are, of course, the addition of two more sides.

While this seems like a cool idea, in practice I think it detracts from the ability to easily create a random village. Most tiles have two or three roads that would connect to another tile. Two tiles have four roads connecting to other tiles.  With six-sided tiles this means that only 1/3 to 1/2 of the sides have to match up to other tiles. When laying out the tiles this meant I was spending more time trying to place tiles like a puzzle than I was simply putting them down.

Even though it seemed a bit "fiddly" to work with, I did enjoy the end result. A couple more tiles that had dead ends or more road connections would have been cool, but for the whopping $1.30 and supplies I already had......not complaining one bit. I might get one of the other sets and give it the same treatment.

Overall I thought this was an interesting new take on random map tiles and a pretty cool way to come
up with a quick village map. A few more tiles would really help round out this set. The 75 tile set that this is an expansion of is the most expensive of the set, but it is also the largest by far.











PS. My cat liked them as well!

Katie goes on a rampage.

Free Map 010

This week's free map is the second level of the eeeeeeevil temple from last week. The second floor is the private residence of the Head Priest and his personal guards.

There isn't a lot to this map.........

Like last week, the example given has numbered areas that aren't on the bigger version.

Hmmmm.....figures I've just noticed now that there is an error with the map. I'll leave it to you to notice it or not.....

Free GM Resource: Sketchup & Mr. Hook's GENERICA Project

Today's Free GM Resource is a bit of a twofer, depending on your point of view.

First up is the popular, free, 3D rendering program. Yes, there is a paid Pro version, but the basic version is still free for non-commercial use. You can get SketchUp for downloading here.

For a few folks, SketchUp might be the ultimate in mapping. Even I have to admit that being able to render a map in 3D is wicked cool. I've seen some game products done in SketchUp in a style that makes it look like it was drafted by hand and given an artist's once-over.

Me....I'm a bit too lazy to play with SketchUp, at least for now. I have enough problems mapping in 2D, much less in 3D. Given my predilection for using the computer to stitch together assorted map parts you'd think this would be the perfect thing for me.

I can, however totally get behind SketchUp if I get to download some wonderful renderings that other people have already created, which is really my main point in today's post. Mr. Hook, a graphic designer/illustrator from Nebraska, put together an awesome sampling of 3D RPG renderings. He calls it his GENERICA Project and I think the results are amazing. I'm only going to share one picture of his work, the quintessential tavern:

Seriously, don't you want to start off your adventure in a place like this? Since it is 3D you can move about the space virtually and change things however you want. Too many tables? Easily fixed. Needs a larger fireplace....done.

Even if you don't want to make your own models, I think you'll get a ton of mileage out of SketchUp and Mr. Hook's GENERICA Project files.

Free Map 009

I've already shared the basement levels of my adventure map, which is a little bit of putting the cart before the horse, but I liked those maps better than the above ground levels.

This map is the 1st floor of a private temple/residence of a High Priest of an evil god. The church's holy symbol is a closed, mailed fist and that symbol is used as the basis for this building.

The first floor is the temple portion which is used primarily by the
High Priest and his entourage. It is important to note that there was no attempt to make the well in this map placed accurately in relation to the stairwell. On this map I didn't see the point in wasting so much space.

The smaller version to the right has some numbered areas, but the larger version does not. I'm not a huge fan of this map if for no other reason I don't feel good about mapping out buildings in general.

Hopefully some of you might find this map useful......especially if you consider yourself as bad as doing buildings as I am.

Frugal GM Review: Plate Mail Games Background Loops

I've featured a couple different methods for putting sounds into your game and this last week I decided to go with a somewhat different track than I've played with before.

While I've been collecting sounds and music for some time I wanted something simple to use at the game table. Downloading an app and tweaking settings is more prep than I wanted. Nothing wrong with going that route if it works for you, but I often have enough going on that I don't want another "thing" to distract me.

Last week when I was browsing DriveThruRPG I came across this free Volcanic Cavern background loop from Plate Mail Games. Now I've been to the Plate Mail Games website before and wasn't particularly impressed, for a couple of reasons. They do have audio examples of their background loops, but some are a bit on the short side. I mentally filed them away as something to check in on later. When I got the full 10' Volcanic Cavern loop, well that was the "later".

Now I really don't think I'll get much use out of the Volcanic Cavern, much less a good portion of their current titles, but the sample did give me a good idea of what they offered. A quick purchase later and I had the Daytime Medieval City loop. At $1.50 I figured it would be worth checking out that night in-game.

All I did was transfer it to my iTunes collection and then my iPad. Coupled with a wireless bluetooth speaker I was able to toggle it on and off with a single press. Both loops are ten minutes long and if you set the player to loop you can have the background playing for as long as you like. The long length and varying noises doesn't give the soundtrack defining moments that make it seem like a file being looped.

I was quite impressed.

My only "extra" work for this was to play with my settings in iTunes to put all (both) background
loops into one album. As I add more tracks I'll add them to the one album just to make playing easier. Since I also use my iPad to look up PDF information I like how I can use one device to do multiple things. As long as the program I'm using doesn't compete for the speaker I can have the background loops going as I multi-task the device.

Plate Mail Games has a decent variety of background loop tracks and has just successfully funded a Kickstarter campaign for more sound effect tracks. I know I'll be picking up some more loops to use in my home game.

Free GM Resource: Handwriting Font Creator

A couple weeks ago I put up a free cuneiform-style font that I thought some folks might like. That was just me messing around a bit.

A couple of times I've used a custom font as a game prop. In addition to notes and letters in foreign fantasy languages, I've made a magical notation font so I can "write" spells out to form a spellbook of sorts.

Now, to make things easy I generally use English to type my stuff out and then use the custom font to simply change letters out. For example, if I was making a Russian-language game prop I wouldn't necessarily actually use Russian (Cyrillic) but instead have Cyrillic letters mapped out on the English alphabet. In this case I'm going more for a look rather than readability in the original language. Then, depending on the PC's language skill (and mechanics) I can simply change back some/all of the text back to English.

There are already a lot of custom fantasy fonts on the interwebs that you can download and use. This free online tool for creating your own font (from http://www.myscriptfont.com/) is real easy to use, but you need a scanner. There are only a few steps:

• Download & print the template sheet
• Fill it out with a good pen
• Scan the filled out template
• Upload the scanned file
• Download & install your new font

Creating your own fonts can go a long way in making it possible to put a personal touch on a lot of gaming projects. On hand-drawn maps, for example, you can dispense with having to label everything as you draw the map and instead scan it in and then use your font to type out the labels. Since you can manipulate the text, it is a lot easier than trying to incorporate it into the drawing.