Experiments in Stippling

I've been working on some mapping, but not necessarily some maps.....

As much as I like to make maps, I don't consider myself that kind of artist. While it is fun to create, it is also often painful for me to do so. I just cannot spend a lot of time drawing things out. It doesn't take long for my hands to cramp up or for me to go into some sort of OCD "thing" where the physicality of what I'm doing starts driving me a little crazy. It's usually the repetition that gets me, so the nice little touches, like hatching a map, that are near impossible for me to do.

Free GM Resource: Blue Boxer Rebellion (Dungeonteller)

Last week I reviewed Ten Battle-Ready 25mm Dungeon Maps, and I hinted there would be another post gleaned from that download file...

Doug Anderson, the creator of the Dungeon Maps, has a blog where he discusses his projects and this blog is the topic for this week's Free GM Resource.

Blue Boxer Rebellion may or may not be to your liking as RPG Blogs go, but Doug has been really generous with some free downloads that you might find interesting. Of course, I won't provide direct links to these downloads because, well duh..., but if you go to his blog you shouldn't have any problems finding them.

In case I'm completely wrong about this.....
          ......here is a helper graphic.

Most of the downloads are for some simple maps and geomorphs (I have always been a sucker for geomorphs), but there is one particular gem I thought people would really enjoy.

That gem is a small RPG!

Doug came up with his own RPG which he calls Dungeonteller. I've only given it a quick once-over and I'm loathe to give an actual review to RPGs I have run & played, unlike far too many other people, but at first glance it seems to be a relatively quick & easy rules-light game. Just from what little I saw I think it could be a good game to introduce people to RPGs.

I recommend heading over to Blue Boxer Rebellion and checking it out for yourself.

Frugal GM Review: Ten Battle-Ready 25mm Dungeon Maps

This review of Blue Boxer Rebellion's 1st set of "Ten battle-ready 25mm dungeon maps" was a bit more difficult for me than I had expected. First off, I thought this map set had a huge "WOW" factor and it is still pretty cool. Unfortunately the set falls just a little short of anticipation and while still a good series of maps, there are a few touches that could make it great.

As an aside, the second set just came out and it looks like at least one concern of mine from this set had already been taken care of.

The letter-sized PDF file is 20 pages long and a whopping 71.4 MB is size. It starts off with a cover and introductory page, some of which I will inevitably cover in a later post (in other words some great freebies!), and the next page is a series of thumbnails. I really appreciated the thumbnail page and think more people need to include these in their map packs.

The PDF then starts getting into the good stuff. There is a town map, region map, and then an overall dungeon map (separated into two parts), all with labels. None of these maps are "battle ready" and while you pretty much need the overall dungeon map, the town and region maps are pure bonus. There are technically 11 "battle ready" maps, with one map shown twice with different options on each page. The PDF rounds out with two more "duplicate" maps, the region and town, without any labels. The last page is a series of notes on each "battle-ready" map.

At first glance the slight isomorphic view of the battle maps is pretty fricken cool. Not only does it have an old-school feel to it, the maps just seem like fun. I couldn't wait to print these out and see what it looked like to throw down some minis. I printed out a test page on my black & white laser printer at 600 dpi.....

.....and the resulting page was a bit more than "OK".

My print of page 7 (Room 1) is definitely usable, but quite a bit lighter than expected. This is where things seem to fall a bit short. I would have preferred a much darker print with higher contrast so everything will be easier for my players to see. There were some unnecessary graphics added to most of the pages, this one included. I don't need arrows and labels pointing out tunnels, nor do I need dashed lines showing where players could jump from point to point. The art, not to mention the overall dungeon map, does a great job showing the relationships within and between map sections. If you think you need to put all this extraneous information on the pages, then put them on a layer so people can simply choose to deselect that layer and print the map without it.

On my print out you can also see the edges of the paper the sketches were originally made on and you can tell that the original sketch was scanned into a computer and edited somewhat.. Ugh.....this is really unforgivable in my opinion. If you are going to do any editing in Photoshop or the like, removing the scanned edges is one of the first things you should do. If, as an end user you want to take a crack at fixing these things with the map in Photoshop.....probably not going to happen because the file is secured.

Finally, I wish this was a bit larger than 25mm. This is a minor quibble, but with more and more minis coming in at 28 or even 30 mm, I think a 28mm scale would better accommodate a larger range of minis. Of course it would be easy enough to have a printshop print this at a slightly larger scale on 11x14 paper.

Overall, for $2.50 it isn't a bad set of maps and with a few tweaks could be a really great old-school map set to use for an adventure. I think more than anything this 1st set hints at some great potential, some of which I can already tell has been unlocked in set 2.

Free Map #15 The Beer House

It's been about time that I got off my duff and presented my (mostly) finished tavern map. In my home game this locale is serving as the base of operations for my players. I tend to run a relatively poor campaign, as in I don't give out a lot of cash....hopefully the campaign is a rich (content-wise) as my players wish it to be. "Adventurers" don't really exist so my players are a bit of an anomaly and living "on the road" can be expensive. Fortunately for them one of the PC's families has connections in the city of Twin Forks and that connection, the Dwarf running this Beer House, is willing to let them bunk in the cellar.

Now this map is a bit on the sparse side because I haven't filled in the Dwarf's living quarters, the brewing equipment in the main level, or the multitude of barrels of beer in the basement. In my game there is also a rack of Honey Brew (think low-grade alcoholic/medicinal healing) and a secret entrance to some long-forgotten tunnels. I have, however, added the most notable pieces of furniture of this establishment which are the enormous tables and benches the Beer House patrons sit and drink from.

These enormous tables were built in-place outside of the main level, originally in a large beer tent. The frame of the tent was sided in with wood and now the wooden structure is being bricked in with field stone. The Beer House has some giant wooden doors and a generous helping of fireplaces to keep the drinkers nice and cozy.

In my game the Beer House only brews & sells beer. They make almost all of the beer sold in the city, made to the individual tavern's specifications. It is important to note they do not cook any food whatsoever. The Beer House has a decent number of urchins who serve as runners for the patrons, getting them whatever food from other sellers as demanded. They work for tips only and are honest to a fault since any who stiff the Beer House patrons get banned from the premises.

The scale on this map is the standard 1 square = 5'. I realize this makes the levels about 80' across, but this Beer House was converted from an old guard tower from when the town was much smaller. Hopefully you'll find this map useful and if you end up getting some good use out of it, please feel free to drop me a note telling me what you did with it!

As always, clicking on either graphic should take you to the file on my Google Drive. The map is a 300 dpi JPG and 11" square.

Frugal GM's End of the Year DriveThruRPG Review

I've just crunched the numbers and it seems like a decent year for the Frugal GM over at DriveThruRPG. A little over 1,000 downloads of the things I've made and overall (not just this year, but since the start in 2012) 92% of the downloads have been for free items.

Now that other 8%.....well for this year that means I've "made" $64. Obviously I don't do this for the money. That money was pretty much spent on buying more RPG products through the site.

I have some more ideas for products for next year and I plan on keeping many for free and everything else under $1.99. I had two goals when I started putting stuff up on DriveThruRPG:

1) Have lots of free stuff.
2) Everything not free should be inexpensive.

That's about as simple as it gets. I know my numbers are actually a bit skewed, for a couple of reasons, and probably should at least be in the 94-95% range. The iPad character sheet I made ended up being three versions instead of one so people could end up with the smallest file needed and generally get sold as a $2 bundle, but I report that out as three sales instead of one. I also found out that another company had downloaded and been giving away one of my free files on their own website for 10 months of last year. That's been taken care of, so hopefully things will be more accurate next year.

I do have one small favor to ask....

If you've downloaded some of these items and found them useful, please leave me a review or even just some feedback. I read every review and it gets a bit disheartening to find that out of 1600+ downloads I have but five (5!) reviews....and only three of them are from "regular" folks.

Free GM Resource: Ye Olde Map Maker

This is probably the last Frugal GM post of the year and this isn't an obvious selection for a "Free" GM Resource.

Ye Olde Map Maker is an inexpensive app for iOS and Android, but it also has a free-to-use desktop/web version. This program lets you create rather simple maps for use now or later. You can easily edit your maps, save them, or even share them.

The sharing of your maps is the cool part because if you can share your maps with others...........

...................

......that means you can use other people's maps as well! Hopefully you realized this before you read it.

In many ways this is a mobile version of the MIA program Dungeon Crafter. Sure, it doesn't have as many tiles to play with, but the ability to share maps more than makes up for it. I've noticed they've been rolling out updates so the program is getting better over time.

They even have a Ye Olde Map Maker forum, but you have to register to get access (and I haven't done that....yet. Hoping it uses the same access as my program registration.)

I've just started playing around with the Ye Olde Map Maker and while I doubt it'll be my go-to program, the fact that I could start a map at home and then use my iPad when I'm out & about to work on it later sounds great.

Free GM Resource: Kroten Campaign Setting from Lenard Lakofka & Dragonsfoot

Well it is that time of year again and I have to ask, did you get your GM a Christmas Present yet?

Of course it isn't too late to go down to the FLGS (Favorite Local Gaming Store) and get some dice or maybe even a new supplement. It really just depends on how your group does things.

My group exchanges gifts, but we're all friends outside of the table and our gifts aren't usually gaming related.

This year it looks like the folks over at Dragonsfoot have given us all a great big old present with the release of not just one supplement, but four related supplements!

Seriously, to quote one of my favorite holiday songs, "Hey everybody Holy Crap it's Christmas!" A big...HUGE...thanks goes out to  Lenard Lakofka for the release of the Kroten series of supplements:

• L5A: The Kroten Campaign Guide 
• L5B: The Kroten Adventures 
• L5C: The Kroten Campaign Companion
• L5 Map Pack 

Kroten is set in the World of Greyhawk, but like anything else can easily be relocated. There is literally several hundred pages of content here to devour and it will take a while to go through it all. If you haven't given your GM a special gift, you could always download these files, print them off, and give the gift of a cool campaign setting in print and PDF.

Who knows? You may end up with a cool new sandbox to play in next year.....

On a more personal note, I'd like to wish all my readers a Merry Christmas. If you don't celebrate this particular holiday...well I don't wish you anything less because of it. Please take some time to enjoy your friends and gaming now and all throughout 2014.

Frugal GM Review: Dyson's Dodecahedron 8

Yesterday Dyson Logos came out with Issue #8 of his "infrequently" published Zine Dyson's Dodecahedron. This particular issue is largely the adventure Trouble at Imp Brücke, set up for use with the Labyrinth Lord system.

Before I go any further in this review I have a couple of author's biases that I must divulge. First is that I have never actually played Labyrinth Lord. My system of choice is HackMaster (the current edition) and I make no apologies for this. I know a lot of people are really digging the multitude of OSR games out there and Labyrinth Lord gets a lot of love from these folks.

My second bias is that I have a bit of a GM Crush on Dyson Logos. I mean seriously, how could any "Old School" GM not love his map work? I'd pick up....heck I did pick up...all of the Dyson's Dodecahedron based just on the mapwork. The fact that he gives the maps out free and these Zines are "pay what you want".....awesomesauce.

As I started going through this Zine I really didn't know what to expect. I was hoping for a bunch of maps, but beyond that not much. My initial flip through to get an overview showed only two maps. One was an expected dungeon map, but the other was a cool little overland map the likes of which I hadn't seen in a while. There were only a couple of other pieces of art, both of which added to the Zine. I hate when it looks like art has been added just to pad out the content. There is a single page at the end of random tables.....something I always enjoy, and then three more pages of open gaming license "stuff".

I get really confused when I see so much license in a product because I know that all of the things listed weren't referenced in this product, as required by the OGL. If anything it looks like a continuation list of all the different products that have been published over the years, but I just don't know.

The last thing I noticed, well actually it is the first thing, but the last thing I checked on, is the size of the Zine. It looked fine on my iPad, but the dimensions seemed a bit "off". I assumed that this was just because it was an A4 sheet and I'm used to the inferior letter size of 8.5" x 11". I was a bit surprised when I found that the Zine's dimensions were actually half of a letter page. This was a bit of a mixed blessing in and of itself because it made me want to print it out as a half-page booklet. When I realized the size of the page I also realized that the maps were also half-sized, as far as 300 DPI graphics went.

My second pass was an actual read-through and the adventure was also a bit of a mixed blessing. It seemed on par with the other Labyrinth Lord adventures I've seen, but at the same time it just felt wrong to me. If you look at the extracted map above, it is reasonably close to a square mile, between 2 and 3 square kilometers for our metric friends. In that small space there are a lot of higher-end monsters. I wouldn't necessarily say they were apex predators, but I really couldn't see all of these monsters co-existing with a small human settlement within their feeding territory. A decent bit of this is explained away in the prelude to the adventure, but that only accounted for a small portion of this "imbalance" that mentally poked at me as I read this adventure.

Of course I think that with a lot of OSR games you just have to roll with it and even within the confines of a fantasy setting things don't have to make sense. I'm perfectly willing to just chalk this up to a difference in GM styles, especially since I knew going in if I wanted to use this adventure I'd be having to change things up some. At that point I'm taken back to just the maps.....both of which were awesome. Since I know that Dyson makes these maps available for free on his website, I kind of wish that the Zine had direct links to hi-res versions of the maps so I could download them easily for my own use.

Overall not a bad Zine. On the surface it really seems a bit of an overkill to buy this issue for a couple of half-sized hi-res maps I could otherwise find for free online, but Dyson's Dodecahedron is more than just a couple of maps. Even if you "need" to re-write the whole adventure to make it more appropriate to your game system, you realistically don't need to re-write the whole adventure. Just a couple of tweaks to the monsters and treasure, maybe minor tweak here or there to the story and you're good to go. I'm thinking it wouldn't take even 30 minutes to get Trouble at Imp Brücke ready for play at my table, which would save me a ton of time in game prep.