Free GM Resource: Fictitious Entry

This week's Free GM Resource is a link to a cool blog with a bazillion, okay...a lot, of free maps. Kind of like the Wednesday posts here, but the blog isn't as cool and the maps are much better.

Of course these are just judgement calls on my part and you might feel different. I won't take it personally....it's all good.

Fictitious Entry is the brainchild of Shane Knysh and is really worth a look-see.

Shane is also having a Patreon campaign to help support his maps....you can even get a non-exclusive commercial license to use his maps!

Frugal GM Review: Arkadon Castle

Well, the week-long GM's Day sale is over at DriveThruRPG, but I'll be using the "loot" I acquired for some time.

One item I'd been eye-balling for some time is Arkadon Castle, from Draken Games. I'm not really familiar with the publisher and to be honest I'm really not sure what drew me to this particular product in the first place. In any regard, I'm glad I tossed it into my shopping cart.

Arkadon Castle is a smaller fortification that is presented multiple times in the span of 32 pages. Aside from a couple of artist renderings, you get a small-scale map of the entire structure, a medium scale map of each level, and then several large-scale maps of the castle. One of the large scale maps is "plain" and the other shows a fully-furnished color floorplan. Accompanying each of these maps is an appropriate set of room descriptions.

A nice touch is a page of full-color page of additional furnishings that can be printed, cut-out, and used as-needed.

One of the coolest things about this castle is that the structure is far from ideal, and is duly noted in the PDF's text. The structure seems to have been organically built, starting from a smaller building and added on to as needed. I think this bit of imperfection adds a high level of realism to the building.

I kind of wished that Arkadon Castle came with a high-res graphics file of the map, but since this PDF has the map presented in a couple of different ways I think the intention was to print this out and work with it in a physical manner. With the thick walls of the castle I'd say this was about  1/2" = 5' or so.

Personally I'd love to have a couple different small fortification maps like this for my collection. I think I'd get some great use out having these for my players.

Free Map 024: An Underground River

I'd like to think I have my own style of making cave maps down. For better or worse, I've got my own methodology, so to keep tossing up cave maps might be good for those who want new maps, but not so good at trying out new things.

In the last couple of days I've been looking at some maps done by folks whose work I enjoy, map-makers who manage to get paid a few bucks for said work.

Do I ever expect to join their ranks? Nope....not really my thing. Now I'd be lying if I didn't say I'd like to put up better maps for game products I'd like to write in the future, but maps on their own, not so much.

One thing I noticed in a recent map was that I've never tried to draw a river. Since I'm not an artist, drawing a river wasn't my goal, but creating a river map was. In order to get the organic look of a river I decided I'd just start with a river and manipulate that in Photoshop. One quick trip to the USGS National Map Viewer and I had my source file.

Most of this map's work was trying to figure out how to use this base file to create something I liked...and could replicate. Of course most of this "work" was trial and error, mostly error, but eventually I prevailed.

My original idea for this map was to create an underground river that tied into an area location I used in my home game, Shane's Delve. When I tweaked that adventure for my own needs I had anticipated tying that location into a series of caves and access points to this underground river. As I was getting close to finishing the map I realized the scale was way off for adding the one other access point the player have unwittingly found.

No matter, I now have this map for future use.

As always, click on the header graphic for the download or use this link.

2014.03.21 Edit:

Here is another slightly differently version of this map you might enjoy.......might be hard to see the differences.....

Frugal GM Review: The Crossroads of Spyley

Special Note: If you are a publisher and want a Frugal GM review of your RPG product I can, kind of,  be bought. If you give me product I'll basically take a look at it and if it is appropriate I'll write a review. I probably won't write a review if I think it is only one or two stars, but I'll give you my opinion regardless.....

The other day +matt jackson released his newest product, a system-less small-area setting, hopefully the first of a series. The first in the series of Side Treks is The Crossroads of Spyley.

Matt  "gifted" me a copy of this first effort and I thought that gift should be acknowledged with a special review, one outside of my already planned review this Friday.

My initial read-through of The Crossroads of Spyley was pretty positive, but I was little put-off by the typeface. I think the great cover made me expect something else between the covers. By the time I got a couple pages into this 10 page PDF I realized the typeface wasn't really much to worry about. It was clean enough for reading and had almost a 'zine feel to it.

There is one map of the Crossroads and its three buildings. At first I had wished there were smaller versions of the building maps with the room descriptions, but the room descriptions were really good and it quickly became a non-issue for me.

I was fortunate to be able to chat online with Matt after this initial read-through and he told me he was going for a 'zine feel. I think with a more old-school cover he'd have an updated 'zine look down pat.

Now as for the contents, I really liked this small-area  supplement. There really wasn't a lot that a GM would have to tweak to simply drop this in to any fantasy RPG.....it would be easy enough to simply do on the fly.  The descriptions for each section is well-written and taken together with the map this is a good drop-in for just about any session. If you weren't quite sure where to drop it in, there are even three possible adventure hooks to get you into the Crossroads.....

While I did think this is a good supplement, what really out it over the top for me were the extra touches that Matt put into its delivery. I was expecting a simple, and single, PDF download. Instead I got two PDFs and two graphic files. There is a hi-res PDF, perfect for printing, and a low-res PDF better suited for viewing on a computer or tablet. The map is available as both a JPG and PNG file.

I think I should also bother to mention that the PDF doesn't have a bunch of security features to get in the way of using it, which realistically just means printing out the pages if you want.

One of my biggest pet-peeves is seeing RPG products hamstrung by too much PDF security. A close second would be seeing a product that cuts-short its usability because the producer didn't bother to see how people might want to use their product (like only including 72 DPI graphics on something that would most likely be printed out). Nice to see that +matt jackson "gets it".

At $2.50 for the full price download, I'd recommend picking up  The Crossroads of Spyley. Odds are great you'll find a good use for the crossroads sooner rather than later. The focus on smaller, more easily integrated locales is something that I hope pays off because I'd like to see much more of the Side Treks line.

3/18/14 Edit: This product is currently on sale for $1.99, so basically 20% off! Get it while you can....

Free GM Resource: Gozzy's Map Generators

This week's Free GM Resource isn't quite a map....instead it is an awesome collection of random map generators from Gozzy's. Basically instead of one free map you have a butt-load you can generate as needed, as well as a few pre-made maps to boot.

I was originally just checking out the dungeon generator, but I decided to click around and found a couple more generators, one of which I found particularly impressive.

Seriously, you should check out these map generators. The site itself isn't particularly impressive, but the content make up so much for the delivery.

There are some bonus files/pre-made maps on the site, but the "good stuff" are these three generators (click on the example map to go to the generator):

Cavern Generator

Dungeon Generator

Wilderness Map Generator

Now these are the "big three" on the site, but if you browse around a bit you'll find other maps for your game as well.

Frugal GM Review: The Guidebook to the City of Dolmvay

Last week I finally managed to get my hands on a copy of the Guidebook to the City of Dolmvay, which is the end result of a successful RPG Kickstarter.

Written for Labyrinth Lord, the Guidebook comes in at 223 pages and is easily adapted to any OSR game. Roughly the first half of the Guide is the setting itself, chock full of city details, while the second half was made up of appendices. The Guide comes with a good table of contents and an index. All to often projects of this nature manage to have one or the other, not both.

Overall I thought this was a good sourcebook and I really only had a couple of issues pop up when reading through the Guide. Now I realize this might simply be my personal preference, but when I'm reading about a specific area, I want the NPCs to be more closely aligned with their home location instead of lumped together. The Guide breaks down Dolmvay into wards and in each ward section it mentions specific areas, which are then followed up with NPCs for the ward. I'd rather have each NPC in the appropriate ward area, or just lump them all together in an appendix. The other issue is that I'd like to see better ward maps. There is a single city-wide map on page 30 and then then next map you see is on page 148 in Appendix II.

Now to be fair, there are a fair number of illustrations and, if you pardon the vernacular, there is "a lot of meat on the bone" that is the Guidebook to the City of Dolmvay. I particularly enjoyed the little touches spread throughout the book, things that a GM wouldn't necessarily come up with on their own:

• Basic list of crimes (and punishments)
• Calendar (holidays)
• Common Gestures & Phrases
• Description of tavern food (including local specialties)
• Random Tables

As of the time of writing, the Guidebook to the City of Dolmvay is a PWYW (Pay What You Want) file that has an average contribution of $3.80. Rounding up to $4 I'd say this is an absolute steal. Use the whole Guide, strip it for parts, or just use a single section.....still worth $4.

I highly recommend buying and checking out the Guidebook to the City of Dolmvay today.

Free Map 023: Buildings of Walnut Grove, er Hackston.

This week I had planned on putting together a non-specific dungeon in a particularly specific way. Unfortunately I have a little too-much on my plate this "weekend" and that plan had to be scrapped.

Instead of this dungeon map I decided to delve into my files and share a number of buildings I had made with Dungeon Crafter for use in a tournament I was writing.

That tournament was originally written for HackMaster 4th Edition, the first of a four-parter that would be easily converted for use with about any OSR game. I'm not sure about the legalities of making the adventure available since the old HackMaster license isn't available any more, but I did convert the adventure(s) into a three-part for HackMaster Basic. Shameless plug for Heroes of Hackston 1, 2, & 3 on DriveThruRPG.

The original maps & adventure were set in Walnut Grove......yes, that Walnut Grove.
If I recall correctly, most of these room maps really weren't needed for the adventure and largely went unused.

The maps aren't labeled so to a certain extent you can mix & match as you want.

As usual, you can click on the header graphic for the free map, or use this link.

Blue Dungeon Tiles on Kickstarter

I have to admit that while I like to check out the myriad of projects on Kickstarter, I spend more time making fun of them than anything else. I've backed a few here and there, but mostly I look for the big losers for cheap entertainment.

Since this blog isn't about general stupidity I thought I should point out a "good" Kickstarter that fits in well with the Frugal GM philosophy.

Blue Dungeon Tiles is already funded and the creator, Kevin Scott (of Red Kobold Games), has been pretty cool about tossing free stuff up on his website. We've shared a couple of emails regarding a cool solo dungeon generator he is working on that I can't wait to link to the final product on some Monday.

Now the last time I recall publicly backing a Kickstarter project it was for a metric butt-load of Reaper Minis. That was a pretty good deal and I think Blue Dungeon Tiles is as well and here is essentially why:

• For $30 you get a set of 48 tiles, which is cheaper than a similar number of tiles from those companies currently making this sort of thing. This is a little harder to quantify since you can sometimes find good deals on the other guy's stuff, but.....
• These are generic tiles. I've yet to see generic tiles on the market and even if you can get the full-color specific area tiles for $5 they are still specific tiles you don't get to pull out often.
• As a GM who has to often travel to games, not to mention going to cons cross-country, these pack so much better than the equivalent size of battle-mats. Don't get me wrong, I love me some battle mats, but having to fold my big mat to get it on the plane sucks.
• With tiles you can pre-draw your dungeon, saving a bit of time and a pain in-game. Nothing I hate more than having to stop the action in a tournament to draw out a map on the battlemat. It feels like trying to do math in public.
• Buy what you want and then toss another $5 in the kitty for the files on PDF! If you've ever had to run multiple tables of a tournament you could use the PDF to print off as many customized copies of the map you need for your tables. The GMs can write on them and then toss after the game. Where was this when I needed it years ago?

The stretch goals for this KS aren't readily apparent, which has been confusing to some. The stretch goals are currently $13,000; $16,500; and $20,000. You have to go into the FAQ to find that out.

I'm excited by this project and can't wait until payday so I can set aside some money to chip in towards my own set and help reach some stretch goals. My suggestion is that you check this out and see about joining me!