Frugal GM Review: Herick's Dungeons (Dungeon Rooms)

Today I was perusing DriveThruRPG and came across Herick's Dungeons. Two things quickly came to my attention: that it was a 41 page PDF and that it was under $2.

A large file at a cheap price...along with a good-looking preview file.....yep, I was gonna pull the trigger on buying this file.

The download itself is quite straight-forward. You get 39 pages of Dungeon Rooms, 1 page of doors, and another page of arches. There is not one bit of wasted space outlying the artist's other offerings, ads, or really anything else....not even instructions for putting together the doors or arches. Now I don't think instructions are needed, so this isn't a detractor at all.

The PDF assumes you are printing on A4 paper, which is great for everyone in the world except Americans. We have to either reduce the page size by about 6% or just print the file up on legal-sized paper. I don't think this is that big of a deal. I do have two minor qualms however. The first is a common gripe that the PDF is password-protected so I cannot open it up in Photoshop so I can use these rooms in a virtual table-top. The second is that the tile layout is all the same from room to room.  It looks like the artist basically made one big room and then just brought in the walls to make smaller rooms.

Now for under $2, it might be a lot to expect the floor tiles to be shuffled around some, but I think that minor effort would have gone a long way in increasing the visual appeal of the rooms. The artwork is great, don't get me wrong, but the rock-steady floor pattern from room to room is not so appealing.

Still, it is a minor qualm and I think overall this is a great download that a Frugal GM can get a lot of use out of.

New Map Project in Progress

Now I'm quite cognizant that I haven't put up a map in several weeks. I have a couple ideas I've been kicking around and truth be told I simply haven't pulled the trigger on executing said maps. Blame it on my job, the car repairs I've needed to do on my days off, or (probably more accurately) I'm not sure how to bridge the gap between what I want and what I can do.

I have my sketches and maybe I'll scribble out some more test maps trying to bridge that skills gap, but it is hard to sit down and work on a map that I truly doubt will ever seem good enough to share.

Anyway, enough about the maps I'm not working on.

May current map project is set to be more than a bit on the large side. Printed out at 300 DPI I'm expecting this to be something in the range of 10' by 3'. Of course that might be my plan now, but plans change. My initial thought was this will be a multi-layered map.

The base layer will be the underground river and the associated underground caves....mostly because I like doing them. The next layer will be the "ground" level with at least a couple settlements. This whole area is a large "hidden" mountain valley, which opens up a lot of potential for mountain caves and lairs....essentially another layer.

The graphic above is just my little guide for how my map slices piece together. I haven't done any cleaning up of the map yet, so this is quite rough. When I finish everything up I'm planning on having a nice "little" sandbox.

Free GM Resource: Dungeon Robber

This week's Free GM Resource is...well, depending on how you look at it isn't free, but kind of is. The folks over at the Blog of Holding have a über-cool poster of the old 1st Edition D&D dungeon chart for sale at $15.

Ok, this is pretty cool, but more of a background to the other thing....

You see, the Blog of Holding took their cool map/poster of the charts and turned it into an online game called Dungeon Robber. The game is brutally hard and sooooo much fun.

Sometimes you need to "game" and don't have an appropriate opportunity to do so. If you want to slug it out, and try to survive the otherwise random and somewhat nonsensical dungeon, you really should try Dungeon Robber. I managed to get my thief up to level 7 before he bit the big one.

It was a complete waste of time that was totally fun and worthwhile......like many of these pursuits often are.

Frugal GM Review: The Hanging Garden

I know I've reviewed several New Big Dragon products in the last few weeks/months, but to be honest....I like their stuff.
          Assault Against the Menace of the Mountain
          D30 Sandbox Companion
          Save vs Dragon (OK, technically not a review)

Now I follow the Save vs Dragon website and try to download any new goodies Richard has made available*, and today I downloaded his newest adventure, The Hanging Garden.

This adventure was submitted in the one-page dungeon contest and Richard has offered up this slightly expanded version on his site. It is a 1st Edition (or 1st Edition compatible) adventure designed for levels 1-3. The adventure is rather interesting, as in I like it, but I think it would be an utter blood-bath for even a large party of adventurers at these levels. I don't think the "big bad guy" would be much of an issue, but the most common enemy....well, they would be really common and prove (I think) to be a huge problem for the party. Toss in the special monster(s) of the adventure and I think this adventure has TPK written all over it. I think the adventure is pretty good except for this one point. The adventure has just the right amount of details without being too bulky and there is a lot of leeway, including a cool future adventure hook, for the GM to tweak the adventure.

Oh yeah....the price is just right at free!







*There have been a LOT of goodies this last month, so do yourself a favor and check out Save vs Dragon.

Free GM Resource: A Twofer from RPG Crossing

Today's Free GM Resource is a bit of a twofer....I like twofers.

RPG Crossing is a HUGE online community of gamers where you can run just about any type of play-by-post game. Membership is free (of course) and setting up an account is easy.

It looks like the site used to have a different name, so you may have heard about it before......

Oh, that 2nd freebie.....they have their own PDF zine called Explosive Runes. At the time of this post issues 3-19 are available for download. Even if you don't ever plan on playing in a play-by-post game, you gotta love some free zines!

Frugal GM Review: Corporia

I have a rather simple rule about this blog....well, I probably have more rules that don't immediately spring to mind, but the one that is on my mind is that if you are a publisher and you send me product I will review it.

Mark Plemmons, a good friend of mine who runs Brabblemark Press, recently came out with his new RPG, Corporia after a successful Kickstarter Campaign.

Now I helped out a bit during the design process, nothing to brag about in my opinion, and got my name in the book as a Contributing Editor. I wasn't expecting to actually get a hardbound copy of the book, but guess what came in the mail today? Yep, number 177 out of 200 limited edition signed & numbered copies.

Now this takes me back to the original blog rule......you send me product and I'll review it.

In a nutshell, Corporia is a "modern" RPG set in the "city" where you get to play a modern-day member of the Knights of Camelot. Now I can go on about the setting, but if that sentence isn't enough, you should just go look at the preview on DriveThruRPG. Seriously....go look at the preview....it's worth at least a good 41K words....

The book is about the size of a trade comic book but hard-cover. The art and layout is great, and I've seen some rumblings about the quality of the paper. I think some were thinking it should be high-gloss super-quality paper. Meh...it appears to be a high-quality matt magazine stock and looks good enough for me. I only have a couple of books with that upper-end paper and honestly I don't really use those books.....looks great on the shelf though. This book is a nice size and a more usable format that most every other gaming book out there. It is a minor touch, but just addition of colored "tabs" on the page sides...tabs that mirror the other color accents in each chapter (great effect!) go a long way with me. Also a HUGE fan of the index with Director-only entries noted in red.

Basically, Mark knows his way around some great layout ideas......

The rules themselves are an easy read and the rules have a lot of leeway for the GM and the players to work together in-game. There are a couple of sample adventures, a rather generous GM (Director) section, and enough sample NPCs to run a couple games.

Now I'll be the first to admit that I probably won't be running any games of Corporia, mostly because I play HackMaster and well.....that's my game. I do hope to get to play a game though at a con.......hope there are some at Origins!

Now I am fully cognizant I didn't go into the specific of how the rules work or the setting of the "City", but with about 1/5 of the book available for preview and a great Character Dossier (16 page character creation guide) available, it is easy to check it out for yourself.

BTW.......the RPG Book in PDF form is on sale for $14.99!

Free GM Resource: Scabbard

This week's Free GM Resource is a free web-based campaign manager called Scabard.

The cool thing is when you sign up for a free account there are a few freebies you get access to. There is a PDF download of tips and tricks and there are a few (5) "extras" you get access to.

There is an example campaign you can check out. The relationship graph is particularly cool.....cool enough to warrant signing up and using this particular campaign manager.

Seriously....check out the example campaign. The site seems mostly low/no frills, but I think it is a hidden gem you might get a lot of use out of.

Frugal GM Review: Dungeons in Blue- Small Dungeons #8

I was browsing DriveThruRPG this week and the Dungeons in Blue line caught my eye, specifically Small Dungeons #8. At $1.29 I figured it was worth a purchase to check out what looked like a cool old-school dungeon map.

My download consisted of what appeared to be four maps, a map legend, a lower-res preview map, and a PDF. All the maps, and the legend, are 100 DPI files, which makes them suitable for use with various online displays.

After poking through my download it occurred to me that this was essentially one map that has simply been dressed up in a couple different fashions. One map has some extra rooms in it and there are basically GM versions with listed traps and hazards and the player versions. While the maps were appropriately size for online use, I don't think you'll get a lot of mileage out of trying to print them out full-size (1" = 5') for table top use.

For a $1.29 I'm generally ok with this.

What I'm not particularly thrilled about is the expectation from the product page site and the included PDF that these maps are "geomorph ready", because they simply aren't. Being able to slap one map up against the other along a single entrance/exit does not a geomorph make. I went ahead and downloaded the recommended "Dungeons in Blue Master List" and looked at the assorted tiles from this line....they aren't geomorphs. Some could be, but as a whole....no. Again, being able to line up some map tiles does not make a set of geomorphs. From the "Master List" Product Page:

Every geomorph tile seamlessly connects to every other tile in the series, providing the megadungeon builder tremendous freedom and flexibility.

...and from the Small Dungeons #8 product page:

All Small Dungeons also include geomorph-ready versions of the GM and player maps, with the added doors, rooms, and corridors required to connect to otherDungeons in Blue tiles.

While I'm at it, the "Master List" is supposed to be a full listing of all the Dungeons in Blue product line, but of course this product isn't in it. I find that a bit irritating, but probably just more so because I had certain expectations based off of the product text(s).

I'm certain that the Dungeons in Blue product line will prove useful for online GMs who want to use some old-school-blue dungeon maps. For anyone wishing to use this on a table-top or as part of a geomorph set.....not so much.