Frugal GM Review: The Goblin Cave

For several reasons The Goblin Cave is not an adventure I would normally pick up. Mostly because it is a solo adventure for a system I don't play and it has little to no value to me for conversion.

What swayed me was the fact that this was written by a 13 year old as a bit of a spin on an English assignment.

In general the story is simplistic and a bit disjointed, but I enjoyed reading it because it felt like it was written by a 13 year old who loved to game. Even though technically I started gaming back in '78 or so, it was simplistic and disjointed to the point that The Goblin Cave is fricken Shakespeare. When I was 13 the best I could do is try to scratch out some notes in the margin of adventure on how I wanted to run them.

Writing adventures was just not something I was capable of at the time.

I highly encourage everyone to download The Goblin Cave and give it a good read. I actually think it would be a) cool to show this young fledgling GM some support and b) maybe try to covert this over to a dead-simple RPG like the 1974 Style Roleplaying Game. I can see getting a bunch of friends over, maybe having a little too-much to drink, and play like we were all 13 again.

I think it would be a blast.....

Free Map 030 (in three versions)

Monday I posted about Google Plus being a great Free GM Resource. On Monday I also took some extra time to check out the plethora of communities G+ had recommended to me based on my current communities' involvement.

One new community I joined was the Micro Map community, where I just had to get in on #micromapmonday. It was fun, and anything that makes gaming, and gaming prep, fun is worth a shot.

I ended up coming up with this small map, which I dressed up a couple of different ways:

Now you can have the two roughly 6 cm by 7 cm maps here and here.

My goal was to do two things for Wednesday....since it is now Thursday you might have properly surmised that I was either lazy or simply failed in my endeavor.....both would be correct in this case....

Anyhoo....I figured I would "blow up" this map to a full page(ish) size and I would try to create another vertical slice view of this cavern. Using my original drawing I made some mark ups, envisioned how things would look, and put pencil to paper for a rough sketch.

I still completely suck at doing vertical/side view maps. Now I'm sure I could probably do a straight-up side view map, but taking a top-down view map and translating that to a side-view....just cannot do it. My brain cannot twist the one projection into the other. I can envision how the different elevations within a map are, but not how they would look. Outside of modelling a cave system and then cutting it in have and using a picture of the cross-section, I don't think I'll be able to overcome this shortfall.

Oh well, maybe I just need to try my hand at something else.

In the meantime, here is the larger-sized map. I experimented around a bit with some different effects. You can get the free map by clicking on the lead-in graphic or use this link.

Free GM Resource: G+

OK, I realize it might seem like I'm phoning in this week's Free GM Resource, and I'll take the hit because it is Memorial Day. I do have to say though that I've found a ton of great resources specifically because I had signed up as a member to some specific communities and added specific people to my circles.

Most of the people I've already posted links to their work before so I'll focus instead on just a couple of communities:

RPG: Kind of a no-brainer, but there are some good discussions and sub communities.

Gaming on the Cheap: Again, what a no-brainer for a blog like this. Some great ideas floating around on there!

The Library of Gaming Maps: A veritable treasure trove of maps.

Order of the d30: I've just been on a d30 kick lately, probably because of all the free stuff that Richard LeBlanc has been doing last month (and before/since...just last month was crazy...)

There are more I could recommend, and even more I personally want to check out, but this is just a quartet to get you started. The cool thing is that as you join more communities, G+ does a good job of recommending even more communities that fit in with your other groups. Just click on the little arrow beside your home tab (top left of your G+ screen) and choose "communities".

I see a few I need to be checking out myself......

Frugal GM Review: Adventurer Essentials (Iron Rations)

The other day I was perusing DriveThruRPG, like I am wont to do, and I came across the Adventurer Essentials series from Skortched Urf Studios. It caught my eye so I hazarded a purchase to give it a look.

On the surface I really like the idea of an in-depth look at an otherwise all-too-often ignored bit of required adventuring kit.

I don't know how many game I've been in where the last thing anybody bothered with was making sure you had enough food....well, anybody but the GM. A few lessons-learned and I always make sure my PC has adequate provisions.

This eight-page (of content) PDF goes into a little bit of detail regarding iron rations, those relatively inedible foodstuffs we buy for our PCs, but would never stoop to try out for ourselves unless we were really desperate, or maybe hard-core LARPers! The bit of general background transitions into several options for fantasy demi-human versions of iron rations, which, with the exception of the Dwarven variant, sound so much better than the standard fair. Rules are given for starvation and a brief discussion regarding magical means of sustenance is given. The PDF gives a few magical items and some interesting rules for using the survival skill and making your own rations.

This PDF is written for the d20 rules system, but easily adapted for anything else you'd prefer to play with. I particularly liked the way the author suggested arranging terrain types for determining difficulty for using survival checks. It is the one bit I'm most likely to borrow for a number of related tasks (like hunting, tracking, etc.).

One thing I definitely did notice when reading this PDF were a number of typos, including a simple addition error compounded in the next sentence by using a completely different number. I ended up re-reading that paragraph a couple of times trying to figure out the math and why things didn't add up. I thought maybe the second number was referencing some fact or figure from the sourcebooks that weren't mentioned.

Overall it was a decent enough download, but it wasn't enough to convince me to try out any of the rest of the series.

Free Map 029: A Long Underground River

This free map is an off-shoot of a personal map project I'm working on. The river will just be part of a much large cavern complex and, I hope, just one layer of a more ambitious map project.

Anyhoo, this map is probably the longest I've ever done, coming in at just a hair over two feet long!

I've detailed a bit of the process behind making this map in my previous post. Feel free to scroll down or just click on this link.

Like usual, click on the lead-in graphic or use this link to download the high-res file. I would ask that you let me know if/how you use the map.

Roughly 4" x 24"!

My Work in Progress for Another Long Underground River

A week or two ago I mentioned a large underground river map I was getting set to work upon. I had started with some USGS maps of a river I was familiar with and pieced together a number of maps to form one long chain of the river.

All I got to on that post was getting my scope outlined and kicked around a few ideas.

Today I went ahead and started working on my map.....and "finished" a version that I'll put up for free after this post.

The first thing I had to do was take my eight pages of PDF and stitch them together in Photoshop to get a more usable working file. After that I simply printed out a few pages so I could work on paper as much as possible....well, as much as possible for me.

Click for a much larger version

1) Using my relatively cheap DIY lightbox I roughly traced out the printed river sections. I wasn't too careful here because I wasn't looking for an exact copy of my source river map.

2) After scanning in my traces, stitching and then cleaning up the connections in Photoshop I ran the now large map (roughly 4" by 25") through Adobe Illustrator to get a nice, smoothed out series of map lines. Unfortunately there are a lot of weird artifacts introduced from where some of my lines were too weakly drawn or close together. If you look closely at the map above you can see some blobbish circles or overly thick connected lines.

3) Another trip through Photoshop to clean up the artifacts I run the file back through the same Inked Drawing tracing option in AI. This forms my real "base file" I get to work with from here on out. Steps 4-6 are more for making the free map and will probably be discarded on my finished map.

4) I go in and start coloring the river. since everything is black I have to go through and color in by hand all the areas where the river connects with the walls of the caves it passes through. The river channel sometimes has a wide bank and others in restricted to a narrow channel. Coloring actually takes a lot more time than expected even with the generous use of the Paint Bucket tool in Photoshop.

5) This next step is kind of easy. I just find an appropriate texture file to add in to the river channel. since this is an underground river, the river channel is rock. I find a rock texture I like and add it in.

6) Now I add my stippling texture. This time I did things a little different in making the heavy stipple extend 15 px out, the medium another 30px and the light 50px. These layers are stacked on top of each other with the heaviest on top of the medium, which is on top of the light. Once everything is done I merge all the layers and run the file through a different trace option in AI.

If you came straight-in to this post you might want to click on the free map post to get a better look at the whole map and get a free download.

Free GM Resource: Lord of the Rings Fonts

One of the many.....many things I collect & squirrel away for future gaming use is a good fantasy font. Now I don't use props all that often, but when I do I like to make them as good as I can. My handwriting looks much like it did back in 4th grade, so any written documents have to be be done on a computer so I can make them look as pretty or pretty ugly as needed.

This week's Free GM Resource was a lead from the folks over at the Kenzer & Company forums. It is a large collection of Lord of the Rings fonts gathered up by Pete Klassen. The collection is pretty sweet. I've seen plenty of Tengwar fonts here and there, as well as a few Dwarven fonts, but I don't think I've ever seen any Hobbit fonts or the awesome "Runic" font, which is basically the Latin/Roman alphabet (what I'm using now) gussied up to look like runes.

Pretty good stuff!

Free Map 028: A Small Inn

This free map is more of a work in progress, but I'm not quite sure which tact I'm going to take to finish this map. I might re-draw the whole thing, maybe do it in Dundjinni, or just color it all in.

This is a three-level inn where I didn't finish the top floor. The inn-keeper's room is the small one with a private office to the side and the large "opulent" room is off on the opposite side of the floor. I figured the space in between was just a nice, private dining/meeting area.

The main floor has a small kitchen, wrap-around bar, a few tables, and a small common room in the back.

The owner has dug out a large cellar of sorts beneath the floor, propping things up with some strong stone columns. This space is an impromptu stable for overnight guests.

I made this map for a special project and that map will be fairly small, so too much graphic detail will simply be lost. I already have a name, but since you'll probably need to finish off the upstairs you might want to rename it as well...

Like always, click on the lead-in graphic or use this link for the download.