Frugal GM Review: Ennie-Nominated Faerie Tales from Unlit Shores Prince Charming, Reanimator

Today I thought I'd review one of the Ennie Award Nominations. I'd already reviewed Corporia, so I had to go a-hunting for what to review. I found the most excellent FT0: Faerie Tales from Unlit Shores Prince Charming, Reanimator. For the sake of my own sanity I will have to simply refer to this adventure as Faerie Tales 0. While I don't agree with the placement of these entries into categories, not just because they both are in the same category (best electronic book), but because I think they should each be in more appropriate categories.

Oh well, nothing I can do about that.

Free GM Resource: Random Map/Adventure Generator from WotC

It shouldn't come as any surprise to me that there are still plenty of old useful "toys" (pardon the pun) available from the old Hasbro-owned WotC website.

I know I've highlighted some of their goodies before (the Tavern Maker and the Map-A-Week immediately comes to mind), but every once in a while another thing pops onto my radar.

This week it is WotC's Random Dungeon Generator. Something tells me this is old hat to a lot of folks, but if it was new to me I'm sure it is new to somebody else....

The options are pretty decent......

......but I've noticed that if you use any theme other than "generic" it won't generate and adventure....which is only a problem if you wanted and adventure.

The maps aren't a lot to write home about, but they get the job done for a GM. The only real issue I see is that you cannot right-click and save the map to print up later. You have to do a screen shot or print off the map, but if you save the seed information you can always go back and get another copy. For example, if you saved this in a text file: "8,8,75,5,6,1,1,0,5,10,0,1405269191767,2,0,,0,1,A,C,0,0,0,5,0,0" and put it into the "Load Value" at the bottom you'll get this map:

I hope that one of my 28 readers will get some use out of this.....

Frugal GM Review: Vornheim, The Complete City Kit

I picked up Vornheim, a Pay What You Want product at DriveThruRPG, to review this week and in many ways I was disappointed with this download. The three-star rating belies my overall impression because while in many ways I don't like it, there is some good stuff in this product and I think a lot of GMs can take something worthwhile away from it.

First off, the formatting/layout of this thing is horrendous. Huge black borders with funky white text, odd drawings and almost confusing haphazard maps make this a bit unpleasant to read. No way in hell would I bother to print this whole thing out on my printer. It is obvious that this was simply a PDF version of a printed product that was not optimized for use on a tablet or printing at home. I have to give credit for a consistent art style, plenty of PDF bookmarks, and no annoying PDF lock-downs. That alone is worth a star in my book.

The author is quite up-front about not giving the reader/GM a perfectly laid out city supplement and instead giving a series of elements that allow the user to expand/contract the city quickly and easily. There are a ton of interesting ideas scattered throughout the book, some great and some.....well I'm still scratching my head. Again though I have to give the author some credit because there are some ideas that I definitely don't like and will never use, like off-the-cuff item pricing based off of how many syllables are in the name of the item, but some are simple and pure genius. Others I just don't get, but the next guy might be completely inspired by them.

Probably my favorite new idea, one that doesn't really work with a PDF, is something so simple yet so foreign that I never would have considered it. When using one of the many random tables in the book the author advises, "Once a result has been used, cross it off and write in your own." I've written plenty of random tables and it has never once occurred to me to simplify things by editing tables as I use them. Wow....talk about a paradigm shift.

To me Vornheim is pretty much unusable as a city location. I would not say it was a "complete city kit". There is just too much strangeness to it that goes off the deep end, but there is plenty of tidbits here and there that I could extract and tie into something else. Even some of the "unusable" bits for me are definitely worth a read if only to see a completely different point of view, like some of the mapping ideas.

I'll probably have to read & re-read some of this a few more times just to get my head wrapped around it.

Just Received Some Commissioned Art

Last month I went to the Origins Game Fair and came back with quite a few goodies, one of which was a 60" Commission from Tina Bongorno. Pretty good for a $1 piece of art!

Tina had a post-convention contest where the 1st prize was a full-commissioned piece of art drawn to your specifications. I didn't win that contest, but I did get offered a free B&W Digital commission. This was about a day before my birthday, so I saw it as another b-day present!

I got the piece a few days ago and it rocks. It is a portrait of my current HackMaster PCs, Balen Lionsbane.

Can I show you what a "Dwarven Charliehorse" is?

The pic above is a PNG file so the background is the proper white instead of off-white. It might look a little funky if you click on it for a close-up. The file I was given is a beautiful 300 DPI JPG.

If you have some art you need done, you might want to give Tina a jingle either on Twitter, Facebook, or even through her Etsy page. I won't post her email publicly, but you can find it here. I'll be the first to admit a lot of her work isn't "my style", but it is obvious from the two pieces I have that she's got a much bigger range than just what people have been buying from her lately.....

Now I just have to come up with a project that needs some art......

Free Map 032: Strix Brook

Last week I was doing the usual link-hopping and came across an article concerning the top 20 scariest places on earth. One of these places was a rather peaceful looking brook in England.

I guess this brook is rather narrow in places, less than two meters, and looks quite deceiving as nobody who has ever accidentally entered the waters has survived the ordeal. Evidently the water is deep, with a fast current that swirls into severe undercuts and underground chambers. Where I live we have irrigation canals that look inviting, but are swift and deadly just below the surface.

While I don't wish to make light of this otherwise tranquil body of water which has taken far too many lives, the idea of a hidden danger struck home for this GM. I had to drawn a map of my version of the Strid, renamed the Strix. The locals know well enough to give the brook a wide berth, only traversing the water safely over one of the few bridges across. So deadly has this brook been that is forms a natural border between two counties.

Map032a

Perhaps the party wishes to avoid a toll for the bridge and decide to simply hop over the brook at a narrow point. Maybe they have come to investigate what sounds like a mysterious death. Surely a local didn't drown in such a small stream....there had to be a foul creature to blame.

Map032b

I've made two maps, both of which are quite large in size (20 inches wide at 300 DPI). I figure it is easier to reduce the size as needed rather than try to make it larger. The first map is just a section of the brook. The farmers on either side have blocked it off with large hedgerows. Where the hedgerows haven't taken hold they've erected small sections of pole fences to help keep livestock away from the rocky banks of the Strix. In this one area the farmer has been negligent and not fully fenced off his land, giving access to the waterway.

The second map is just an overlay of the caverns and tunnels beneath the fields.

Here are the links for the two maps:
Map032a
Map032b

If you find either one of these useful, please let me know.

Free GM Resource: The Forge (via the Wayback Machine)

I often find the best stuff when randomly thread-hopping on the interwebs, poking around the various nooks & crannies of scattered URLs.

This week I had the good stuff find me!

Last week I did a small review of The Cozy Hearth Inn. I was a little perplexed that it wasn't a lead-in to a larger product line, but I didn't put too much thought into it because I really liked it. The only dating for the product was the old 2000 Open Gaming License "stuff" and the last update on DriveThruRPG of September 2013. Imagine my surprise when I'm told a) this is over ten years old and b) The Forge is no more.......but.....

....Thanks to the Level 27 Geek I have a link to the appropriate Internet Archive Wayback Machine page to where all the rest of The Forges free goodies were kept! Honestly, I would have NEVER found this on my own.....heck I didn't even know it was "out there" to find!

I'm still going through the 14 downloads, but I'm impressed by what I've seen so far. Thanks to Level 27 Geek for this find!

Frugal GM Review: The Cozy Hearth Inn

I'll be the first to admit I'm not usually impressed with d20, but The Cozy Hearth Inn, from The Forge Studios, was a great little supplement easily adapted to any RPG.

For some reason I thought this was a free preview of an upcoming product series, but I guess it is just a free supplement. Too bad, because I really liked how this turned out.

Aside from the great exterior shot shown in this post's lead-in graphic, The Cozy Hearth Inn has three great floorplan drawings, one for each level of the building. There is a brief, but detailed-just-enough description of each floor as well as the four NPCs that can be found here normally. Sure, the NPCs are statted for d20, but that is easily remedied and/or ignored. A bonus is a quick encounter hook to get the PCs involved.

HUGE to me is the simple fact that the PDF wasn't locked down. I could actually pull out the graphics and manipulate them just enough to use in a VTT.

The only nit-picky gripe I could even come up with....and this was an effort on my part, was that there doesn't appear to be any means for the cook to....well, cook, in the kitchen. If you read the description on the cook you'd see why he wouldn't be using the central fireplace.

The Cozy Hearth Inn is a great little supplement that my players will be using at a future game. If this is any indication of the quality of product that The Forge Studios puts out, I'll definitely be adding more of their offerings in my online cart.

Free GM Resource: Hand Drawn Map Association

I like maps.....I like to draw maps.....the problem is I cannot draw worth a damn. Meh, I'll draw maps anyway. Maybe I'll get better, maybe I won't.

In-game I find two good uses for hand-drawn maps: For the GM and for the players.

As a GM I love a good map to go with my adventure. The whole "picture is worth 1000 words" rings true so often. In general I find my map needs as a GM are pretty strict because I need to use it as a tool to guide the adventure for the group.

As a player I really dig a map as a handout. Cool props make a game more interesting, as long as they aren't overused. Getting a prop/handout often requires a lot of effort on the GM's part, especially if they have to make one up during their prep time.

"A lot of effort" can mean time, but it can also mean inspiration. The Hand Drawn Map Association can really help. Essentially a large collection of hand-drawn maps that you can see online, they've just put out their first book (on their website, click on the source for the graphic above, or use this link).

I've found the HDMA a great resource for seeing different styles of (often) real maps. If nothing else, it makes me feel better about my own chicken-scratches......