Frugal GM Review: Maps For Heroes Fundraiser Campaign

This week I'm not reviewing any straight-up product per se, but a fundraising effort that I brought to my reader's attention a little over a month ago. In that "head's-up" post I challenged folks to pony up $8 for a series of RPG maps from eight contributors, figuring a buck a map for a good cause was well worthwhile.

As near as I can tell a couple of folks took me up on that challenge and then some. I think that two folks, myself included, "only" donated $8. By my math the minimum donation level (direct through the site that is) was $8, which I think it pretty awesome.

Free GM Resource: Fantasy Map Tiles from FantasiFjas

Today's Free GM Resource is one of those, "get some know, stay tuned for more" type online destinations.  The resource itself is a series of gaming tiles from the Norwegian blog  FantasiFjas by Les Inkwell.

I stumbled upon FantasiFjas through a random G+ post and was glad I did. The tiles aren't "perfect" as in you can use them in a completely random fashion, but making them "perfect" would a) take a LOT more work, and b) take away a lot of the charm of these tiles.

You really should take a look at FantasiFjas and get some of these tiles for your own use. While I could go more into these tiles, the artist himself made a little comic about his work just for his increasingly English-reading fanbase. I've only borrowed two panels of the comic. so you might want to read the rest of it here (or click the panels below).

Frugal GM Review: The Manor, Issues #1 & #5

The Manor is a quarterly zine put together by Tim Shorts, currently under the GM Games banner. Somewhere I had gotten a copy of issue #5 and filed it away forgotten. With DriveThruRPG's Xmas in July sale going on for just under four more days I thought I'd pick up issue #1 for review.

Honestly, when reading through issue #1 I was pretty "meh" and didn't want to review it. When I went to file it away I discovered the #5 issue and decided to look at both for a review. I'm glad I came back to it, because #1 was far better than my initial impression led me to believe (I guess we all have off days).

Free Map 033: Hedgerow Countryside

This week's free map has been quite the PITA for me to put together, mostly because I set my sights much higher than normal. I've been wanting to donate a map to Matt Jackson's Maps for Heroes Campaign and I couldn't just through up a "normal" map. No....this map I had to make 100% from scratch....no borrowing texture graphics.

Last week I caught a glimpse of a 1:10,000 map of the French countryside and I was amazed at the sheer number of hedgerows. Now when I think of hedgerows I immediately think of the kind the neighbors would have, which is so wrong. I looked up some pictures online and if my neighbor's hedge's are "normal" then these were Dire Hedgerows. Some bridged creeks and other had fricken tunnels through them!

Free GM Resource: Generala

This week's Free GM Resource is another RPG system, Generala. The game is more or less complete with a simple rulebook which includes some monsters and a sample adventure, a couple of PC sheets, and a book of pre-gens. There is also a player-only version for printing, which is nice.

The basic mechanic is an interesting dice pool mechanic based on the game of Yahtzee (or more importantly, the games Yahtzee is based off of). I won't go too much into the game in case I feel like reviewing it later, but right off the bat it seems like possible "starter game" for folks that don't know what a d12 is, but want to play anyway.

I don't know about you, but I know some folks that resemble that last remark....

Generala is free, but if you like what you see and get some use out of it you can always buy it again at DriveThruRPG for $2.99. The PDF for sale has an extra 10 pages with what I only have to assume is an expanded Monster section.

New FREE Frugal GM Product at DriveThruRPG: Trouble at Karst Cavern

This week I've been busier than I should be screwing around with some family genealogy research for my mother. I find it mildly amusing that she's made several cross-country trips to do research and I've found so much more than her from the comfort of my home-office. Of course she hasn't had the same education & experience at these things as I have.

Anyway, this morning was spent with some physical construction work where I *actually* sweated some. This afternoon I was planning on tidying up some and during a "quick" break came across the following challenge from one Matt Jackson, "Let's have some fun today. I made a map, let's stock it! Write a short adventure for whatever system you prefer. Any takers?"

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.....