Frugal GM Review: Murderhobos

I was planning on reviewing a particular product when I discovered it isn't publicly available, so I didn't see the point. When I was searching DriveThruRPG for something new I almost just went ahead and grabbed an item off of my wishlist, but I wanted something new.....

....and that is when Murderhobos caught my eye. As some of you know I play HackMaster predominately (almost exclusively) and this isn't HackMaster, but it is peripherally related only to a few folks in a nonsensical way. One of HackMaster's game designers joking refers to PCs as "MurderHobos", which always made me laugh.

Free Map 036: Mountain Valley

The map I've been working on this week was an attempt to use some  bits and pieces of things I've been learning with other maps and try to piece it all together on a map pretty much from scratch.

This is the "actual" location from last week's treasure map.

I'm not enthusiastic about how it came out, but on the plus side with some additional tweaking I think the B&W version for the Tweak & Toss I'm working on came out a lot better.

Free GM Resource: MediaWiki

As long-time readers of this blog, well...both of you, might know, I've used several methods for keeping track of in-game information, and I've shared these methods with anyone who might be interested.

First I used a simple wiki that you could keep on a thumb drive: TiddlyWiki. It was just "OK" for my needs and I didn't really use it for long. Of course part of that might just be I didn't have an active campaign at the time and I couldn't be motivated to set my wiki up. For the longest time I was using Blogger, and for just a simple campaign journal it was perfect. With some difficulty I was able to use hot-links from one page to another, but on more than one occasion those links didn't work. The blog did a great job of making things prettier for "outsiders" to follow the game, but it didn't do as well as I wanted for campaign management.

Free Map 035: A Map Hand Out to Somewhere

This week's free map is a player-handout, which is a bit of a departure from my norm. One of my new weekly attempts has been creating some short Encounter Sets which I put up on DriveThruRPG. Since I've just started this the whole concept is still taking form and I've got two under my belt. An idea I've been working on could better be told as at least two Encounter Sets, so that's what I'm doing. The first will be something occurring on the way to the second, but I wanted to "set the hook" with some sort of lead-in.

Frugal GM Review: The Towers of the Weretoads

Last week, thanks to a G+ post, a free OSR adventure was brought to my attention.

Evidently Michael Raston had finished his six page labor of love and released it for the world to see. The Towers of the Weretoads is not statted for any particular system or PC level and is easily adapted. I can see running this for a mid-level (5-10) group of HackMaster PCs, but only because of the sheer number of enemies that can be found within. Of course that all depends on the party's resources. I could see this level range swing wildly.

New Frugal GM Product: Who's Watching the Weir?

I've been coming up with some ideas for inexpensive products that I think will go over well, and some I just want to do. Between my current working from home, the normal blog updates, and (very important) my home game, these new items are a bit slow in coming out.

A couple weeks ago I created what I call a "Tweak & Toss" encounter set based on a nebulous challenges from Matt Jackson. If there is one thing I've come to enjoy from this site is that it has allowed me to connect with some great folks in the RPG community.

Free GM Resource: Meatshields

Richard and Meatshield Courtesy
of Looking For Group

I keep a small file of free resources on my computer so I can share these tidbits on a weekly basis. This weekend while I was listening to the most excellent podcast Roll For Initiative, which is still going strong two years after I posted it as an excellent Free GM Resource, the mentioned one of the few links I had saved to share. I'd rather just use that resource now and acknowledge the RFI guys than wait a few weeks and try to pretend I'd never heard about it on the podcast.

Meatshields (from the folks who brought you Barrowmaze) is a cool little online utility for quickly....and I mean quickly generating a list of possible NPC hirelings. There are only two generator options: size of locale and paying for a town crier. Don't bother fleshing out NPCs just to have the party decide to not hire them. Instead use Meatshields to list what is available and do the work, if needed, after the party decides who to hire.

Free Map(s) 034: Yet Another River Section

This week's free map(s) are a little late, I know....but I didn't want to detract from the quality maps that Matt was putting up as part of his Maps for Heroes campaign.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Last week I went up into the mountains to visit a fellow Toastmaster and the majority of our drive was alongside a couple of mountain rivers. The granite outcroppings were rather stunning and I had some game-related ideas that I'm in the process of putting together as another Tweak & Toss encounter set.