Frugal GM Review: Pirates of Hagrost

In honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day I had to review one of the few Pirate(y) RPG products in my library: The Pirates of Hagrost.

This old Judges Guild setting goes way back to 1982. It isn't a refreshed product restored for the modern gamer, but a scan of an original printed product.

This brings back some nostalgia, but also makes the supplement a bit difficult to read. The formatting is a bit of a bear and unless you are used to running the "Judges Guild Universal Roleplaying Adventure" system, you'll probably be a bit slack-jawed at the wall of abbreviations presented on most pages. There is a glossary of sorts about 3/4 of the way through this supplement and if you want to have some fun, try to wrap your head around the armor system. You'll need a pad of paper and maybe a calculator, as well as a few look-up charts to add up the piece-meal armor system.

Still, even with it's warts this supplement, like most of the Judge's Guild line, is a great source for inspiration. You'll need to clean up everything, but for a 30+ year old product I think there is still a lot of meat on them old salty bones.

For me this product is more of an interesting read and not something I'd get too much table-use out of. If you have a group of players who have read or played in "everything" from TSR, then this might be a good source of some truly old-school adventuring. As of the time of this review the PDF is going for $2.99, which is less than the 1982 cover price of $4.99 ($12.37 in 2014 dollars).

Free GM Resource: Open Game Art

I wasted this morning trying to evaluate/get working a seemingly abandoned piece of software that on the surface would appear perfect for GM's running a campaign with a non-standard calendar. The program kept crashing and bugging out and I was attempting a work-around so I could use it for my own campaign. By fiddling with the system files I could get around some odd limitations, but I couldn't get program to save without crashing.

Ugh.

I was about to completely give up on a post today but decided to look for a specific sound effect I was hoping to use with my soundboard and I came across a pretty decent free resource. OpenGameArt.org is pretty much exactly what the title says, a collection of "open" art for games. While it seems clear that the art is for video games, a quick search of the sound effects tagged as "RPG", revealed several hundred sound effects. There has to be a few goodies in there to borrow for in-game sound effects.

 I did notice that few sound effects would be sound-board ready as they really need to be unzipped and possibly converted over to your desired format. You might even need to get creative and combine some sounds & effects, either in the soundboard or with a dedicated program to make them a more usable length. For example, a hit sound might be half a second, but if you combine it with some "whoosing" sounds and a grunt or two....it might work.

Of course, YMMV.....

Frugal GM Review: Winds of the Ice Forest

Going through the list of recent offerings at DriveThruRPG a cover caught my eye and upon investigation I discovered that J.V. West had put out another adventure. I really liked Howler and my group finally got to run through it. I think they liked it as much as I did.

First off, I know that this is only the second adventure, but is there a mailing list or something I can get on? (I guess there is....you can "follow" a publisher on DriveThruRPG)

Of course I had to download this adventure and do a quick review. It'll be quite some time, years maybe, before my group will get to play in this, but I have the perfect spot for this.

GM Prep Tip: Book of Prepped Randomness

Unless I'm GMing a one-off or a tournament/convention game (which are usually one-offs...) I like to have some decent level of continuity and campaign mastery for my players, but I don't want to rail-road them or waste my limited prep time on information I'll (likely) never use.

Many game sessions are just continuations of a well-defined path (i.e. the party is already in the dungeon where we just stopped the session's action for the night) and I don't have to do much additional prep work, but other times I don't have a firm grasp on where I expect the players to go. Sure they might bite on the hook I set for them, but they may also decide they don't want to go "fishing".

Free GM Resource: Blue Dungeons Tile of the Week

Last April I reviewed Dungeons in Blue: Small Dungeon #8, and I wasn't that big of a fan. Looking back the issue at hand seems to have been expectations from the DriveThruRPG listing for the general Dungeons in Blue line, which didn't pertain to the Small Dungeons line.....

.....anyway, regardless of that specific product, I've been eyeing the "regular" Dungeons in Blue line, I think just as much for the nostalgia as for the fact I cannot wait to get my Blue Dungeon Tiles from the recent  Kickstarter. I think if I can get the two to work together I'll be set.

Last week, thanks to a timely G+ post, I was reminded of Mark Thomas' free Tile of the Week, which works with his paid products. There are 28 Tile of the Week entries as of this posting. That is not only a lot of free product, but it just enhances the value of any of the Dungeons in Blue you've already purchased!

Now you can go through and download each tile right from the blog, or you can also get a bundle of almost all of them (I doubt Mark updates the file each week because it would be a PITA) for Pay What You Want at DriveThruRPG. If you go the DriveThruRPG route, you don't need to worry too much about recent updates because when the collection gets updated you can just download the newest version.....unless you have to have those updates ASAP...then you just need to keep on top of Random Diversions.

Frugal GM Review: Blood Cult Temple Preview

This week has been a bit busy with some consulting work and when I had some free time at way-too-early this morning I thought I'd pop over to DriveThruRPG and look for a map I was needing for a potential location I suspect my players are going to visit.

I usually have several dangling threads for the PCs to pull on and I try to have a couple adventure ideas roughed-out, only putting significant efforts into the direction I know the players are going. In my last session the players indicated they may want to return "home" and maybe check out a specific town further down the road from where they first started.

Without going into too many spoilers, I might be needing an evil cult location as a setting, so I wanted to find something that I could use instead of having to devote GM prep time to creating some new maps. While I already have a large collection of maps, I always like to see what new maps are available. My one cult chamber map I have was already used for this group and while I could just reuse it.....I think my players deserve better.

Some of the new efforts from Heroic Maps has been on my radar and right on the main page of DriveThruRPG they have a new free map that is just what I was looking for! At first I was a bit surprised that this map was free and not PWYW, but it eventually dawned on me (remember.....way-too-early....) that this free map was one level of a larger map offering.

Quick Play Report: Murderhobos

Yesterday my home group managed to squeeze in an hour or so of Murderhobos. I'm not writing this with the rules in front of me so some of the names for stuff, er shit, might be off.

Everyone liked the rules, or at least reading the rules. Before I GM'd the players I also created two Murderhobos. I let everyone have 200 GP of weapons and the results were....interesting. I didn't allow the players to name their PCs, so any references are to class.

Our small group had three Murderhobos: a Brutal Fighter, a Sneaky Bastard, and an Unhinged Priest. Most of the weaponry was standard fare, except the Sneaky Bastard that preferred to use a potato cannon as her missile weapon and a rust dagger for melee.

Free GM Resource: Book of Low Level Lairs Volume I

This week's Free GM Resource is a quick one...sorry guys, but I'm phoning it in today.

Today is Labor Day and the first time since....I was going to say Christmas, but that isn't right...it's been forever since my entire gaming group has had the day off at the same time, so we are going to be making a bit more of a day of it.

We'll fire up the grill, I'll GM, my wife will GM, we'll play some board games, and we'll probably have a decent amount of libations.

That means I have more cleaning (OK, some cleaning....but any is "more") and game prep to do. No long post or time spent on an intro graphic:

Go check out And Magazine's Adventure Book 03: Book of Low Level Lairs Volume I. The fact they bother to label it as Volume I means you know there is going to be at least a 2nd volume. I gave it a once-over and it looked pretty good. Definitely worth the cover price! I loved the listing of "texts required" and it has a couple new spells.

Go get it now.