Katie's Custom D30 Attack Table

I have my table all set up for tonight's game and my cat (well she has decided I'm her human) jumped up in my chair and put her front paws on the table. My wife joked that Katie would be our GM tonight and that all of our PCs would invariably get bitten.

Katie's favorite game is what we like to call "I Bite You". As you can imagine the rules are pretty simple. I think her mouthiness is why she is such good friends with the dog (a lab mix).

Today I also found my "new" antique D30 (and there was much rejoicing). When it was lost my speculation was that Katie had taken it for a cat toy. It was found safe and sound and I didn't find a single tooth mark on it.

In honor of both finding my die safe and sound and to hail our new kitty overlord GM, I think I have to put forth the following D30 attack table:

Frugal GM Review: The Lair of Largash the Lurid

This week I'm picking up the dice to GM for my group since the normal GM is involved in NaNoWriMo and works in retail, which starts getting interesting this time of year. My players are around 3rd level and I run a bit of a sandbox world so I try to keep several potential adventures in mind instead of trying to railroad them into one particular adventure.

Normally this group bites at any hook I set for them, but since they drive the literal direction they travel, I need to have a few hooks in a few different spots for them to nibble on. To that end I picked up Dungeon Module CG1: The Lair of Largash the Lurid from Michael Mills.

TL;DR: "meh", it's ok, but I recommend picking it up to encourage the author to write more.

My Thoughts on an Article About Better Roleplaying

One of my gamer friends from "back East" shared this great post with me: A Writer’s Guide to Better Roleplaying: Developing Character at the Table.

While the article is really written from a player's perspective, I see this as a great article for every GM as well. If anything, I think it is more important for a GM to read this.

Normally I'd try to sum up the article before commenting on it, but the author (Rich Howard) provided an awesome bit of text at the end of the article doing exactly that:

TL;DR

Don’t let your character be static. Encourage other players’ stories as much as your own. Offer to become part of their narrative, let them become part of yours and find ways to merge your stories into an even larger epic.

If you let them, your continually evolving characters can take you to places you never could have imagined on your own.

Free GM Resource: State Tourism Office(s)

This morning when I woke up I spent some time before getting up thinking of what I wanted to highlight as a Free GM Resource this week. I wanted to do something "different" and a great previously untapped resource sprang to mind: local state tourism offices.

I have traveled a LOT in my life, as a child of a Navy Brat with wanderlust and then in the Air Force. I was lucky to spend all of high school in one place, which was a record for me until I got out of the Air Force and settled down in Boise. I still travel a fair amount, but more as a tourist than an incoming resident.

You know when you drive from state to state there is often a state tourism center somewhere close to the border. My idea is specifically for these centers, but extend to the online state tourist websites as well. These places are great free resources for your games. You can usually get free maps, great location photos, and awesome adventure seeds (with props). If you are running a fantasy game you might want to stick with the more natural tourist spots, but even a good highway map can be great.

Ignoring the interstate highways, many of the state highways were built on top of existing roads. Take a couple counties' worth of state roads, copy them over to another sheet, add the city locations and instant map of villages.

You don't even have to travel to get some great ideas as a lot of folks don't know what they might have locally. Within a 2 hour drive of my home (give or take) are some great foothills, mountains, rivers, lakes, a spectacular waterfall, and even some "ice caves". I could go nuts with the ice caves. Great place to put in some monsters I probably wouldn't be able to use otherwise. I can also grab a map of the caves and even some great photos to show as props.

Next time you are travelling, stop by one of these tourist centers. You might find some great stuff to do on your trip and some great ideas and resources for your game when you get back.

Frugal GM Review: Legend of the Ripper

Today being Halloween I thought I should review one of the "scary" products being offered for free as part of DriveThruRPG's Halloween "Treats".  I ended up choosing Goodman Games' free offering of Dungeon Crawl Classic #24: Legend of the Ripper.

Seriously, if you are even thinking of getting this adventure, ACT NOW!!! It is only free through the end of the day.

The DriveThruRPG listing says it is a D&D/d20 adventure, but the title shows it as a Dungeon Crawl Classic adventure, which is an actual recognized game system at DriveThruRPG, unlike my beloved HackMaster.

I'm not quite sure where it fits*, but I think it is intended to be a d20 game since it was put out in 2006. I think the name was lifted from the adventure series to use for their game system. At any rate, it is a minor point for me because the little corner tag on the cover sums it up well enough: "ALL NEW MODULE FOR ANY FANTASY CAMPAIGN".

GM Prep Tip: A Targeted Approach

A few weeks ago I detailed a GM planning approach gleaned from my military days. While I do use this approach often, I tend to blend it in with some other planning methodologies learned over the years.

Like a lot of young GMs, my early forays into GMing were fraught with an extravagance of planning to the point of absurdity. After a while I wasn't prepping for a game, I was essentially playing a different game....with myself.

Now let's be honest here....how many of us have sat down and basically created an entire game world? Created countries and NPCs on the far side of the world that will never come into play? Made up over-the-top high/higher level adventures that the current campaign group might be able to see some day.

I get it...been there, done that. Sometimes the exercise of creating is just simply fun. No harm in having fun, is there? In my opinion this is only a problem when you are trying to plan for a specific game (campaign/session) or when you really need to use your resources (time) wisely. Since I rarely hear GMs say, "You know, I seem to have way too much time to prep for my game!" I'll have to assume this simple, targeted approach will work for all GMs.

Free GM Resource: Paper Friends

As I've mentioned countless times no doubt, I used to be a HUGE fan of paper minis, even though my personal interests have mostly moved on for a wide assortment of reasons.

Good-looking paper minis still pique my interest and I've noticed that paper minis tends towards the fantasy RPG genre, with significant gaps in available minis for other types of games.

Now I'm not sure who is behind the Seven Wonders website (no listing and Whois failed me this morning), but they have a vast array of paper minis for a wide variety of genres. The Super Heroes really jumped out at me, with tons of minis for DC and Marvel heroes and villains.

This site does not attempt to sell any of these figures, nor does it intend to infringe on copyright. I think it bends the concept of "fair use" a bit, but is probably within the lines.

Frugal GM Review: Village Maps from Paratime Design

Do you know what I pretty much suck at?

I'm specifically referencing making city/village maps, though I'm not vain enough to think the list stops there, not even when it comes to GMing.

Normally I use the Roleplaying City Map Generator, but frankly it isn't always an option and it still takes me a decent amount of finish work to get things where I want. If only there was a relatively inexpensive, yet good, collection of village maps that would work for tabletop and VTT.....

....but there is!

Tim Hartin, over at Paratime Design, has a set of great village maps. I specifically downloaded Village Map 1 & Village Map 3 (shown above) to file away for when I take back over the table in a couple weeks.

I was surprised by these maps a little bit. First off each map comes as a two page PDF, one with place names and one without. Actually this isn't completely true....I should probably note the maps come with and without building names. Village Map 01 still has some labels for the fields and pastures on both maps. I think this was a super minor oversight that doesn't detract from the overall map.

I'm usually not pleased with having maps be PDF only, but when I went to open these PDFs in Photoshop, I could. They weren't locked down and made unusable, which is great because these maps are HUGE, coming in at over 34 x 44 inches at 300 DPI. They are almost to a scale of 1" = 5', so reducing the resolution to that scale but 100 DPI took no time at all. I spent more time counting the number of grid squares to make sure I re-sized it right.

I've already recommended the plethora of free maps available from Paratime Design and I'm happy to recommend their maps for sale as well. These maps were $2.50 each and totally worth it.