Frugal GM Review: 47 Tips and Tricks to Become a Better Game Master or Storyteller

I just picked up this small PDF of 47 Tips & Tricks to Become a Better Game Master or Storyteller from Blackstone Entertainment, Inc.

The premise seems good....who doesn't want some tips & tricks to be a better GM? The price is a whopping $1, definitely in my budget. Let's not forget how important to me that a PDF not be overly secured....this one has no security.

My first question when getting this file, which is only compounded even more when I look at the rest of this publisher's offerings, is, "What is the deal with 47?" All 12 of BlackStone Entertainment's offerings are about "47 things". I don't get it, and the publisher's website isn't about the publisher at all, just some RPG I've never heard of...and seems to be a work in progress.

At any rate, I read through the 29 page PDF and while I liked the general advice, it was a difficult read. This PDF is not something you want to print out....ever. Every page is black text on a way-too-dark grey background. The background on the cover is the same on every page. The font selection and layout is funky enough to detract from the reading, with too many widows & orphans. The original text was written using MS Word and while 3.56 MB isn't that large of a file, for what you're getting it is relative huge, presumably from the background graphics that don't add anything to the product. The layout itself isn't even consistent point by point. Some of the tips are indented, other are not. The use of paragraphs in general is spotty throughout the document.

This was not a pleasant read for me. Many of the points could be simply deleted and replaced with the 1st sentence explaining the point. For example, "Develop, copy, or wing your vocal skills." doesn't seem like a tip to me while "Find a way to alter the tone, depth, and pace of your voice as you run your games." is a useful tip.

There is some good information in this product, but pulling it out is a less than stellar experience.

Inked Adventures Contest Winners

OK...I've selected the two winners from the recent contest and have reached out to them. Surprisingly, both winners...and my alternates in case either one isn't interested, came off of the members list.

That's the way the random dice rolled....this time.

I'll wait to announce the actual names until the winners have responded.

Free GM Resource: Encounter Magazine

Today's Free GM Resource is a bit of a mixed bag.

Encounter is a pretty good fanzine for the "classic D&D game" with some good production values and interesting articles. I'm not a huge fan of the three-column layout, but to each his own.

The zine is free, which is obvious good, but there are only four issues to be had. Since this was a quarterly attempt, I'm glad it went to a full year's production.

There really isn't much more to this week's resource other than to go to the website and download your copies today!

Frugal GM Review: The Smoking Pillar of Lan Yu

Now I tend to pick and choose what I review here to the extent that I don't generally pick up things that don't pique my interest immediately. The Smoking Pillar of Lan Yu, from Sine Nomine Publishing, didn't seem all that interesting to me at a glance and I'm not quite sure why I picked it up.

Boy I'm sure glad I did though!

Frugal GM Contest: Inked Adventures Hand Drawn (Large) Geomorph Tiles

I think it is about time I've gotten rid of some of my crap, er had a contest....yeah....a contest.

OK, I'll come clean. I'm clearing out my office because I really let things go this winter and when I came across one of my many small storage boxes containing the bajillion Inked Adventures Geomorph Tiles I painstakingly put together. I had them professionally printed, mounted on high-end self-stick foam core, and then laminated with high-end lamination. These things are a bit larger than 3" square and come just short of completely stuffing my photo storage box (11 x 7.5 x 5).

I think these things are pretty fricken sweet, but I also know I'm probably not going to use them. I already have plans for the electronic files and if I had been just a bit smarter about making these things I would have sized them to about 4" square. That size I'd have more of a use for because they'd fit the large collection of generic tokens I have.

Maybe some day I'll re-do these tiles, but for now.....well, something this nice has to have a good home. I've already reached out to Billiam Babble and gotten his permission to give these away. He liked the idea well enough that he's offered to let me give away a free download of the set as well!

So here is the deal:

• Check out the original review post on the Inked Adventures Hand Drawn Large Geomorph Tiles, to make sure this is something you'd be interested in. This set I printed much smaller.....
• Shoot off an email to iacontest@frugalgm.com

and/or

• Follow this blog by clicking on the little "Join this site" with Google Friend Connect. 

The contest will run for 1 week, ending at midnight (my time Mountain Time) on January 15th...as in when the 15th starts for me. At that time I'll open up the email account, count the number of entries, count the number of blog members, and use a random generator to figure out who won the tiles and do it all again to see who won the digital download.

I'll pay for standard shipping here in the US and up to $10 for any international shipping. I like to think we're all adults here, but in case I'm wrong I'll just go on the record to say I reserve the right to make any necessary changes to the contest as I feel like. A little bit or me feels dirty for even having to type that......

Please help spread the word about this contest and help me find a good home to this excellent product.

Free GM Resource: Omniglot

In the last couple of weeks I've been made aware of two particular font-based resources I plan on sharing as Free GM Resources. I'm a sucker for new & unusual fonts to use for gaming props...which is "funny" because I don't actually get to use them all too often....

.....but I can, and for some reason this pleases me more than it should.

Omniglot is an interesting little website that has quite a few good uses...even for players.

My current HackMaster is one of those "once-in-a-lifetime" PCs, a statistical anomaly for sure, but he started off the game being rather racist and didn't even know any language other than Dwarven. Well, technically he knew a little bit of one of the human languages, but not much. I played this up by using a crib sheet of phrases in Dwarven.

"But Chris....you don't know Dwarven....it isn't a real language!" OK, you got me there, but I simply decided that I'd use Icelandic as a substitute. Google Translate helped some, but in my experience a lot of common phrases don't necessarily translate directly (some swears come to mind), so I need a little linguistic help. Omniglot has some nice (i.e. "Clean" references) as well as some links to more. I especially like the help with pronunciation so when my Dwarf asks a foe "Viltu dansa við mig?" I can say it right.  Oh....."Viltu dansa við mig?" translates to "Would you like to dance?"

My first stumbling upon Omniglot was to find some obscure fantasy fonts, which can be found in the "Fictional Scripts" section. Fricken jackpot! Some even have downloadable fonts to use.

I highly suggest just getting to the site and poking around......if you find a font you like and want to use, but doesn't exist, I'd suggest this Free GM Resource.

Frugal GM Review: Mead & Mayhem

This week I have an interesting little RPG supplement that covers probably the wildest and most chaotic thing I can think to GM: a bar brawl.

Mead & Mayhem is a 6 page PWYW supplement pretty much consisting of a single bar-brawl table. The general idea is to consult the table at specific intervals and use the results to guide the brawl to its inevitable conclusion, which is the utter destruction of the establishment.

Put out by D-oom Products, Mead & Mayhem uses the much-maligned d30. Most rolls have a positive modifier to the next roll and when you hit 30......well, it is time to find a new watering hole.

I love the fact that this uses a d30, that the PDF is open, and that they've also included a "printer friendly" version of the cover. I think a little more work could have been done with the "printer-friendly", since the woodcut is not black and white, but it is a minor point. Since it is an open PDF I can (and did) "fix" the cover for my personal file.

While I'm on the point of files, this PDF is way too large in terms of size. Storage-wise this 6 pages comes in at 11.6 MB while the "printer-friendly" cover is 3.71 MB. I don't know if this is a factor of the Ghostscript distiller used or incorrect settings, but a quick "re-print" using Adobe Acrobat set to "Press Quality" resulted in a PDF not much larger than the cover. The PDF is sized for A4 paper, which might seem a bit off to Americans, but is perfectly normal for most of the world.

I think I'm more of a fan of the idea of the bar-brawl resolution table and using a d30, but I think there needed to be a bit more to this PDF than a single chart. Another table to two to run in conjunction with the main table could spice things up a bit so the table could be used multiple times with seemingly completely different outcomes. Speaking of outcomes, it'd be nice if there were multiple options for the end-result. Even something as little as when you hit result 40 roll on a sub-table to generate the ending of the bar-brawl.

Personally I don't think Mead & Mayhem is worth the suggested $3, but I love the idea and the use of a d30. With a little tweaking, some of which I've already done, I think this supplement will find a place at my table.

Frugal GM's End of the Year DriveThruRPG Review 2014

At the beginning of each year I like to do a quick review of "sales" over at DriveThruRPG. This helps me gauge my "work" over the previous 12 months and allows me to keep things in check with the initial goals I had when starting this effort.

I think I'm right in line and while some goals may change over the course of 2015 (i.e. I have some plans I'm not announcing yet) at the core I want be able to give back to this hobby that has given me so much over the previous years.

For some of you, these numbers may be surprising and for others it might be useful to have something to compare to.....just be aware that there that are going to be some discrepancies by design. None of these number incorporate the free Lunch Box Heroes game that was put up recently.

1,201   The number of RPG products "sold" by Frugal GM on DriveThruRPG in 2014
   667   The number of "sold" products that were new in 2014.
55.5%  Percentage of new items "sold" in 2014

42.3%  Percentage of 2014 sales compared to all sales since April 2012

$58.01 Gross Sales
$39.34 Pay-What-You-Want Sales
$97.35
      .70 Commission
$68.14 Net Sales

$0.06   Average Net Sale

     6%  Percentage "For Profit" Sales
     2%  Perecentage Pay-What-You-Want Sales
     8%  Percentage of revenue-generating sales


This means that 92% of everything downloaded from Frugal GM through DriveThruRPG was free. My overall goal was to hit at least 90% I think I've been successful in this regard. I'm a little disappointed in that there have only been three product reviews this year, but it's within the expected range of 350-400 downloads per review norm that has been established.

The one thing I'm personally not happy with is that there were only seven new items released this year. While I didn't exactly have a goal in mind, I think I need to shoot for at least one a month.

I do think things have been steadily progressing and as I find more free GM resources to post and more cool RPG products to review I like to think that this blog is slowly becoming a more valuable tool for my fellow GMs. Thank you for being a part of this endeavor and for helping more folks enjoy RPGs.

Game on!