Free GM Resource Expanded "Against the Giants" Super Adventure (G4-G9)

This week's Free GM Resource is "an adventure", but really I should state it is a "Big-Assed Adventure". How big? Like 6 adventures rolled into one big. Like high-level campaign big. Like, this is all we will be playing for the next year of Sundays big (YMMV).

Some time ago the good folks over at the Roll For Initiative podcast reviewed the 1st Edition Giant Series of modules from TSR. Now it's been a while so I might be a bit off, but they either reviewed or simply mentioned that some folks were working on a huge expansion of that series. IIRC they promised to get that mega-series "posted" for folks to download.

Now I've been mislead by their promises lies before (I'm still waiting for my reward from last year Vince!!!!!), but I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Last week (or so) they came through and had a link to the G4-G9 adventures. This link just goes to a "shared" Google Drive, so it is one of those things you might not find if not specifically pointed out (which is why it is being shared here!).

The files consist of two maps, a "complete" PDF of all the adventures, and adventures 4,5,7,8, & 9 individually. This really seems to be a working drive of some type as file names are a bit off, but everything seems to be in order.

• G4 Sanctum of the Stone Giant Lord
• G5 Curse of the Cloud Giant Queen
• G6 Forge of the Fomorian Smith lord
• G7 Giants in the Deep
• G8 Manor of the Mountain Giant King
• G9 Secret of the Swamp Giant Steward

If you don't already have it, the Official G1-G3 Against the Giants series is on sale at DriveThruRPG.

Frugal GM Review: Temple of Qultar

Today I was gifted a free download of The Temple of Qultar from Chubby Monster's Matt Jackson.  Right off I have a couple of admissions. 1st, I consider Matt a "friend" (even though we've never met) and 2nd, generally speaking, if you send me something RPG related for free I'm going to review it.

The friend bit might make you think I'll give a not-so-critical eye towards a review, but I like to think I tend to be a bit harsher with friend's stuff because I'm emotionally invested in seeing them do the best that they can do. My first-glance review for The Temple of Qultar was 4 stars, but I thought that was more from me being a bit of a nit-picky dick.

This download consists of 3 files, a PDF and two PNG graphics. To me the "real" download is the PDF since you can get the maps from Matt's website, so including them here is a real nice touch. Normally I prefer my maps to be 300 DPI, and these are 150 DPI, but again...nit-picky. Having two versions of the map is a great touch and my preferred map prints up nice. Because I have the PNG it is super easy for me to go ahead and print this out to scale should I want to. Not that I probably will, but I could and being able to do so is often my gold-standard for a map.

Now as far as the PDF, I usually harp upon PDFs being unsecured, which is often a sore spot for me. The thing is I really don't care if the PDF is secured, what I care about is if the file is needlessly locked down, especially if locked down to the point I can't use it. Too many times the PDF is put together so I can't get the graphics I need or even print it off. The Temple of Qultar is secured, but that doesn't really affect the usability any. The included map is a full-page map and there is the PNGs so this isn't a problem. Even though the PDF is only 4 pages, Matt went ahead and bookmarked the thing.

As to the content and layout of the PDF, I like it. The font choice and layout is a bit of a departure from other Chubby Monster games, almost as if Matt has been reading the same resources I have. I've found a typo or two here or there, probably as many as I have in the average post here. Odds are he'll have those fixed before you read this. There were a couple of thematic elements I was like, "I don't get why that was like that", but it made sense later. Spoon-feeding me the information on the spot would have been a waste of ink. There was one encounter where the number of monsters listed....well there is no number of monsters listed. I think this wasn't an omission, but a conscious choice, which I'll get into next.

Personally I haven't seen a whole lot of D&D 5th Edition short encounter sets, which is what I lump this into. I haven't played 5th edition and am not intimate with the rule-set, so overall I thought the monetary rewards for this encounter set were a bit on the high side. That's more of a gut feeling and I am cognizant that I could be way off base here (nit-picky), so I have to exclude that from any rating consideration. There is no "appropriate" level limit listed for this encounter set, so it is up to the GM to figure out the appropriateness. Coupled with the random monster tweaks in the "Getting There" section, this is why I think the one encounter doesn't have a "number appearing" entry. The GM is expected to fill in that blank to make it an appropriate challenge.

This simple aspect of The Temple of Qultar is probably the biggest reason I like this short encounter set and recommend it to anyone. Matt has given the GM a good set of maps and some great recommendations that have to be tweaked by the GM. Maybe I'm a bit biased, but most of the things I have seen for these newer editions is a hard & fast formula for appropriateness that the GM can't/shouldn't deviate from. Maybe this is a bit of the "old school" creeping into this work meant for a newer edition, but I like it. Again, probably biased, but I think GMs really need to be able to make the necessary adjustments to make encounters appropriate for their group and this short encounter set does that without deliberately drawing attention to the fact.

Now I don't mean that GMs should be able to take this short encounter set and make it suitable for their groups beginning 1st level adventure. I'll go ahead and get off my soapbox a bit and back to the review....

TL;DR: Good maps, 3 new monsters, & tweakable short encounter set for $1. The Temple of Qultar is worth it. Made for D&D 5E, but easily adapted to other rules.

Frugal GM Review: The Sandbox

As a small publisher wannabe I have a vision for producing what I think will be some great RPG products that people will love. Of course I am cognizant that a) my appetite for this may be far larger than I can stomach and b) I don't know what I don't know, so there is a helluva big learning curve.

This is why I'm developing a bit of a publisher crush on the folks over at Sine Nomine Publishing. Not only do they put out some fine products, but they are more than willing to share their institutional knowledge. So far it has been my experience that most of the folks that want to "share their knowledge" are people that really have way too high of an opinion of themselves and want me to acknowledge their self-appointment as someone "important" I should be listening to. They also tend to try to pollute my various social media feeds....

...no thank you.

Sine Nomine Publishing, on the other hand has pretty much just put their advice "out there" and really hasn't promoted it, or at least not that I've really seen. I pretty much had to stumble into it, starting off with The Smoking Pillar of Lan Yu when they included some cool publisher-useful info. That review got me a comment or two that led me to A Brief Guide to Small Publisher RPG Production (some awesome other stuff at that link...), and now on to The Sandbox.

While there are two RPG articles, the bulk of this "irregular journal" is about plotting & running a successful Kickstarter, from a production point of view. The article covers a bit of the same ground as A Brief Guide..., but damned if it isn't needed in this day & age.

I have a particular project that I was considering as a Kickstarter and I'm somewhat happy to see my initial plan is close to The Sandbox guidelines, but I'm not going that route. Even if you aren't ever planning on using Kickstarter the advice in this article is top-notch, or at least it feels that way to me. I have to remember point b) from above, after all.

All I have to say is thank you Sine Nomine Publishing for sharing your experience with the rest of us. I think they seem to get that we are all in this hobby together and bringing up the quality for one of us helps the group as a whole. Even if you aren't a writer, editor, or artist, you might get a great bit of insight off of The Sandbox. At the price of Free (as in beer), it'll be one of the best c

Map Work In Progress: Which Way to Go?

I actually have about five different projects in process that I'm skipping back and forth between. Some of this is due to a couple being larger projects (which need more resources than I currently have available) and some is because I haven't quite figured out the end-game (pardon the pun) for these efforts.

When I was cleaning out my desk a couple weeks ago I came across a couple game world maps I had created twenty years ago. At the time I had found what I thought was a cool RPG resource and I was in the process of translating it into my own campaign world. IIRC the "resource" was a book detailing a number of cities and countries that some series of choose-your-own-adventures books was set in. What really intrigued me was that each entry was quite abbreviated and no more than a page per country. Really just the highlights, but with just enough crunch to satisfy. In many ways I think this early exposure is why I liked the Garweeze Wurld Gazetteer from Kenzer & Company (now bundled with the Atlas to form the World of Aldrazar)

Anyway I found these old maps and some were heavily marked up on tiny hex paper and others were relatively unused. Sine I no longer have that earlier reference material I just tossed out most of the maps and scanned in the best copy I had left. While I have some memories of working on those other maps, the nostalgia didn't outweigh my desire for a cleaned out file-cabinet desk drawer.

My immediate question is what to do with this map now. Obviously I'm going to share it, but how much work do I want to put into it? Do I want to just update the map....do I want to start another game world guide with it? I'm half tempted to make the map the best I can (within reason) and then start to "drill-down" in a series of small products. If I did so I'd obviously want to leave everything a bit fast and loose so enterprising GMs can work their own particular magic.

Do I want to write to a specific game system? I'm starting to come around to maybe using Labyrinth Lord as my default "OSR" stand-in, but really I'd prefer to make it as usable as possible. Of course I really have to have fun doing this however I do it because I'm going forward with the assumption that very few would be interested.....unless I made everything completely free and then most who express interest would just download it and barely look at it.

At any rate, I'm of the opinion that I'll take this base map and start working on it, releasing the tweaks as I go along.

Free GM Resource: Mappery

A lot of times when I'm looking to make a map I start with a real-world map to get an idea of how to lay things out. This is particularly important if your map is supposed to be based on a real-world analog anyway.

There are a lot of places to find maps, but fewer places to find collections of more modern maps (maybe with a few older ones sprinkled in). There are enough collections here and there (I'm sure I've highlighted some in the past), but this one interwebs source, mappery, is pretty cool.

In addition to the requisite map collections there are a few great features worth checking out. One is the ability to have your own "room" where you basically assemble your own collection of maps. The best, in my opinion, is a "Gallery View" where you can pan-in on a big world map and see where the maps themselves are located. You can jump straight to the world view, but it works better if your narrow your focus first and then switch over. If there are too many maps in a small area they don't show up on the global view.

I went to the Antarctica page and then switched to the map viewer and got to see the location of the maps in the collection.  Pretty cool, yes?

Next time you need access to a real-world map, you should check out mappery.

New Frugal GM Product(s): Menu Generator & Drop Table

Once in a while I get one of those creative itches that I really need to scratch and this week I've spent too much time taking care of that needy feeling.

Earlier this week I had an idea for a simple drop-table to create a fantasy RPG menu. I had an idea in my mind how it'd work and after creating the original background graphics and doing a fair bit of research I realized that my concept was far too simple and trying for an "authentic" sort of medieval meal was just unrealistic.

In addition to the whole idea of when & where, as "medieval" encompasses such a large swath of time & space, there were some considerations for poor meals and better meals. Before I knew it I was looking at a slew of menus with different price points and complexity. Eventually I had to just stand back a bit and hit the subject with a rather wide brush that "felt" right to me. I took some historical information into account and just hammered a few points around until it felt right to me.

In the end I came up with a series of tables that allow you to use a full range of "standard" RPG dice. I also made sure that the tables had some extra entries so the GM could add some regional fare and even had some room for an extra table. I didn't forget the drop table, but tweaked my original idea and made a rather simple table. The drop table is available as a freebie and I put a price on the full PDF.

Here is the drop table, just for a look-see. If you want it I'd download this copy from DriveThruRPG. If the full-on version interests you, use this link.

Frugal GM Review: Mad Monks of Kwantoom

This week I managed to pick up the Mad Monks of Kwantoom, a Labyrinth Lord compatible sourcebook. Truth be told, "sourcebook" is a bit of an understatement. This thing is not just a Oriental Adventures sourcebook, but also a solo-campaign generator. There is a ton of cool stuff in here to "lovingly borrow" and the author knows this, going so far as to note "just rip off whatever you need for your game". Now I don't need permission to do that, but this acknowledgement tells me that Kabuki Kaiser (an interesting nom de plume if I've ever heard one) "gets it".

Right off, there is a metric butt-ton of content in this download, 229 pages of it. The PDF was obviously created for A5 printing, but doesn't look too bad when expanded for letter-sized printing. I'm not a fan of the huge side margins and single column layout. That empty space is put to use often for little notes and asides in red text, which is visually striking but leads to probably my greatest frustrations.

I am extremely disappointed in this product as a PDF download. I bet it is glorious as a printed book, but as a PDF....not so much. There isn't a single bookmark in this PDF! The PDF is also needlessly locked down. You cannot change the document or extract pages, which means you cannot add your own bookmarks or even make your own PDF section from the book. Imagine as a GM you wanted to go ahead and actually make all these little bits of red break-out text do something. Nope! Do you want your own Monster Manual PDF? Not going to happen. Heck, even if you want to go to the Monster Manual you need to either know it is on page of the PDF or mouse up to page four, which is marked page two...., see it is listed as page 134 and either type that in to your reader's navigation box, or do a shit-ton of scrolling.

There are other little things here & there, like an almost full-page of a cool monster graphic (on page 116/118) when you know they have a color version, because it is on the cover! Going through and listing all of them would just be piddly, but mostly just an effort to vent because of the ungainly PDF. Seriously though, the PDF is enough of a pain I doubt I'll end up using this without printing it off, unless I attempt to crack the password and go through fixing things myself, which is a lot of PITA for a nearly $13 PDF.

Lucky for me I got this on sale for $5 and there is a lot of good content. Even if you aren't running a full-on Oriental Campaign, the information for new classes, races, monsters, and magic items can weasel their way into your home campaign. Heck, I could see some folks just picking this up for the variant Monk classes. With minor tweaking the 1001 Pagodas of Doom can become just a "regular" random dungeon crawl. My favorite though is probably the roughly 20 pages of content that is "The Little Tome of Lucky Charms". I've always loved minor magic items and this collection of 100 is pretty cool. Again with some minor tweaks this would fit in with any style campaign.

Overall the Mad Monks of Kwantoom is a bit of a mixed bag and it really depends on where you want your campaign to go. There is some great content, but accessing that content is a bit of a pain. If you want to simply borrow some elements and if you can get this at the cheaper price point of $5 I think it'll be worthwhile, but if you want to use this as a PDF and you have to pay the full cover price, I'd rather just get a printed copy and save some of the frustration.

If you are itching to run an oriental adventures campaign.....then all bets are off and you should definitely pick this up.

Free GM Resource: Dragon Age Inquisition Tavern Songs

A fellow HackMaster player and new blogger Andrew Bush gave me a head's up last week about some free RPG themed music that is up for grabs until February 9th.

Evidently the folks at BioWare had been inundated with requests for the tavern music from the Dragon Age: Inquisition game and they decided to comply. From now until February 9th you can head over to the game's website and download a zip file of 10 tavern songs. If that isn't enough for you, they've also included sheet music for the songs as well!

No I can't carry a tune with a bucket, but I'm willing to bet a few brave souls will take this sheet music and run with it. It wouldn't surprise me to hear some cool versions of these songs floating about eventually. Now I'm personally not a fan of filking, but that's just me......don't let my opinion keep anyone from getting their geek on.

The songs are short, ranging from 1:11 to 2:13, although one song is a whopping 3:23. I'm planning on using these to spice up my in-game sound board (when I get off my but and organize it!).

If you come across this after February 9th, 2015 all isn't lost as the songs will be made available for sale. It isn't as good as free, but then that is what you get for not following the Dragon Age, FrugalGM, or Dungeon Beef websites.