Free GM Resource: Labyrinth Lord Owlcon Adventures

It looked like people enjoyed the Super Adventure of Against the Giants. Well, I don't have another "Super Adventure" but I do have a couple of super adventures.

OC-1: A Parliament of Owls and OC-2: The Dark Rookery are Labyrinth Lord adventures written for the 2014 & 2015 Owlcon Convention. Both feature art from James V West and as much as I'd like to go in an do a review, you should just go ahead and download these for yourself.

Of course you could just wait a few years and also download OC-3 Tomb of the Feather Mage, OC-4 Warrens of the Night Hunters, and OC-5 A Screech From Beyond, but I'm too impatient for that......

Free Tweak & Toss Short Encounter Set: FGM023 Dreki Draugr of Strandagaldur

I had just realized that it has been two months since I made a "Tweak & Toss" short encounter set, so today I buckled down and made a new one. Last week at the Wednesday night open chat at Tenkar's Tavern, Matt Jackson asked for a name he could use as some ruins. I made something up, typed it into Google and gave him the results, which ended up being an Icelandic place name (or I hope that is what it was!)

When his map came out Matt made an off-hand remark something to the effect that he wished to see someone make something from it. After the last challenge I had to use this map. Now I realize it might not have been an actual challenge, but sometimes you need anything for motivation. I was already working on a map and it was easy to add the appropriate-shaped building "blob" on that map.

I spent my free-thinking moments during the next day or so coming up with a couple ideas, which I subsequently scrapped. The only fragment I kept was this mental picture of St. George slaying the dragon. It was the actual picture I used on the back of the woodcut playing cards I had in mind. Eventually I came up with some sort of "Lazarus Dragon" who could come back from the dead under the right circumstances. That morphed heavily into something else and mentally tweaked and prodded until I came up with an idea I hope was expressed well-enough in the adventure, which I named Dreki Draugr of Strandagaldur. Those other words are Icelandic as well and *surprise* spoilers!

If I didn't get my new monster across as well as I had hoped I could try to re-write a better entry. There were space constraints, but also the simple fact I wasn't working from a specific game system point of view.

The Tweak & Toss Short Encounter set is available on both DriveThruRPG and Patreon...for absolutely free! Just if you enjoy it, please check out Matt's Patreon campaign as well.

Free Map 042

Well, my 1st Patreon sponsored map is up and it was quite the learning experience for me. The free map itself was easy enough, but I made a much (as in HUGE) larger map with multiple background options.

My idea was that I'd get some decent mileage out of this map as I have plans for a couple Tweak & Toss short encounter sets and a larger adventure.

 Since I'm using Patreon now, I'm not hosting the files on my Google Drive, which is great because these things tend to take up a lot of room. You can easily download this map from Patreon without too much effort. All you have to do is click on the little blue icon below the preview and it'll download automatically.

Click to go to my Patron activity page for a much larger example

Frugal GM Review: Gygax Magazine Issue #5

I've been a bit conflicted on whether I should review this issue of Gygax Magazine since I went and reviewed issue #2 & #4, but I did buy the thing and because of one major issue I could see a review being relevant for some people. Besides, one review a year for this magazine should be acceptable, right?

I'm going to go right on ahead and address the "elephant" in the room: Gygax Magazine's release schedule blows chunks, and their problems getting an issue out in time is problematic to the point where I expect it hurts sales and interest. This is issue #5 of what was intended, and by all accounts still pretends to be, a quarterly publication. I picked up #1 two years ago, so this being #5 pretty much makes Gygax Magazine biannual.

OK, I've Officially Put My Hat in My Hands......

I did it.....I took the plunge and started a Patreon campaign for the Frugal GM. There are a few things I've really been wanting to do here and I just haven't had the resources. To some extent it is all my fault since I tend to put stuff up for free, but pointing out &/or making resource-saving "stuff" for GMs is really the whole point.

My attempts to "save up" some "extra" cash to finance these extra efforts is a bit futile (to say the least). It doesn't help that I'm currently unemployed.....

....and that isn't an attempt at sympathy. It just is what it is. I do make a few bucks a month from DriveThruRPG, but that just gets rolled back into DriveThruRPG for stuff to review on Fridays.

If you are the patron(izing) sort, please check out my Patreon Campaign and donate (or not). The thing is I'm not planning on changing anything as far as releasing products for free/PWYW, with the exception of doing more of it. If I get enough I'll be able to do some "extras". First on the extra block is a regular Zine (every other month) and I have some designs for a regular series of NPC booklets.

Mrs. Frugal GM is on a Podcast!

Nothing like a little good-morning plug for a podcast. Now I'll be the first to admit I was a bit "meh" on the BrainStorm podcast when I first heard it, but wisely gave it a second chance. I'm pretty sure I've heard all of the episodes since I have it on my iTunes feed and if anything the short (30 minutes or less) format has made me dump some of my longer podcasts. Those 90 minute or longer formatted casts are just too damned long for me.

Recently my wife was asked to contribute to the podcast and this morning, as in about 10 minutes ago, her 1st episode, is up. This isn't her 1st podcast experience, but her old podcast with a diverse group of gamer girls (their term, not mine) only lasted about 10 episodes.

Ok, I'm off to listen to the podcast, which you can find here.

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.