Frugal GM Review: Big Hexyland 2

Last week I was stoked to hear on my G+ feed that Doug Anderson had finished his Big Hexyland 2 set. Doug puts out some great stuff and I've already reviewed his 25mm Dungeon Maps and shared his Dungeonteller RPG. I put the new download in my DriveThruRPG wishlist and "vocalized" that I was looking forward to reviewing it.

Doug decided to send me a review copy, which is even better! I really looked forward to customizing these new tiles and having them run off at my local print shop. My thought was these tiles would look great on foamcore and maybe even laminated. Last Monday I had to go downtown to the Boise State University Library for some FrugalGM research and I figured I's just stop by FedEx and have a few tiles printed.

Free Map043: Clarkesburg Caverns

I've focused in on a small area of the larger map I put out last week. Since I've written quite a bit about this map on the Patreon page where you can download it I won't go into too much detail.

I do want to state though that I deliberately didn't add entrances to this map because it occurred to me that with this type of map having pre-placed entrances might actually be a impedance for some GMs to pick this up and use it. Now I'm intending to place three entrances where the cavern system butts up against some ponds, but another GM may wish to place this "under" one of their current maps and choose entrances based on how well it lines up for them.

Hopefully if GMs would prefer that I always make sure to include entrances, they'll let me know so I can take that under advisement.

The map is a 300 DPI map printed to a High-Quality (actual setting) letter-sized PDF.......and I just know realized that was kind of a stupid thing to do. Well, releasing it as a PDF wasn't stupid, but ONLY releasing it as a PDF was. Here is a link to the JPG version. At least those who would have preferred the JPG get rewarded for actually reading this post!

As per my usual, clicking on the lead-in graphic or using this link takes you to the original (PDF) file.

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.