Free GM Resource: I'll See It When I Believe It Adventures & Art

This week's Free GM Resource, in keeping with my recent impromptu theme of free adventures is, duh, more free adventures.

I'll See It When I Believe It is another Blogger blog by Michael Prescott and Michael has some pretty good stuff. He puts out a monthly adventure and has a Patreon site (evidently I am so late to that party!). The adventures are posted to his blog and I'm happy to say that there is even some easy front-page navigation to find them.

Exceedingly cool is the fact that the art is usually available in addition to the adventure and that pretty much everything is released under a CC-BY-NC license.

Frugal GM Review: Bloodnut Pass

This morning I've had my 1st two rules invoked when the usually-awesome Matt Jackson sent me a download of his newest OSR adventure Bloodnut Pass.

I wasn't but a couple of pages into this adventure when I had to reach out to Matt and basically ask "WTFO?!" There was so much that was a departure from his norm that I thought maybe his name on it was a typo. Nope, it was his work and there was a reason why he layed out this adventure as he did.

At first I thought maybe this was a bit of a joke adventure because I thought maybe he was having a dig at Venger Satanis over at Draconic Magazine (not a magazine by the way). It wasn't, by the way...a dig at Venger that is....but he was "inspired" by some design choices from a way-too-popular LOTFP adventure. I'll let you pick which one.....

We chatted back and forth and he sent me some art examples that were inspiration and the best I could say was, "Who the hell uses their kindergartner's scribblings as RPG art?" Now I don't have kids and I can't draw worth crap, which is exactly why I don't draw or feel compelled to use refrigerator art in anything I do.

After chatting with Matt I don't think this is the beginning of a new direction for him, but maybe an artistic phase, and something I really hope is just a "one and done". Hey, I'm obviously biased, but I really like Matt's Old-School Maps. I've used them in the past and will use them in the future. I'd actually like to get to the point where I could commission some for my use....

....as long as they don't suck like they did in Bloodnut Pass.

A much better way of supporting Matt

The PDF is completely unsecured, not that it really matters in this case, and it is sized 5.5" x 8.5" and laid out in a single page format. If you want to print it out, don't forget to set your printing to "booklet printing" or you might end up with an awkward blown-up to full page layout....not that I did that or anything. I do like Matt's font selection...meshes well with the chosen rule system....and the five small pieces of art, while crude, actually fit the text they accompany. Just don't blow it up to a full-page print out because it'll look off.

I am not really familiar with the Pits & Perils system the adventure is statted out for, but it works for me. There is one hotlink in the document and that seems to just be something that the LibreOffice PDF distiller automatically put in.

The adventure itself is decent enough...a bit over-the-top for my tastes for sure. It feels like it was designed by, and written for, a group of pre-teens trying to play an "adult" game. The accompanying map, which I obviously don't like, is a bit crude and of low quality. It doesn't actually look like it fits with the adventure as far as layout goes. Parts of the map are blurry, almost out of focus, and it looks like he spent more time on filters than drawing it. The graphic next to the map title really helps solidify the crudeness of the map and the adventure.

I am glad that I got to chat with Matt before finishing this review because I think he nailed the aesthetic he was looking for, pun intended*, but he should stick to the quality work he normally does. To loosely paraphrase one of my favorite dumb movies, which is also appropriate:

"Mr. Jackson, what you've just written is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever read. At no point in your rambling, incoherent prose were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having adventured in it. I award you two stars, and may God have mercy on your soul."



*If you've read this adventure you'll get it....

New Tweak & Toss Short Encounter Set: The Mad Mosquito Bats Of Clarkesburg Caverns

I was expecting to put this out tomorrow, but Mrs. Frugal GM is sick and I'm fully expecting to be under the weather later today.

Good times!

Speaking of sickness, this Tweak & Toss short encounter set is based on a real-world animal disease and is definitely "fluffier" than my normal work. One of my guiding Patreons likes things on the fluffier side and while this wasn't specifically requested, I wanted to give it a go. Hopefully some feedback one way or another will tell me if the effort was worthwhile because I'm a bit on the "meh" side.

Unless I get to a longer adventure I have in mind, this will probably be the last of Clarkesburg for me......yeah, I named the local town Clarkesburg, for some obvious reasons. My last two maps and Tweak & Toss have come from this area. I could see maybe "drilling down" on a few small areas, but only if the mood strikes. I have a couple of other ideas I need to work on.

You can download the adventure from my Patreon page or from DriveThruRPG.

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