Unexpected Surprise = Mind Blown

I usually try to remember to Google myself once a week, which sounds so dirty, but not much I can do about that.....

You'd think it was more of a vanity issue, and maybe it is, but I like to see if anyone is linking to the blog and/or if there are any review on the stuff I'm doing that I haven't seen yet.

This habit has helped me find some cool stuff to share as well, but sometimes I'm a bit taken aback by what I find.....

Today I was out with the Mrs. getting lunch and I did a quick search on my phone when she was..."unavailable" to talk to and I came across this little gem:

Oh that's nice.....wait, what?!

Today my last effort is #68 on RPGNOW's Top 100 list? I'm a bit surprised.....mostly because since I can see how many have been "sold"....I'm surprised I could even get on this kind of list. I didn't think it was that great an effort, although I did put a little something different in this one.....and I don't know how long this will last, but I'll enjoy it for today.....

Making a Far Away Land Adventure Book

Between a combination of DriveThruRPG sales and my Patreon campaign I've finally scrapped enough dough together to pick up the Far Away Land Tome of Awesome. To be fair, I've been picking up other RPG stuff which keeps whittling my funds down, keeping FAL a bit out of reach. I picked up the "standard printing" version because it is cheaper, but also because I really wanted to see the quality of that level of printing.

Since I'm going to be at the Origins Game Fair next week I figured I'd just have the book shipped to my hotel so I don't have to wait much linger to fully check it out. Yes, I have the PDF already, but it is harder to pass a PDF around to players at the table (don't get me started on "sharing" PDF files.....)

Since there is a chance I might get to run or play in some FAL at Origins I thought I'd print up some of the adventures currently available. I picked up the whole A series and the newly released D1. Now I could easily use these on my iPad, and still may, but I wanted to mash them together and print them up into a single booklet.

Easier said than done, but eventually I got it finished. The hardest part was just my usual dinking around to come up with a nice cover for the 1/8" booklet. The front cover and spine look good, but I had a goof on the back cover that I didn't catch until it was too late. Nothing too major, but I'm not re-doing the booklet.

I have a few other RPG items (games & adventures) I'm considering printing up in mini-book form. For one I'm dying to get a full set of mini HackMaster books now that the GMG is out. I had a real cool PHB and HoB made up, but I ended up getting them autographed by the D-Team and tossing them in the auction at GaryCon.

Since this was only my second book (here was my first post about making books with a jig), I'm obviously still learning. What I learned on this go around is that 1/8" is quite a bit small for the book and getting the spine fold for the cover is a PITA. Also, if I make thicker books I might want to use legal sized cardstock so I can trim things up right when I'm done.

Free GM Resource: Revised & Expanded Petty Gods

This week's Free GM Resource is a bit of a no-brainer, at least for me, that should have been up last week. Last Monday I was on a small vacation and had pre-written the post.

This awesome RPG sourcebook (I am clearly biased) was created by the heard of cats that is the "Old-School Roleplaying Community", or ORC. I'd argue that this book was really put together by the chief cat ....er ORC... wrangler Richard J. LeBlanc, Jr. Remember him? He's the guy over at Save Vs. Dragon that put out some great stuff under the New Big Dragon Games Unlimited label.

You really should just go to his publisher page and pick up one of everything, like I have. Get yourself a good d30 or two while you are at it.

Anyway, I was fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time to help out with this particular book. Richard would put items up for people to work on and it was difficult to get in there and get my dibs. I managed to do two write-ups in the minion section and later when I found out he needed help with some of the more monotonous PDF assembly I was able to do a little bit more volunteering.

Now I don't think it is right for me to actually review a project I've worked on, so I won't, but you could probably guess what I'd rate this based on the following aspects:

• Free PDF
• No PDF security restricting printing or document assembly
• Print versions available at cost (here's the link for the hardcover and softcover)
• Bookmarked and internal cross-links in the PDF

I'm looking forward to seeing how the community at large reacts to this book and comes together within the confines of ORC for more gaming goodness.

FRUGAL ALERT: Save 25% on all print books with code MEMORIAL through May 29th.
(the sale got extended by two days!)

New Frugal GM PWYW Product: The Massive Mushroom Missive

I've finally finished a new "Tweak & Toss" that is both larger and smaller in scale, compared to my norm.

The Massive Mushroom Missive is more of a seed idea for a campaign that exists to get the party underground, or more likely, further underground.....

The map I made the other week was envisioned as a huge (100ish miles across) cavern with a large central lake. I splashed a bunch of color on it to represent different types/areas of "vegetation", which in the case of this product is a huge forest of giant fungi.

The basic idea is that the party is hired to delve dark & deep to get a specific type of mushroom. I figure just getting to the location is an adventure itself and with such a large cavern I could have easily made this a much larger supplement complete with random encounters, new monsters, etc.

While I could still go that route if I wanted, I figured this would get much more use if I made it simple. There is a new NPC/Monster race I made up as well. There is a bit of a twist to the adventure idea, but I don't want to put in any spoilers......

The Massive Mushroom Missive is available now as a PWYW product on DriverThruRPG.

Frugal GM Review: Far Away Land Quickstart Rules

I was on a mini-vacation at the end of last week and "missed" the unveiling of the free Far Away Land Quickstart Rules.

Far Away Land uses (some) similar mechanics to the free  Lunch Box Heroes game Matt Jackson and I put together last year, but the similarities end pretty damned quick. FAL uses a d6 (as d2's, d3's and d6's) mechanic, some simple rules, and a lot of GM & player flexibility.

I've been saving my pennies and nickles to buy me a copy of this game. It's been on sale for some time and it would be a shame not to get a printed copy as opposed to a PDF. Now I'm usually a fan of PDF gaming resources, but there is a lot of great colors and art in this game reminiscent of Adventure Time, but distinctly different.

This great art has it's place in the soft/hard cover editions of the full game, but I think it is a detraction for the Quickstart Rules. The PDF is sized 5.5" x 8.5", which looks pretty good on a tablet, but just begs to be printed out. For something that is basically a teaser for the rules of a game (ideally used once then tossed aside when you buy the full game) I'd have appreciated black and white graphics, preferably line art. I don't think it would have detracted from the overall appearance any. The PDF is 33 pages, which is an odd amount considering if you did print it out you could go booklet printing and get this on eight pages of paper easy if you skip the last page which is just a solid red with the publishers small logo at the bottom. I'd have preferred the full-color cover followed by the black & white line art cover so I could just print pages 2-33 in booklet form and be done with it.

At first I wasn't entirely thrilled that the sample adventure included was part of the Quickstart, but that was because I was in the mindset that you'd print off one of these for every player and the GM. After reading the rules I think the average group could get by with a single copy and maybe print off an extra sheet or two as needed, like the equipment or spells pages. There is a PC sheet too, but I preferred to go to the FAL website to get the PDF-fillable version.

The bulk of the Quickstart rules cover character creation & combat. Combat seems quite easy to me if you get the underlying mechanics, which make character creation (the source for the mechanics' numbers) a bit more important. I do have to say that Dirk & Vince did a good job of giving me "just enough" to get a character started. I made up one PC that didn't quite fit in with what I was reading, but thought fit in the spirit of the rules. This really makes me want to get the main rules even more...

.....which is kind of the main point of any Quickstart....

I'm hoping to be able to run some PCs through the included adventure,  "Isle of the Rat Wizard" not the next game session, but the one after that when we are down a player. I'll do a quick update after that session.

Free GM Resource: Free RPG! (Lamentations of the Flame Princess in two versions)

Today's Free GM Resource is another RPG game, served up one of two ways.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess is labeled a "Weird Fantasy" RPG and is available for only $5 at DriveThruRPG. If you're on the fence about the game you can check it out for free from their website.

There are two different versions. The 1st, at the bottom of the downloads page, is the previous "Deluxe Version" and the other is the "Grindhouse Rules", with the latter just being an art-less version of the current rules. The Grindhouse rules is also a single book, where the Deluxe version is a few more pages spread out over two books.

I've reviewed at least one LotFP adventure before and while I'm not sold on the system as a whole, I think it is definitely worth picking up to add in a few elements to your game. Of course, this pretty much works as a blanket statement from me.

Frugal GM Review: Goldmarsh Village from Lupus Rex Games

I chose this week's review item in a bit of a circuitous fashion after doing some link-hopping on DriveThruRPG. Somehow I had gotten to Lupus Rex Games and noticed that they had a rather abysmal 1 star rating.

Being all-too-familiar with the fact that so few people actually rate products on DriveThruRPG, must lest leave a review, I went ahead and looked into this. Yep, only one review total and the purchaser didn't like the product. While I get the reviewer's point, to be fair the publisher did provide (in my opinion) an ample preview so a purchaser should have known what they were getting. Of course the preview settings could have been changed after that review.

It occurred to me that right off the bat Lupus Rex Games could have easily made a few tweaks to make that one product much better.....but since that isn't what I purchased for review I'll stick a pin in that comment for now.

Free GM Resource: RPG Downloads from Corey Ryan Walden

Now I don't know about you, but when I find out I have a new social media follower I tend to "look them up" to see what our common interests are and whatnot.

I'm sure some of you are so insanely popular and/or busy you simply don't have the time to do this, but the rest of us can afford this luxury. I'm glad I do because I was able to discover a new Free GM Resource.

Corey Ryan Walden has a rather simple self-titled blog where he writes about his game mostly, but he has also written an adventure, a small city setting, and done up a few maps.

What I really like is that he's put these resources in an easy to find location on his blog ("downloads"). Too often these little gems are hidden until the author gets a decent number produced and then maybe they get organized into an easy-to find manner.

Thanks Corey, I hope you continue writing!