Hoody Fricken Hoo! Post #500!

Wow...I'm amazed I've managed to make it this far, sharing what I can and working to help give a little something-something back to the RPG community as a whole.

Thank you everyone for dropping by, leaving comments, or just picking up some dice an playing.

The last 3 & 1/3 years has been interesting to say the least and I'm hoping it'll be a lot less than 3 & 1/3 years before I hit post #1000.

The best part of doing this has been the opportunity to interact with gamers I've never met in person, share ideas and work, and be a better gamer, GM, and publisher because of it. I know for some 500 posts isn't a lot, but I see this as symbolic of the late night online chats (group and one-on-one), emails of encouragement, and collaborations.

I'm one of those types that always has about 20 different ideas for projects in some stage of production and I'm lucky if 5 of them get finished. The Frugal GM blog has really helped give me some direction and a pathway to getting those five items checked off my list. Of course it probably is responsible for remainder of those 15 unfinished projects as well, but I'm going to dwell on the positive.

Again, THANK YOU for all your support, it has been much appreciated!

Free GM Resource: Pointcrawl

This week's Free GM Resource is a pretty cool, if non-standard Dungeon Generator with an unwieldy title.

DunGen Pointcrawl Dungeon Generator by Ed Allen: Ed's Hobby Hovel & Ruminations of a Geek throws your random dungeon up as a chart and gives you the transitions from room to room. There are plenty of options to choose from and this thing will spit out wandering monsters, regular monsters, and treasure.

You can also click on a room in the chart which highlights it and the transitions. You can get some quick lookup info and twirl the room around some to "mess up" the chart.

I'm sure there is a valid use for this property, probably to help keep the charts organized, but mucking the chart up a bit is some stupid fun and I can't help myself......

Frugal GM Review: 200 Character Backgrounds

Yesterday I was asked to review this new RPG product that had been released that day and while I already had my next review or two "in the hopper" I said something to the effect of  "I'll get around to it."

Well, I guess 12 hours later is technically correct, but not what I was expecting. Evidently one of my pets decided that 6 AM on a Sunday was "sleeping in", so here I am.

Frugal GM Essential GM Gear: Staedtler Non-Permanent Pens

With arguably the biggest convention of the year coming up (depending what you mean by "big") I thought I might write a few posts about what I consider some essential GM gear, highlighting one small piece of kit at a time.

I will not cover dice though, because I have mentioned before I'm a bit of a dice snob and that is one thing too many GMs and players hold precious. I might as well try to stoke an edition war.....nope, just not gonna happen.

Frugal GM Review: Monster Pamphlet #1

This week I grabbed what looking like a cool little zine-style mini-monster book simply called "Monster Pamphlet #1". Written by Arlin Ortiz and put out under the Monster Pamphlets imprint, this 1st issue of 3 is a Pay What You Want product.

Right off the bat, this PDF is has no PDF security, which really isn't a factor with the exception that means there won't be a PDF watermark on every page. I think that is important for a visual product like this.

Originally running $5 an issue, the 12 page PDFs are being released for $2 each. For that 12 pages you get 2 pages of cover, 5 pages of write-up and 5 pages of art.

FGM033 "Were" Have the Good brothers Gone?

I have a new Tweak & Toss available over at DriveThruRPG entitled "Were" Have the Good Brothers Gone? Obviously the title is a bit of a give-away that there might be some lycanthropy in this adventure....or is it?

This time around I didn't go through and list a bunch of encounters, but instead focused on a couple of "important" points and used the remaining space to highlight a number of specific tweaks that could be made based on the party's strength. It is a bit of a departure from my normal Tweak & Toss short encounter sets, but I like changing it up some.

Gaining a Bit of GM Insight from an Out-of-Table Problem

I don't try to go too-personal here at the Frugal GM, but there have been some times I can't help myself. I've gotten on the old soap-box once or twice and I've saved the really negative post I had for someone else's blog (to be fair it was more appropriate over there.)

I like to think that think, well probably delude myself, that my real-life alignment is somewhere along the lines of Neutral Good, but considering my military and organizations (Scouts, Toastmasters, etc.) background I'm probably in the Lawful spectrum for sure. Most likely Lawful Neutral.

Like many, I have some slightly convoluted personal code that helps guide my actions. I like to think most of us have them and if you could codify them they'd make for an interesting read. A good "mission statement"-ish phrase or two doesn't hurt and trying to get back to the overall RPG theme here, might be useful in creating NPCs.

GM Prep Tip: Tracking Some of the Fiddly Bits

I'm quite certain that the last thing any GM wants is to add a heap of extra work on their plate when it comes to running a game. For this reason I'm willing to bet that most GMs gloss over a lot of the fiddly rules in their chosen game system.

As a HackMaster player I keep track of a helluva lot more "stuff" than I'd ever be willing to do as a HackMaster GM, and even then I've had to go out of my way to make it easier for me to do. My custom PC sheet tracks my PC's carried weight, fatigue, and even the last time I used a skill (well, a check box if I'd used it since I last leveled). I don't even think the "Official" HackMaster PC sheets keep track of this information.

Now I'm not advocating my PC sheet, or even my game, but just noting that often the more fiddly bits of a game can be a royal pain in the ass. It is usually just best to either work out some sort of shortcut or determine what matters and what doesn't.