Unexpected Frugal GM "Vacation"

Just a brief head's up that the Frugal GM blog will likely be short on posts because I've had a bit of an accident and am currently in the hospital. With any luck I'll be released in the next day or so, but I'm likely to be bedridden.

If I'm lucky we'll have a guest post or two and if I can manage it, I'll spend this down time work my trusty pad & pencil. It is hard to post from my phone and the WiFi isn't working to post from my iPad.

The Winner of the Monster Stand-In Giveaway

My apologies to anyone who might have tuned in to last night's Tavern Chat over at Tenkar's Tavern hoping for the winner results, but I hurt my back yesterday and literally wasn't in a position to attend. I'm not faring too well this morning so I won't be spending too much time drawing out the results here.

Luckily for me there were 16 folks who wanted a chance to win the Monster Stand-Ins I picked up from GenCon and reviewed here. I was able to bust out my very own d16 and roll.....a 16! Must be lucky dice to get the max result right out the gate...

That means our lucky winner was Tony T. Tony...I'll be in touch.

Frugal GM Prep Tip: Pre-Drawing Your Battlemats

I know a lot of GMs are fans of using Battlemats, I know I am.

The thing with battlemats is, obviously, you can draw on them, but that great benefit is also that you usually have to interrupt the action to draw on them.....if you do it in-game. Because of this, what usually happens is you end up drawing something rather crude.

Personally I don't think players really mind since crude outlines of rooms and obstacles on a battlemat is the de facto standard for most home games, but it doesn't have to be.

The answer is to pre-draw some of your rooms/battles onto pieces of acetate. This was my go-to response for multi-table (i.e. big) tournaments where I wanted all the tables to have a standardized battlemat overlay. You can get thin flat sheets meant for use with overhead projectors at most any office supply store.

Some of the higher-end (& quality) stuff from Dick Blick

My personal preference was a far cheaper roll of acetate picked up at a fabric store. Not just a run-of-the mill sewing supply store, but those larger places that carry upholstery fabric. They usually have long 6' rolls of varying thickness for a couple bucks a running foot. That stuff goes a long way.

I prefer the thick acetate because it is usually more flexible and easier to work with. The thinner flat sheets for overhead projectors are the best, but hard to pick up and place...or at least they are for me. You can solve that problem easily enough by taping a small pick-up tab on a discreet spot along the edge.

Something I've been meaning to do and haven't gotten around to, is creating some flat trees (outlines) that have been printed out onto the acetate that I can use as terrain. I could also do small buildings the same way. IIRC they cost about $1 a page at places like FedEx Kinkos and if you lighted the design enough in Photoshop you can still make out your square/hex lines form the underlying battlemat.
  

Free GM Resource: Far Away Land Adventures, Dungeons, and "Stuff"

Right off I have to make a wee bit of a confession.....this week's Free GM Resource may be a bit premature, but it is one of those things that is only going to get better.

I've highlighted bits of Far Away Land before, pretty much in two reviews (the Quick Start Rules and the Pawns Pack), but I was also collecting the adventures to make into a book.

Yesterday I read a G+ post that was chock-full of good news. Far Universe, the website for Far Away Land, is going under a major overhaul and will be capable of hosting their own webstore. Usually this just means that you can find another place to buy their rule-books, but since they don't have to pay the 30%+ commission to sites like DriveThruRPG, they can sell these products at a cheaper rater and still probably make more on the deal. All too often the publisher doesn't share this windfall with the purchaser, so hearing about this win-win is significant to me.

The new site will also have its own freebie section. The adventures are already free, but being able to easily pick them up with the rules all in one go is pretty sweet. As I'm writing this there is only the one adventure up, but that will get remedied quickly.

I suggest you favorite Far Universe and check back in periodically. I know I will! In the meantime, you can get these free adventures from DriveThruRPG (A1 Isle of the Rat Wizard is on the Far Universe Site):

A2  Whoa! Here Come the Dead
A3  Crazy Maze Daze
A4  Journey Into the White
A5  The Winter Tournament
A6  Pawns and Knights
A7  Temple of Zoko
A8  Outpost Knoll
A9  Barkoon
A10 Love Actually... Sucks
D1  Dastardly Dungeon of Doom

Exchange Contact Info With Your Very Own Gaming Card

For some time, the overwhelming majority of my gaming was at conventions. While I had a great time playing with perfect strangers, sometimes it is much more fun to make friends and play with some of the same folks again another time.

In order to do that you need to have a way to keep in touch and some outside of the table interaction doesn't hurt either.

For a while I was using some custom business cards that had my contact info on one side and something like a coupon stating "good for one free drink at the bar after the game". Needless to say they were somewhat popular, but those drinks can really eat into your convention budget fast if you aren't careful.

I needed a new "gaming card" and I'm not too ashamed to admit I totally stole the idea for mine....

Now it is no secret that my main game is HackMaster and I've spent a lot of time volunteering for Kenzer & Company "back in the day". For quite some time at the summer cons the KenzerCo D-Team had these crudely made cards that mimicked the chance & community chest cards from Monopoly.

The most common card was the "Get out of Character Story Free" card, which was intended to help extract the D-Team from the inevitable parade of PCs stories they'd be forced to listen to. What a lot of people didn't know was there was a second card they made that was "Listen to my PC Story". Over time the cards kind of disappeared, or at best there would be a half-mangled full-page sheet crammed discovered in one of the convention boxes.

What I did was totally steal this idea for my own "gaming card", but I cleaned it up considerably. 1st I started with scans of a couple cards I found online of older Monopoly cards and I figured out the fonts used (or close-enough). Then I went through my ton of convention pictures and singled out pictures of my wife and I, as well as two of the KenzerCo D-Team. My finished cards are black and white, printed on the appropriately colored cardstock.

My wife gets the more popular canary Community Chest version and I grabbed the orange Chance card. Printing these up at Fedex-Kinkos was dirt cheap and a great way to single yourself...definitely better than using traditional business cards.

Now I have a Frugal GM "business card", but I'm still a huge fan of the gaming card.

Horrific Looking Map-in-Progress

I thought I'd share this map-in-progress, which may end up being part of a larger project or, just a one-off.

The biggest reason I thought I'd share this is simply because it is hideous at this stage. I try to do each element of the map in layers so I can tweak each bit individually. On this map I actually started with the outline of a city wall borrowed from another source and then made a rough sketch. The city walls, already having been an auto-generated electronic image, comes out nice and smooth compared to my scanned-in chicken scratches.

No matter, because that sketch is just a rough outline anyway for the next few layers of colored elements in Photoshop. The colors aren't nearly as important as the width and layout of the lines for the rivers and the roads. I want the roads to be more erratic and the rivers to have some "flow". At this point I still have to go in and play with the river widths some since they are too parallel. The colors are chosen more for contrast as I'm working on the screen. They get changed to more appropriate colors and will have textures added later.

Currently this map is an obscene 40" square.....I'm not sure what size the end result will be.

I just thought some folks would like to see how horrendous a map-in-progress can be.

Frugal GM Review: Dice Chest from Dog Might Games

At the Origins Game Fair last June I decided to be a bit "adventurous" and splurge for a new Dice Box, primarily for use with my home game. There were several vendors at Origins selling what I was looking for, ranging from relatively cheap (not inexpensive, but cheap) wooden boxes to some really high-priced top-end dice trays. My wife got a beautiful leather-lined tray exquisitely made with some gorgeous hardwood, but I didn't have that kind of cash and I wanted something more along the lines of a full-on box.

I ended up getting a good end-of-con deal on a dice chest from Dog Might Games. You might remember these guys from one of three gaming box Kickstarters (dice chests, deck boxes, and adventure cases). These guys sold just shy of $135,000 worth of product on those crowd-funding efforts.

What I picked up was a white ash box stained in dark walnut, with red felt, nickle pedestal legs and an aluminium helm logo. The regular retail for this chest is a whopping $64.90....$60 if I had bought it as part of the Kickstarter. After reviewing the Kickstarter campaign and video it is clear that Dog Might Games only used the platform for sales....there wasn't a single reference to needing funding to purchase supplies, new tools (plant), or anything that needed to be "funded".....I realize that a Kickstarter Rant isn't the purpose here....so I'll let this matter drop. I will though, review this item like I had purchased it for full price....

GM Prep Tip: Pre-Campaign Survey

I wish I can take credit for this, but like many of you, I seek out and learn from those around me and this tip came from a GM buddy of mine:

Poll your players to see what kind of campaign they want to play in.

This probably seems like both the most brilliant and yet the dumbest thing ever, because I bet most of you have done this yet half-assed it like I have.

I'm certain we've all asked a player or two a pointed question about what type of game to run, but the information collected was tainted or just generic. Asking in a group setting introduces bias and influence and even the act of asking a verbal question can muddle the waters.

My buddy took it s step further and created an actual survey for the players to fill out and then he worked up his campaign based on what the document responses were. What he got surprised him but he ended up being able to focus his efforts and put together quite the memorable campaign.

Actually, I know he's done this a few times and the resulting themes have been interesting:

• An Icelandic Saga campaign
• A campaign set on the eve of the fall of Constantinople
• A campaign of wizards proceeding through magic school (like in Harry Potter)

Here is a link to one of the questionnaires he has used. Undoubtedly you will have to tweak it to fit your needs.....

I think you'll find a little effort to effectively poll your group will pay HUGE dividends down the road....and don't forget to fill one out for yourself.