Frugal GM Review: Middle Management (IT) Card Game

I'm going a bit off my normal beaten path with the review this week, and there is a big reason why...which I'll try to explain briefly.

My wife and I were part of an ever-increasing club of folks who have been scammed by Ken Whitman on Kickstarter. I've done my best to keep the negativity off of this blog, and will continue to do so, but if you want the sordid details you can read them over at Tenkar's Tavern (specifically here, here, and finally here.)

So after my wife spent $450 on an "experience" for both of us and I-don't-want-to-think-about-how-much on actually travelling to GenCon for said "experience", we were pretty much left high and dry by Mr. Whitman. We weren't the only ones and the guys over at Zombie Orpheus Entertainment stepped in, not to help out Ken Whitman in any way, but to do something for the fans that were screwed over. A couple of their actors were in the projects that Ken Whitman had bilked people money for. When news of the bilking and dare I say general fuckery, spread a few other folks pitched in as well.

One of the ways some publishers/exhibitors pitched is was to donate product as some sort of "door prize" for the last-minute ZOE after-party. I picked up a copy of Management Material, and even though it isn't really an RPG product I wanted to do a review as some measure of thanks. I'm sure some would think of I wanted to send a real thank you I'd automatically give it 5 stars.....

.....but I don't play that way.

Right off the bat, there are two different Management Material games, one is specifically focused on Information Technology (IT) and the other on General Office Management. These two games are completely compatible and you could easily just mix up the two sets to form a larger set.

I had the IT set of 110 cards. The cards are roughly divided 60/40 between Resource and Assignment cards, but there are actually four main types of cards, five if you want to get picky and count the one card used to mark which person's turn it is.

Right off the bat I loved reading the rules, which are pretty much up verbatim on the website links I have above. The game itself is simple enough that I think a simple paragraph or two would suffice, but the designers had the room on the sheet and had fun with it. The basic gist of the game is you are trying to avoid completing projects by having good excuses to cover why you can work on the project and why someone else much more capable should be doing the project instead. This mechanic is a simple point system were the projects and excuses have point values assigned to them.

Although it seems that the idea is to be avoiding work, in reality it is far from that. The excuses detail the crappy minutia of work details that the IT folks have to deal with all the time. Completing the big projects basically earns you some level of respect/recognition and it seems if you are too good at your job you get promoted to middle management, which is considered "losing" in this game.

The cards are pretty cool and funny....I've experienced some of the lesser annoyances on some of these IT cards. While I thought the game mechanics were a bit overly simplistic, the fun in the game is reading the cards themselves and laughing. I suspect there are also a few insider jokes in there as well. I think I caught at least one, but I don't have that big of an IT background.

This bit is the games strongest and weakest point. Management Material's strength is the source material and would probably work quite well with the right audience. My group would play this once and get a laugh or two out of it, but if instead of IT it was focused on retail (most of my group has worked at the same multi-department store, but all of us have worked retail for years), we'd probably play this a few times and enjoy ourselves much more. Hell, we'd probably work a drinking game into the scheme somehow (You can bump up the excuse by +1 if you've had to do this. Take a shot and tell us the story...)

Management Material is a bit on the simple side, but with the right group the game content would make it funny enough that the enjoyment comes from the memories the cards bring up for the players. The expand-ability of the game is good for larger groups and this can be a quick filler game that shouldn't take nearly as much time as many cards games seem to do. This definitely much better than the only other IT-based card game I've played....*shudders at the thought of even mentioning that blight on card games*

Frugal GM Work-In-Progress of the Most Recent Tweak & Toss

My latest Tweak & Toss should have been done a day or two ago, but some family drama coupled with a stupid hand injury has set me back at least a couple days.

Obviously I can type this so my hand isn't a complete wreck, but it does hurt. This injury was super stupid and 110% my fault.....how stupid, you might ask? Take your normal level of stupid, double-it, and add 10%. I'm not going to get into specifics because...well, reasons, but let's just say it hurts, the stitches come out in a couple of weeks, and if it hurts for the next two weeks I'll consider it the price to pay for the learning experience.

Anyway....I thought I should at least post the cover to the Tweak & Toss since that is the only page currently finished. I only need a couple of hours tops for the rest, so even if we double that and add 10% I hope to be finished by tomorrow.

I hope this is enough to get the gears churning on what "the Horrors" might be.....

Free GM Resource: The New York Public Library Map Warper

You might have seen a recent press release about the New York Public Library Open Access Maps, specifically the The Lionel Pincus & Princess Firyal Map Division (say all that 5 times real fast!)

The cool thing is this is a great Free GM Resource because it is a HUGE digital map collection that is being released under a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication license.

So far every post I've seen on the subject is just a re-hash of the press release, which made me take a closer look.

I love using old maps for inspiration on making new ones and this Open Access collection is a simple sign-up away. Registration took less than a minute and then I had access to this great collection. Seriously, the registration was little more than my name, email and password twice. No muss and no fuss.

The access to the collection is done through the Map Warper and I didn't quite know what to make of it at first. It is pretty easy to search for historical maps and once you find a map there is an "export" tab that lets you download a high-resolution image. A lot of the options, at least on the 1st map I tried were for "warped" versions, which makes some sense because I was using the Map Warper after all. I was a bit surprised to download my 1st map and see it all skewed up. Fortunately you can also download an un-warped TIFF.

It ends up you can do more than just find and download maps. The whole point of the open access is to be able to assist the library by essentially overlaying these old maps over current ones to be able to tell the differences between the two. In order to do that you have to "warp" the map.

If you do end up using the map in something you create, the library does ask that you attribute the work as "From The Lionel Pincus & Princess Firyal Map Division, The New York Public Library." While technically you don't need to cite public domain work.....well at least legally, it is a good idea to do so, especially here since this helps the NYPL track how their stuff gets used and probably helps them in fundraising for the collection.

You can click on the lead-in graphic to reach the collection sign-up page, or use this link.

I Want You To Support Your FLGS

I usually look forward to Sundays because I often to get to sleep in, there isn't a whole lot I have to do and most of all because Sunday is game day!

Usually my group comes over to the house in the evening, we catch up of how our week has gone, and then we get to sling some dice. I'm fortunate in that I'm usually a player (after pretty much only GMing for years), but when the holiday season comes around and my GM's job encroaches too much on her ability to prep and run for us I gladly pick the shield back up.

The one thing I've pretty much been missing is a Favorite Local Game Store (FLGS). I had one here in Boise but the guy moved his small store to another county and eventually closed up shop. Some enterprising folks rented out his old space immediate and set-up a new game store and they did put together a pretty nice-looking shop, there were some customer service issues and it just felt "off" to me. I will give them credit that they moved to a new location, expanded, and seemed to be doing well, but I just don't get over there that often.

This summer my group attended Origins, travelling 2000 miles to run into a game store owner from just down the road in the next city. We were invited to run our game at his shop this weekend during their anniversary event (the shop isn't normally open when we game). This means I still get my game on today and I get to check out a new place that might be able to fill the FLGS role.

While I'm at it I might as well plug the store: Phoenix Fire Games. It seems to fit all the requirements I need in a new FLGS, so I'm looking forward to checking this place out.

If you are wondering about the lead-in graphic, it is my version of Knights of the Dinner Table 81 cover. KenzerCo had made this a poster of sorts, but I wanted to try and get a bit closer to the source material. One of the reasons I've always liked KenzerCo is that while they are happy enough to sell you games and comics directly, they'd prefer that you go through your FLGS. They've even put together special retail packages for game stores that get shafted by their distributors....which happens more than many realize.

Do you have a good FLGS? If so, you might want to snap a few pictures, write up a paragraph or two, and get it featured in Knights of the Dinner Table. Here is the link to the submission guidelines.

Map052F: Halfling Hollow

I've temporarily set aside the city map I was working on....largely because I didn't like how my buildings were coming out (i.e. they sucked) and instead switched gears to create a large valley map....

.....and I mean LARGE. The Patron version of the map is 30" wide and the free version is "only" 16.5" wide. For only a couple of bucks it could be printed out at Fed-Ex Kinkos at full size for a different map than you might be used to.

I'm hoping to be able to get the associated adventure seed out tomorrow, but it might have to wait until Tuesday. Between my healing back and the new job, I'm still working on finding some semblance of balance.

One thing I'm still fiddling with is my naming conventions when it comes to the maps. I really dislike the haphazardness I've used so far, but I like the idea of Map###P for the Patron version and Map###F for the free version. If I put out more versions I can just append the names to designate versions in this fashion Map###P# or Map###F#. Yes, these are the dumb things I worry about.

Frugal GM Review: Book of Lairs

This week I wanted to take a closer look at Simon Forster's "The Book of Lairs", a project I had been following as one of his Patrons. The finished book is available now on DriveThruRPG and is a pretty good deal for a soft-cover and watermarked PDF for only $12.22

Even though I have a Patron PDF I'm sorely tempted to buy a print copy for my files, but I'll stick with the PDF....for now. It is my Patron copy I'm specifically reviewing, so I know there might be some minor differences, such as a watermarked PDF in the retail version vs. my "clean" copy.

The Book of Lairs is "ACKS Compatible" and was written with this system in mind, but with my not knowing anything about ACKS, I didn't really see anything that stood out as an impediment with the stats or layout. My gut says you wouldn't need to really figure any conversion on the fly for your standard OSR game....odds are you'd read not what was written down, but what it needed to be. A good portion of the monsters might already be in your game system of choice already.

What Would You Do With an Improbable Set of Stats?

I managed to get one of my HackMaster PCs to 9th level during our last gaming session, which is a bit of a milestone for me as this is only the second time I've managed to get a PC to that level.

The leveling process was pretty quick and painless as these things go and I won't bore you with the details, but in the course of things I had more than enough time to think about this character's progression from rolling 3d6 straight down the line for stats.

I also won't bore you with any character stories......well, not yet at least.

This PC is a statistical anomaly for sure. Before adjustments for race I had for my stats:
16 STR
16 INT
16 WIS
18 DEX
12 CON
  9 LKS (Looks)
11 CHA

Frugal GM Essential Gear: Personal Libations

I was going through my Thinkgeek Bag of Holding, which I actually use to haul my gaming stuff around at conventions (for now) and found one of my many flasks.

It occurred to me that I pretty much always play in an "adult" game and this is one of the few times I imbibe. Travelling to a convention, for me, has the added task of figuring out how much, and what type of, booze to bring.

The last handful of years I've simply used a series of Stanley flasks to haul my hooch. I don't have the 8 oz flask pictured left, but I do have the shot glasses and the smaller 5 oz version of this flask. At Origins this year I had a veritable mini bar with me and while I don't advocate gaming while intoxicated, because it might lead to too many PC deaths, I do recall having a wee bit of excess on Thursday night.

Now I'm not complaining....the next morning I found myself light one small personal item and heavy a butt-load of minis and a wicked Army knife. I still had both my d30's so no harm there.....

My normal Sunday game is at my house and everyone in the group usually has a beer or two. It isn't uncommon for the game to start late because we are catching up from the week.....game night is a social event that extends far past rolling the dice. I guess I'm a social drinker so that makes sense....

How many of you folks knock-back a drink or two while gaming? Have you had to account for this in the when and where of your regular game? I don't think I'm in the minority here, but I have to consider a flask of "the good stuff" to be some of my essential gaming gear. The way I figure it, having something on-hand beats having to play in the bar (too noisy) or make a run to the local liquor store (all sorts of issues if flying to a game).