Finally Finished FGM036: Creature Catalog, Vol 1

I'm finally finished! Hoody-fricken-hoo!

For the last week or so I've been slaving over the Creature Catalog, Volume 1. I thought maybe I'd be done Thursday, but instead I managed to squeek it in today.

I went from 10 creatures profiled to 12, which meant I had to make two more pages to round it out to a full 16 since the format is a 1/2 letter sized page. No worries, I ended up doing a forward of sorts and a back page "ad" for this site.

This isn't a free product this time around, but I'm only asking $2 for it. I think it is worth $2 and I hope others feel so as well. Worst case it has been a learning experience.....

Click to go to the DTRPG listing....

Frugal GM Review: Modular Battlemats: Inn

This weeks review is on the brand new Modular Battlemats: Inn from Inkwell Ideas. The idea of a modular building appealed to me since it usually means I can get more bang for my buck.

The download consists of a 35.2 MB, 42 page PDF. The file information listed on the product page is a bit off, not just in size, but also in that the PDF is not watermarked. Usually a watermarked PDF has some security features implemented and this file does not, which is a big plus. Normally I want to be able to use this type of file in its printed form and cut up electronically for use with a Virtual Table Top (VTT).

The download is just the PDF, which means I'll have to do some slicing & dicing in Photoshop 1st. While the unsecured PDF should make this an easy task I'm thwarted somewhat by the fact that LibreOffice (4.3 to be exact) was used to create the file. I get that LibreOffice is free, but it falls short on PDF creation.

I've also noted that the PDF is Letter sized, but since the actual art doesn't take up the whole page, printing to A4 paper won't be an issue. Just make sure your settings are "Auto Rotate & Center" without scaling the page.

The modularity (if that is an actual word) for these inns comes from the fact that each "building" is separated into quadrants and the end user can swap out quadrants as desired. According to the product page, and the 1st page of the PDF, there are 8 "main" buildings with four parts each and two "uppers", or 2nd floors, both with four parts each.....

Frugal GM Work-in-Progress: Creature Catalog Volume 1

I know I tend to start projects and not finish them, mostly because I can't execute quite as well as I'd like, but also because I work on things as they strike my fancy.

One of the things I'm fancying right now is my 1st attempt at a mini OSR "monster manual". Nothing too strenuous, just a collection of 12 new creatures/monsters I'm putting together. I have all the artwork tweaked and placed and am busy working on the state blocks and write-ups. After that I just have an intro and an ad of sorts to insert to get me up to the required 16 page count.

I'm hoping to have this finished by Thursday, which is a realistic goal. Meanwhile, here is the cover:

New RPG Terrain Kickstarter You Should Check Out (Fat Dragon Games)

I'm not usually the type to endorse a Kickstarter here on the Frugal GM blog, but every once in a while something just "clicks" with me and I have to share.

I've been fortunate enough to meet Tom Tullis of Fat Dragon Games years ago when I was working with another game company running/organizing their convention games. Tom had agreed to a joint venture where he'd provide some (possibly custom) terrain pieces that we could use at the cons and give our members a special discount and after the con we'd write up the adventure for sale prominently featuring that terrain.

I remember at the time he also offered to give me whatever I wanted in product on the spot, but I had already planned on buying everything he had at the time....it felt wrong in the moment to take advantage....especially since I'd already committed to buying these sets at what was a great convention special price.

That collaboration didn't occur, but that was more on our end and the issues created with the change-over from one edition to the other. Fast forward a couple years and I got to meet up with Tom again at this year's GenCon, which we attended for one day to see what ended up being the Knights of the Dinner Table: Live Action Series fiasco.

The day was a bit of a mess that I won't get into detail here (but you can read a bit in the above link), but I did find out that there were a few publishers that decided to step-up and throw a bone to the folks getting screwed over by this one unscrupulous Kickstarter. Tom/Fat Dragon was one of these guys and he offered several, IIRC four, free Fat Dragon Games downloads to the backers. That was pretty damned generous in my book.

Now couple this with the facts that he has come through 110% on his previous Kickstarter, as-in I got more than I was expecting, and that this new Kickstarter can be a great deal.....I'm sold.

I don't have problems spending money on quality.....the Frugal GM isn't about being cheap, but about spending what money you do have wisely. I don't have a 3D printer...yet, but I'm assuming I will have one someday. The way I look at it $40 plus the cost of materials is a very effective use for my money. If you end up making any decent amount of terrain, this add-on cost for the files being offered in the Kickstarter approach $0. To me it is a no-brainer...as long as you have, or intend to get, a 3D printer.

The base goal for the Kickstarter is already funded and now it is up to the stretch goals. If Tom's previous work (Kickstarters) are any indication on how this one will go, and why wouldn't it(?), this project will come out better than anticipated and earlier than expected.

You'll be getting my $40 for sure! Click here (or pretty much on any picture) to check out the Kickstarter.

Free GM Resource: Basic & Expert RPG Generator

This week's Free GM Resource is a recent addition to the slew of table generators I'm fond of highlighting.

Yesterday I came across this G+ post sharing the Basic & Expert RPG Generator. I played around with it a bit before going to bed and.....well, I liked it.

There are seven generators and I think if you play Basic or Expert D&D at all you will find them useful. If you don't, you'll still find them cool.

No More Local Cons for Gaming?

I'll admit this isn't so much a PC story as a player story.....if that.

I recently got news that a local convention might be going away. It was/is a multi-faceted convention that was a bit hit or miss with me because...well because of the multi-faceted aspect. Hard to pay money to attend a con to run & play games when you have mobs of teens running around in costume.

From what I've heard, from multiple sources, a lot of the local conventions, save maybe this one, are pretty much means for folks to dump their kids off for a weekend of screwing around unsupervised.

Contrary to some folk's opinion I'm not totally stupid.....I know con runners have to put something on that appeals to their core audience, and aside from the ill-fated "Tree City Comic-Con", these aren't enterprises you intend to get rich off of. Running a local convention is a huge resource suck and largely a royal pain in the ass.

My wife and I have gone to quite a few conventions over the years, but we've had to largely cut back to only a couple a year. Partially because of life and partially because some conventions just aren't worth what they used to be. One con in Salt Lake City used to be the beginning of our summer of fun, but over the years we realized we were paying the convention to basically give us a room to dump us in and forget about us. Aside from our gaming, everything else we were doing involved free parts of the convention, so why were a group of us shelling out $50 a piece?

For a couple of years the Mrs. and I just stayed at another hotel and got the same group of players to come over and game all day in the side room they served breakfast in (but wasn't used for the other 20 hours of the day). We could then take our extra $100 (actually more when you factored in the better & cheaper hotel room) and walk over to the convention to tour the free parts.

Eventually that convention went away....while I wonder why I have to assume it was because they folks running it catered to their own particular fandom and let everything else wither away....like the RPG groups.

So here we are with no "local" conventions. I'm thinking it might be time to get the band together for a weekend of gaming (here or maybe in SLC) or trying my hand at organizing something on a smaller scale....I might have to check out Aethercon this year as well.

I know there has to be some folks without a local con.....do you guys just save up your pennies for a big trip, or do something on your own?

2nd Look at Mead & Mayhem

I reviewed Mead & Mayhem back in January and last week I got a comment on this blog that there was a "new" version I could look at.

Right off the bat....I wouldn't put this as a "new version" but a "new format". Fundamentally this supplement is identical to the original. Some minor text has been updated...as far as I can tell they just changed the dice formatting from "1D30" to "1d30" and layed out the document to account for a new size.

The original was a US Letter size and the new format is 6" x 9"...actually 6" x 8.99" according to the document properties. There are more pictures in the update and overall the file is smaller with an option for a black & white-ish cover. The alternate cover isn't in actual black & white, but is without the large colored background. The inset picture is still in color....just a greatly reduced color pallet.

I personally wish that the authors had taken the time to tweak the main d30 table itself, but the entries are all the same. Eventually all bar fights will end in the bar catching on fire unless the GM just decides to end things early. Personally, if I was to use this supplement I think I'd come up with a series of additional results that end the bar fight and either replace certain entries (like 35-39, as an example) or make 40+ a sub-table of different possibilities.

My gut feeling is $4.90 for the combined PDF and printed book is a bit much, but mostly because I think a 14 page 6 x 9 booklet is a bit overkill. If you find this kind of thing useful $1.79 for the PDF can be a decent deal. The new version of this product isn't significantly different to warrant a change in rating in my opinion.

Frugal GM Review: Treasures & Traps Card Game

Last week's game night we were down a player so we changed things up a bit. Instead of the players coming to my house I went to theirs and instead of RPGs we played "board" games. We played three games specifically, with the second one being Treasures & Traps, from Studio 9 Inc.

Treasures & Traps has been out for a while (2006) and is listed as being suitable for ages 10+ and 2-6 players. The whole idea behind the game is that each player is an adventurer trying to get three types/levels of treasure into their playing area, or realm. In addition to each player's realm there is a common area known as the wild lands.

The basic mechanic is that you get two turns to perform actions and there are basically three actions: bring a card into play, remove a card from play, and swap out cards from your hand. There is a difficulty to each card for entering and exiting play and you need a d6 to determine if you can perform the desired action. If you keep trying, and failing, at a specific action you get a cumulative bonus on subsequent attempts.

My initial 3 player game took about 15 minutes of play, but only because we were constantly stopping play to read the cards, which are rather nicely made. I liked the art throughout the deck...and not much else. The game quickly revealed to be a "screw your buddy" type game and half the action is to do something good for you and the other half was screw whoever seemed to have an advantage. In some ways this mirrored playing Munchkin, but the relative lack of humor left the players feeling a bit empty.

I honestly don't feel like this game was worth the $10 I paid for it, much less the $13 Studio 9 wants, because I have absolutely no desire to play this game again. I could see this game maybe working as a minimum 3 player game where one player acts as the GM and the rest a party of players. I'm not sure if I would want to put the effort into creating said rules, but evidently I'm not the only one who feels the game needed another way to play. If you head over to Board Game Geek, kingspud has worked up some solitaire rules (and game board). You need to have, by the looks of it, at least one of the two expansions, for the solitaire rules to work, which adds another $13 to the cost.

A bit of a gamble for me, but if I come across the expansions for a cheap cost....I might consider it. The 2 Star rating is because the game is well-written, had good art, and there is this 3rd party rule-set that gives some flexibility.

I could see trying to figure out a way to use this deck as a randomizer for regular RPG play.....but I'll let someone else develop those ideas....