Frugal GM Review: Fat Dragon Games Ravenfell Core Set

This week I decided to put together one of my paper terrain buildings I had received from the Fat Dragon Games Ravenfell Kickstarter. You can get this Ravenfell Core Set off of DriveThruRPG, so I felt good about putting one of the buildings together for review.

The first thing I did was select which building to print. The zip file I had contained folder for each building, but what I did was use the included instructions booklet to look at the finished buildings to make my selection. There are two instruction books, one for general paper building instructions, the "Beginner's Guide" and a specific set of instructions for the Ravenfell Core Set.

I ended up choosing Building 2, which should come out looking like the model on the right. Each building had its own folder and this building had 5 sub-folders (Floors, Level1, Level2, Roof, and Tower). Each sub-folder had a separate PDF for each page, which I didn't really like playing with. I have to assume there was a reason for it, but I had to go through and remember what options I chose for each and every page I printed. This was a good and bad thing.

The good thing was that I had options, and that is probably the biggest strength of the Ravenfell Core Set. I could have a natural grid represented by a visible nail pattern, in two sizes no less. I could have a dusty & stained floor or a perfectly clean one. The coolest options were for the outside though. Different facades & even a snow covering.

I'm Moving the Frugal GM Reviews to Saturdays

Normally I do a Frugal GM Review on Fridays, but with the new PT job (hoping to make it FT or at least add another PT position somewhere) and some (improving) issues at home.....it can be a bit of a stretch getting the review done in time since my "cushion" of posts/reviews has been used up....I know, my bad.

I'm considering pushing back the reviews until the weekend, probably just a day. Right now my weekend mornings are relatively free and getting just one more day can be quite useful, especially on reviews that simply take up a lot of time by their nature. I don;t want to be one of those guys that tries to do a review where they do little more than read over the chapter titles and call it good.....

....I hate those reviews...they don't do anybody any favors. I've seen far too many reviews where it was clear the reviewer didn't actually bother to read the material being reviewed, much less play it, and just went off of 3rd hand information.

If you guys want rumor and specialization I could right stuff up everyday......but it kind of goes against what I'm trying to do here.

As a special thank you for even reading this far I've reinstated a 1/2 off coupon code for The Horrors of Halfling Hollow, the short encounter "location" I put together recently. It'll be 99¢ until Halloween.

Do Gamers Still Have Named "Gaming Groups"?

As I'm going through Facebook today I got a few of those "Throwback Thursday" posts in my feed and I saw a gaming picture or two in there and they reminded me of something....

...I was wondering how many folks her have an actual gaming group. Not a group of people who game regularly, but an actual named gaming group....

Back in the days of HackMaster 4th Edition the HackMaster Association promoted the creation of formal gaming groups in order to track member participation and even PCs because this was something that was needed in the "highly" competitive convention tournament environment. I know that some conventions have been borne out of formalized gaming groups. Dragonflight in Seattle immediately comes to mind.

I was a member of several groups, but my two home groups were the "Boise Incident" Instigators and the Gem State Gazebo Hunters. I GM'd the 1st group and my wife the 2nd. She drew up the combined group's logo and I turned it into something we could use, like this travelling banner we'd take to conventions.

Just a thought.....have any of you guys put together something a bit more formal? I know I've seen group T-shirts and notepads at conventions.....

A Good-Looking (& Frugal) Gaming Kickstarter I'm Getting behind

OK, I know two weeks and two Kickstarter mentions might be a bit much....

I just looked at this Small Dungeon Maps project and immediately thought......cool.

It occurred to me that this is pretty much a completed project that the artist is just using Kickstarter as a sales/distribution channel instead of places like DTRPG. Since Drive-Thru and her sister sites take 30-40% off the top, "losing" 10% to Kickstarter becomes a more viable option for many folks starting out.

There are a couple of things I like about this Kickstarter though. 1st is the low buy-in. Say what you want, but about $2 USD for a 40 room dungeon is money well spent. The graphics have an interesting slightly cartoonish look I like and the perspective used.....I think this would look perfect on a VTT where every player is oriented to get the best view of the room.


I'm sold on that this could be a great project for use at my gaming table.

New Free Tables up at DTRPG

I've posted the next set of d30 combined height & weight tables over at DriveThruRPG.

These tables are for Elven PCs & NPCs, and like the 1st set for Humans, one table uses English measurements (FGM031fe) and the other Metric (FGM031fm).

Enjoy.......

Free GM Resource: Freelance Traveller

This week's Free GM Resource is another "fanzine" although I think this is a bit more than that...

Freelance Traveller has been around for a while, almost 6 years now, and is on their 71st issue.

Not too shabby.....

There are a couple of great things about this PDF magazine that don't even get into the content. 1st is that it is available in both Letter and A4 formats. Seriously.....who does that? Awesome in my book. They also have a consolidated listing of articles that is updated on a monthly basis.

These two things take a little bit of extra work, but really kick up the production value in my book. If you play any type of space-based RPG, you should really check out Freelance Traveller.

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.....