New Book From New Big Dragon Games Unlimited: Basic Psionics Handbook

Richard J. LeBlanc, Jr. has released his newest project and while I realize I'm likely to never, ever, actually use the Basic Psionics Handbook, I had to pick it up for a review later.

I'll freely admit I've liked everything I've picked up from New Big Dragon Games Unlimited (seriously....everything), so "risking" $6 on the PDF is a pretty safe bet. I've always liked the layout and even though I'm not likely to play a psionicist, I wanted to read his take on it.

Back in the day.....when I 1st started "playing" AD&D with my uncle we didn't have a fricken clue what we were doing. I do remember rolling up a PC with psionics, but damned if I can remember if it was a legit PC, a specific psionic allowance (ie, GM fiat and not RAW), or even straight-up cheating....although I highly doubt that I was cheating for a psionicist....I'd have gone for a Paladin instead. Regardless though, that PC never saw any action and we never did quite figure out how psionics worked...did anyone?

My initial flip through looked good and I'm in the process of printing up and gluing my own book for later reading/review. The PDF of the Basic Psionics Handbook is a couple bucks off for a while, so if you have any intention of picking up the PDF, now is a good time to do so.

Free GM Resource: 20-Sided Rhymes

This week's Free GM Resource is quite the welcome departure from the norm here at Frugal GM.

Released almost two weeks ago on the Hipster, please! blog, 20 Sided Rhymes is an eclectic album of 20 "gaming" songs. I'm not a big music guy, so classification is hard to come by for me, but a lot of this album feels like nerdcore to me....

....doesn't really matter, because I enjoy it.

Technically this is a free album, but if you are so inclined there is a Paypal link to make a donation to Child's Play.

I'm impressed by this effort. Not only are there 20 cool songs to listen to, but there is also some good cover art for both the front and back cover. I was able to slide this into my collection easily......

New Free d30 Tables at DTRPG: Halfling Height & Weight

Another week, another table.....well at least while I have a backlog of d30 tables to share.....

This time around is the combined height & weight d30 tables for Halflings. As per the usual for this line there are two tables. FGM031he is the English measurements for the Americans who use the beloved d30 and FGM031hm is for those enlightened folks who have been blessed with an innate understanding of the Metric system.

I know that a kilogram is 2.2 pounds and a meter is 3.28 feet, but I just don't "get" the metric system well enough to use that on the fly....

Feel free to click on the appropriate graphic to get to the appropriate download.

English

Metric

 

Frugal GM Review: The Trip & Trap from Heroic Maps

Last week I picked up The Trip & Trap from Heroic Maps' Storeys line.

I've been wanting a good Inn/Tavern map I could use in my game and this particular map was perfect. There are three levels: basement, main floor, and 2nd floor quarters/rooms.

The download consists of three main groupings of files. The first is an A4 sized PDF of the gridded version of the maps. Then you get a full set each of the maps with and without the grid. These digital maps are 300 dpi which means you could conceivably get them printed out rather expensively at full-size from your local FedEx Kinkos.

You can also reduce them to 100 DPI and use in any of your assorted Virtual Table Top (VTT) systems.

Example of good overlap

I went the cheaper option and printed out the PDF at home. The A4 PDF is password protected/locked down, but since you only need to print the files it isn't really an issue. There are directions on the 1st page on how to properly size the printing to get 1" = 5' scale, which is coincidentally just how my printer wanted to print it natively on my Letter sized stock.

All three levels came out to 20 printed pages and for the most part cutting out the pieces was easy. There was just enough overlap to make piecing the parts together rather simple and aside from one screw-up on my part it all three maps came out great. Normally I print to cardstock, but this time I used regular paper because I was planning on laminating the maps when I was done gluing it down to poster board. The thinner paper vs. cardstock made the lamination work better to hold everything together. If you go the route I did I'd suggest using a light-tack gluestick so you can more easily position the overlapping papers.

Finished Main Level

I was really impressed with the end results. I liked how it seemed that the artists deliberately placed objects on/under the overlap to make aligning the pieces much easier. Using the grid helps a little bit, but printed objects covering the overlap help out a lot more. I also loved the addition of three "secret" rooms that could be swapped in & out of some dead space on the map. This lets me get just a bit more mileage out of the map.

The Trip & Trap is a good tavern map that I think a lot of GMs can easily use in their game. Assembly was easy and it doesn't take much to put together this game aid that you'll want to use often. I really think I'm getting my $4.50 worth on this download.

Explore the Power of Maps for National Geography Week

The other day one of my interweb buddies +matt jackson brought to my attention that National Geography Awareness Week was coming up and he suggested an RPG map-making project since this year's theme is "Explore! The Power of Maps"

I think this is a fantabulous idea and for the life of me am not sure why the G+ post about it has gone *poof*.

I've always been fascinated with geography and a little frustrated I can't make the kind of maps I'd like to. Beside my desk is a small world map with push-pins showing everywhere I've been. I also have a Google map of "all" the places I've been. It isn't super accurate, but I update it when possible.

When I was in high school I was on a Quiz Bowl team (kind of like "Head of the Class") and one of my specialty areas was geography. One of my favorite games, which I managed to play twice (it was super-hard version of Trivial Pursuit) was called Ubi. I get that I was a bit of a geography nerd.

Maps are kind of important to a geography nerd and I'm really hoping that this idea gets kicked around some more and solidified. The basic gist was a group of mappers would make a map based on a real-world location. Since I often start with real-world locations, even for my fantasy maps, this is right up my alley. Of course I'm assuming the group would pick a location where I don't have the resources I'd have for my normal map-making-process, but I'm up to stretch my creative muscles.....

.....what one real-world location would you like to see mapped? If the group thing becomes a no-go I'll have to do something on my own and would prefer to pick from some suggestions...

Free Map053: I Cannot Get Enough Caverns!

It's been a while since I've put up a new free map. I've been doing some mapping, just saving up some maps for a special project which I still have a lot more work to do on.

I do love cavern maps and I'm still experimenting. One of the tools I love using can't really handle larger maps, so I'm playing around with some other techniques and trying to solidify the ones I do like.

Practice makes perfect......or in my case "good enough".

Free d30 Table: Combined Height & Weight for Dwarven PCs/NPCs

It's that time again where I put up another set of free d30 tables.

I've done up a whole slew of combined height & weight tables for a good 13 different RPG races. I've put them all up on my Patreon page for patrons and am slowly releasing them on DriveThruRPG.

This set is for Dwarves and consists of two PDFs, the 1st using English measurements (inches & pounds), and the 2nd Metric measurements (centimeters and kilograms).

 I hope you find them useful.....

Free GM Resource: Masterplan

I've been sitting on this Free GM Resource for a while because I hadn't actually downloaded it and checked it out for myself. I'm only sharing it now because a GM friend of mine uses it for one thing and found that it worked exceptionally well even in that limited capacity.

Masterplan is an "Adventure Design Studio" that is basically a scratch-built database for GMs to set-up and record their campaigns. If I wasn't attempting to do the same with a wiki, I'd be all over this.

After watching the five tutorial videos I can say that Masterplan seems a helluva lot easier to use than what I'm currently doing, and it seems to do a better job on every level but one to the alternatives I've used. I have a specific requirement that I might just need to re-evaluate in favor of switching over to Masterplan.

The program is written with D&D 4E in mind, but the author had to remove the game-specific libraries so I don't see how this couldn't be a great asset for any game.

Masterplan is a small (< 6 MB) download that you should check out. My GM buddy uses it just to create a working custom calendar and says it is worthwhile just for that.