Free d30 Tables: Combined Height & Weight Charts for Half-Orcs

It is a busy day at home as my wife heads off to Gameholecon without me...at least I get some extra hours in at work....

Before I drop her off at the airport and start my longer-than-average-day I wanted to get out the next two d30 Combined Height & Weight Charts.

This time around they are the charts for Half-Orcs.

FGM031je is the English d30 table and FGM031jm is the Metric. You can use these links or click on the graphics below to go to the appropriate free d30 tables:

English

Metric

Free Map054: Generic Cavern

I have my newest cavern map up on the Patreon site. This map is was originally designed to fit a latter-sized page, and my Patrons get it at 300 dpi. The free version is 100 dpi.

I'm working on a GM supplement to make cavern crawling these 2d maps a bit more interesting and hope to have that out next week. Until then, have fun using this map....

Free GM Resource: Exquisite Corpse Dungeon #2

This week's Free GM Resource is a highlight of a cool community project called the Exquisite Corpse Dungeon. Technically I'm pointing out the more recent 2nd project, but here is a link to the 1st as well.

The Exquisite Corpse Dungeon is a series of HUGE maps that are broken down into small sections, with each section being drawn by one artist. At best the artist knows just a sliver of the map piece before it, just enough to make the appropriate connections from the old section to the new.

This can make the overall map look like somewhat disjointed, but it does make for an interesting collaborative effort. The final map comes in at a huge 18" x 48". I can't speak for anyone else, but I loves me some big-assed maps.

I can't wait to get my skills up to the point where I could contribute.....well, at least to the point where folks would want me to contribute. Until then I'll be like everyone else and enjoy the Exquisite Corpse Dungeons.

Frugal GM Review: Basic Psionics Handbook

I almost feel like I'm "phoning in" this review because I've liked everything from New Big Dragon Games Unlimited and so I picked up this supplement based on pure blind faith in the quality. I've never run psionics and never really planned on it.....

....of course that can always change.

Newest d30 Height & Weight Tables are up: Gnomes

As I'm working on my d30 table for November I still have nine more sets of combined height & weight d30 tables to release....after the ones I just put up on DTRPG. I'll be releasing them in bits & pieces over the next few weeks/months depending on the pace of other publisher's freebies.

This set of two tables are the combined height & weight charts for Gnomes. Aside from the Half-Elf charts I have in the pile, the rest of the ones to be released are for more obscure races.....

The two tables are FGM031ie d30 Gnome Height & Weight Table (English) and FGM031im d30 Gnome Height & Weight Table (Metric)

Throwback Thursday: Dragonflight 2003

I know Throwback Thursday is more of a Facebook thing, and not something I normally partake in, but this morning I have to do my 1st opening at the store I'm working at PT and I was feeling a little nostalgic.

Back in 2003 the Mrs. and I were set to attend the Dragonflight convention in Seattle. It was our 1st Anniversary and attending the con was actually a cheap way for us to also visit the city. We had some specific game plans that got a bit thwarted when the guy who was running KenzerCo game demos backed out.

Stupid me.....I stepped in to run the demos in addition to the games we already had scheduled.

Dragonflight was held at an old Jesuit university and had a few holdovers from the old days. Lodging was pretty cheap and in the university's dorms. They made us "prove" we were married before they'd let the wife and I share a room. Matching names on our driver's licenses could have meant we were brother & sister, and that wouldn't be enough to let us share a room!

We got to play in a couple of HackMaster games on Saturday with married PCs that managed to game off and on with each other for years. We had a great time and one of the other players gave me a copy of HackJournal #1, which is a treasured part of my collection.

The primary demo focus was on KenzerCo's "new" game Fairy Meat, which was a fun little fae miniature wargame. The best part, for me, was coming up with the terrain to play with. I had two table setups, but the most we ever got were a couple of players at one table. Still, it was a fun spin on a wargame.

The other game we demoed was Dwarven Dig. I'm pretty sure the game is still in print, not just from KenzerCo. The game was pretty decent, not sure if it was worth the price that KenzerCo had it at. IIRC the game was remade with much cheaper components....not up to KenzerCo's quality, but a lot lighter and easier on the wallet.

Dragonflight was a pretty cool con. Affordable, and all about gaming. There wasn't a bunch of non-gaming things, aside from the allure of Seattle, to draw folks away from getting their game on.

Monsters that GMs Don't Like to use at the Table

I was reading up on a game forum where a GM had what he thought was a dastardly plan for surprising the party with a monster. The plan was a decent one, and kind of amusing, but the discussion took a bit of a dark tone to me and went off in a bit of a "screw the players over" sort of fashion.

My mind immediately jumped to a "monster" that I pretty much refuse to use and it made me wonder if other GMs have monsters that are pretty much on a banned list for their campaigns/tables.

For me the one monster I rarely use is Green Slime. I hate Green Slime because it is barely one step removed from simply having a lightning bolt fry a PC from out of the blue. Think about it....Green Slime is pretty much a stupid ambush predator that (in many systems) drops down from above and instantly starts destroying any organic material it comes in contact with. If a PC is lucky maybe it'll just take out an arm before it gets lopped off.

Oh hell no.....not in my game.

Don't get me wrong, I have used Green Slime before, but I always give the PCs plenty of warning before hand. They get to see the Green Slime long before it has a chance to attack. To me, Green Slime is more of an obstacle encounter than a monster encounter. I've used this creature twice and it was only an issue for the PCs the 1st time and that was all on the players.....

In my HackMaster 4th Edition game I had an "evil" Dark Elf Necromancer. I ended up having to give the PC the misguided quirk because the player, a genuinely nice guy, had issues playing a Neutral Evil PC.....his own real-world personality kept creeping through. At one point in an adventure the group had found a spellbook stowed underneath the cook stove in the ruin's kitchen. There appeared to be a mass of Green Slime attempting to devour the spellbook, but it was being kept at bay by some mysterious force. Basically this was loot I wanted the Necromancer to get, but I wasn't just tossing it at him.

The PC grabs a stick and tries to get the Green Slime to attack the stick instead of going for the book. Now I had already figured that if the PC simply used the stick to push the spellbook away from the Green Slime that'd work, but the player couldn't figure out that action. At one point I put a phone book under my living room couch and handed the player a broomstick and asked him to show me what he was doing......

....eventually the player just got frustrated poking at the phonebook and just reached in and grabbed it.

In the next few second in-game the Necromancer was attacked by Green Slime and the Ranger managed to amputate the Necromancer's arm at the elbow and staunch the bleeding before there was a loss of life.

Even though this was a good session for me.....still not up to using Green Slime.

Are there any particular monsters you just refuse to use, and why?

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.