Free GM Resource: GM's Miscellany Free Previews

This week's Free GM Resource is a set of interesting product previews from Raging Swan Press.

The free resource this week are the previews for GM's Miscellany:

• Village Backdrops
• Village Backdrops II
• Village Backdrops III

Although intended specifically for Pathfinder, the GM Miscellany Series are hearty GM aides that really flesh out small locales/dungeons that GMs can pretty much drops right into their campaigns. 

Usually free previews like these are little more than an example of the writing and layout that really have no value on their own and are just intended to entice you to pick up the full product. What Raging Swan Press has done is actually put out some useful free content that would entice you to purchase the rest of the product.

For example, the GM Miscellany: Village Backdrops is a 98 page PDF while the free preview is 34 pages. Instead of just putting out a few pages of free preview, what the publisher did was actually provide the 1st 2 pages of content for each of the 12 featured villages. You get a quick background, demographics, notable information and even a map!

Sure it is written for Pathfinder, but there isn't all that much Patherfinder-specific "stuff" to get in the way.

I'm planning on picking up something from the GM's Miscellany line to review this week.

It is Time for Secret Santicore 2015!

It is that time a year again!

Time to submit your Secret Santicore requests. For those of you unfamiliar with Secret Santicore the basic premise is that you make a simple (usually OSRish) RPG request and be willing to fulfill one wish in return. Helper elves mix up the requests and send them out to all participants. The elves also help with editing and assembly and then Secret Santicore delivers everyone a free PDF chock-full of the requested RPG items.

If you want in, please click on any of the links here for the overview blog post and a link to the submissions page.

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.