Frugal GM Vacation

Just a head's up that I'm taking a vacation from the blog for the next week.

The next post should be a review on Saturday, January 2nd, but if I get a bit restless I might sneak a post or two in the interim.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas (or Friday......Friday is good too), and I'll see you next week!

Free GM Resource: B0.5 Secrets of the Unknown

This week's Free GM Resource is another free adventure. This time it is adventure B0.5 Secrets of the Unknown from Pacesetter Games & Simulations.

This is a small OSR/1st Edition ruleset adventure design to bridge a gap from the original B1 In Search of the Unknown to Pacesetter's follow-on adventure  B1 Legacy of the Unknown.

At only 7 pages (with cover) it is a short adventure, but it has a new spell, 6 new magic items, and 2 new monsters. Definately worth checking out, especially at this price!

Frugal GM Review: Combat Accelerator

As Christmas is just around the corner and free time gives way to prepping for the holiday, gaming often takes a backseat....at least for me.

This week's Frugal GM Review is going to be as short, which is in-line for the item being reviewed. In this case it is Combat Accelerator from 10 Spot Games.

This 3 page (including the cover) PDF is nothing more than an idea being put forth to speed up combat. Since my favorite RPG is HackMaster, speeding up combat feels like a cardinal sin, but I can totally see where the ideas put forth in Combat Accelerator could be useful. I actually picked up this free supplement with the thought of tweaking it for use with a play-by-post game where the emphasis is more on roleplay than intense combat.

If you need some help speeding up combat in your game, I think this is worth checking out. You can't put a price on a good idea, and the un-credited writer didn't.....

Free GM Resource: Under Xylarthen's Tower

This week's Free GM Resource is an old-school dungeon crawl adventure created largely from random tables. The author, Jeff Rients, has a blog I used to read regularly, but he hasn't posted anything since last summer. It is worth a read for some thoughts and posts relative to OSR material, but I'm specifically highlighting the adventure Under Xylarthen's Tower.

Instead of linking directly to the adventure, which is a bit unfair, I'm providing a link to the appropriate blog post from 2008 (!) that has his direct link to the adventure. The post itself was a good read....

Frugal GM Review: Dungeon Monthly 2015 Compilation

This week's Frugal GM Review is on a "free" map-set that you can pay $1 for over at DriveThruRPG.

I really like the idea of this product because...well you can pretty much get it for free if you want, or you can pay a measly buck and skip a bit of hassle. Now I'm all for saving a buck or two when possible, but there is being frugal and there is being cheap......

Spending a lot of time to save $1 isn't being frugal....

Crooked Staff Publishing has a blog where they put up some good content (I should add them to the +12 Links of Helpfulness) and part of that content is a monthly geomorph map. Now you can easily just go through and download those monthly maps in either 50 or 70 pixels per grid, or you can spend $1 over at DriveThruRPG and get the Dungeon Monthly 2015 Compilation.

There are definitely pros and cons for downloading the free maps vs. paying a buck a year, with the freebie option winning out if you want the "larger" 70 px/grid maps. OK, downloading 36 geomorph maps (the last three year's worth) is pretty simple and pretty much one click if you use Google Photos. I like the bigger map parts myself, but the downside if you get one option (aside from size).

For $1 (per year) you get a download of the "complete" map, with the pieces all stitched together. There are three files to download. The 1st is a Letter-sized overview map, pretty cool, but only good for the overview. The next two files are the assembled maps at the "50px" size. One map is on a dark background, like the free monthly maps, and the other is on a white background. These two maps are actually 150px per inch and 38" square. I'm fairly certain this will work out fine on a VTT where a lot of folks prefer 100px per inch resolution.

In my opinion what you are buying for your $1 is a heck of a lot of convenience. The download of individual files might be relatively easy and I guess you could search through the blog to find out how the individual maps work together, but then you have to go and assemble them yourself in Photoshop or the like.

That is a bit of work, more for some than for others, but for $1.......this is pretty damned good. The only way Crooked Staff Publishing could make this even better would be to use the 70px grids. Odds are I'll end up downloading the larger individual maps from the blog and be thankful that I can do something else other than trying to figure out how to assemble it into a larger map and taking the time to do it as well.

I really think this was a buck well spent.....and now I need to buy the other two year's of compilations.

Free GM Resource of the Week: Roleplay Online (Play by Post)

This week's Free GM Resource is one I used to use a lot, but haven't in a couple of years: Roleplay Online.

Roleplay Online (rpol.net) is a great online space for people to run online play-by-post RPGs. It has all the functionality of traditional forums, along with probably the best die roller I've ever seen....as far as options go.

RPOL isn't the prettiest site I've seen, but it is extremely functional. If you want to find and play in a play-by-post game this is the place to go.

Frugal GM Review: Tree Maze of the Twisted Druid

I went to DTRPG to download something specific for review this week and I happened to stumble across this little gem called Tree Maze of the Twisted Druid. The cover art is what suckered me in and I'm glad it did.

This 9 page, 1.56 MB PDF doesn't come with much of a description, but the product page states that it was made in 1981 and found in the author's mom's garage. After reading this I believe it.

Personally I don't think this adventure is playable, but it was definitely an enjoyable read....especially for the price of free. It took me back to my early days with AD&D and the sheer stupidity of my pre-teen GM self. I don't want to spoil the adventure for your reading, but this is the opening statement in the adventure's introduction:
"The Twisted Druid needs a punch in the nuts."

The writing is complete with spelling errors, some rail-roading, small aside comments for the GM, and ridiculous monsters and treasure. Everything a young budding GM back in the day would force upon the players.

The artwork is crude, the text hard to read......in many ways this adventure sucks so badly that it comes around full circle to being good. I highly recommend picking this up just for the reading like I did.

Tree Maze of the Twisted Druid totally made my day.

Free Table FGM037a: d30 Fantasy Diseases

Technically this is a table for November, but I was so late in getting it done it is being released on December 1st....assuming I have the settings done correctly.

This table is just a list of 30 Fantasy Diseases, along with the minor and major symptoms of each malady. There are no "rules" to get in the way of the GM using this at their table, and it my assumption that the GM will use whatever their rules use for communicability, vectors, duration, severity, etc.

Now I do like the current edition of HackMaster's rules for diseases and will probably end up having to add some stats to my personal-use diseases table, but I know that would be too much for a lot of GMs.

Click on the lead-in graphic above, or use this link to go to the listing on DTRPG.