Free GM Resource: Coin Creator from Inkwell Ideas

One thing I've really been wanting in my home game were some "coins" for the players to use. While I like the idea of making actual coins for the players to handle, that just seems like a lot of work without that big of a payoff.

The reason that I was even considering it was the fact that my campaign is set in what was a familiar setting, albeit one that was set quite a bit in the future from when the players became familiar with it. With the physical coins I could introduce the idea that not all coinage was the same and I could slip in old coins from the bygone era that had different values than the standard coins currently in use.

Nothing like finding out that old silver piece is worth a couple gold or that the mound of coinage just uncovered only holds scrap value.....

Since I'm not planning (anymore) to make physical coins, much less purchase them (way too expensive) I might just go with a small prop to show the players the different coins and just let them record how many of which coins they have. I'll probably use Photoshop so I can get the exact details I want, but this freebie from Inkwell Ideas can do quite a bit.

Coin Creator - Free! is a simple two page PDF that shows 6 coins. You can turn layers on and off to change the coin size, shape, and distinguishing characteristics. It has quite a few options, but if that isn't enough they have an "Expanded" Edition that contains even more options. The Coin Creator -Expanded is on sale for $1.99 right now.

This would be a good way to introduce some small props to your game......

Closing the Book on 2015....Where are my Dice?

I don't know about you guys, but I'm glad to be shutting the books on 2015 and looking forward to gaming in 2016.

I have some specific goals in mind for the upcoming year, projects I've been working on for some time.

Usually my personal gaming life takes a bit of a hit during the mad rush of retail hell that is the "Christmas Season" starting a couple weeks before Black Friday and ending a few days after Christmas. This year, however, I've been working in a different retail setting where the 3 busiest days of the year are the day before Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, and New Year's Eve....pretty much in that order.

Things were bad enough (maybe not the right word to use) that I just had to take a week's vacation from being the Frugal GM. Now I actually have a week of vacation from work so I can pick things back and start digging into this year's projects. I think on of my 1st projects will be creating my own personal travelling GM box/kit. I've got something special in mind.....

I do wonder if others find the the holidays too much to be able to game regularly. If so, how do you manage to get your gaming fix on during the interim and do you have anything special planned for getting the group back together post-season?

Frugal GM Review: Wormskin #1

This week I'm reviewing the inaugural issue of Wormskin, an OSR Zine.

This issue is currently PDF only and is labeled as the Autumn 2105 issue and was posted to DriveThruRPG on December 15th. Technically that is autumn, but I think most people see December as full-on winter. I know that is just semantics though....

This $3 PDF is pretty big, coming in at 41 pages and 25.2 MB. Right off the bat I noticed the 41 page count, which doesn't make much sense for something made for printing.....you need the pages divisible by 4. While reading the PDF it occurred to me that page 37 is largely superfluous because it gives explanation of stat-blocks which shouldn't really be needed by this Zine's intended audience.

The PDF is A5 sized and password-secured, which really isn't a big deal here.

Frugal GM 2015 Year in Review

It has been a pretty good year for the Frugal GM as far as meeting & exceeding the goals of this blog.

Last year we finished up with the number of products "sold" on DTRPG at 1201, with actual sales (retail and PWYW) of $59. The percentage of free products downloaded by folks like you was 92.34%, above my goal of 90%.

This year the number of products "sold" went up by over 600%! The year ended with 7705 downloads with combined net sales of $94.14 and the percentage of totally free downloads went up to 97.88%

I don't think you'd normally see sales figures from publishers putting their stuff up on DriveThruRPG, but my participation there was driven by my initial goals for this blog. As you can see I'm not making any real money with this effort, but that really wasn't the point to begin with, hence my ability to share this information. I roll everything I get from DriveThruRPG back into purchasing things to review here.

Glossing over these numbers, 2015 has had a couple of other minor milestones. The 500th post was made here last July, my Patreon campaign started this year (which is what I credit the aforementioned numbers to), and we even got a shout-out in a Knights of the Dinner Table article. 2015 was a pretty good year, but I hope it is just a warm-up for 2016.....

Thanks to you all for helping me reach my goals and to give something back to our community at large.

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....