Fallout 4 Interactive Map For Those Interested

This is most definitely NOT this week's Free GM Resource, but in some ways I wish it could be.

I'm making what I have to consider a pretty safe assumption that those of us who love RPGs tend to love other games as well. I know a lot of my friends have been having fun with Fallout 4, especially since we're getting to the 2nd DLC and the new Survival Mode.

In the stretch between finishing my 1st play-through and the introduction of the new content I've spent a little bit of time trying to collect all the bobble-heads, magazines, and I think I'm up to about 45 suits of power armor (amazing how profitable it can be to make and sell Jet). This interactive map has been quite the boon.

I'd love to be able to have a map like this setup for my RPG campaigns. Lay out the map, and then populate it with markers for towns, tombs, caves, etc. Of course I'd want to be able to share it with the players, so it'd have to kind of work in reverse. While I'd put the markers in, the players would start with a blank map and then uncover the markers, as opposed to having the big populated map where you get to mark off these special spots.

Cool Map Tiles Available Through Kickstarter

I hope I have a decent record of not pushing Kickstarter Projects unless they seem to be a good deal for my 12 regular readers here.

A couple months ago I reviewed the Small Dungeon Maps, which I picked up via Kickstarter. I really thought these maps were not only cool, but pretty useful, especially for virtual table-top (VTT) use. I was looking forward to adding the new sets to my collection when the became available....

.....which is "now".

The creator of the Small Dungeon Maps, Jean Francois Senay, has another Kickstarter that looks like it'll be even better than the last one. Dungeon Map Creator is a collection of 9 sets of 32 5x5 map tiles. As of the writing of this post not all of the sets have example images yet, which I'd normally be quite concerned with.

Fortunately Jean Francois Senay already has a great track record with fulfillment and the fact he set such a small funding goal tells me he was always planning on doing all nine sets.

These tiles are pretty much a top-down perspective so they aren't as awesome as the earlier sets for a VTT, they will have a lot more use for all GMs.

Frugal GM Review: Goblin Market

This week's Frugal GM Review is a PWYW adventure from QuasarDragon Games called Goblin Market (PO-2). This OSR adventure is designed for an unspecified party of PCs of levels 10-12. Goblin Market is a follow-on adventure to their adventure The Stolen Child (PO-1).

Before I even sit down to read the adventure I went ahead and looked at a couple of things, like I normally do. First off this 62 page (3.65 MB) PDF is watermarked & secured, not unlike most items from DTRPG, and fortunately it isn't overly locked-down. There are no bookmarks or internal hyperlinks, and this adventure really needs both. A lot of information, like maps, new spells, etc., are at the end of the PDF in Appendices A through H. This means there will be a lot of page flipping, either through the PDF or actual pages if you decide to print this adventure out....

Hot Deal Over at Lulu (25% off and Free Shipping)

Generally speaking I'm not a huge fan of posting recent content from another blog, but I thought this was too good to pass up.

Thanks for the 411 Erik!

Lulu.com often has deals here & there. Usually something along the lines of an "ok" percentage off or free shipping. Right now they are offering 25% off and free shipping!

Even though I had just payed good money for a PDF I couldn't ignore this sweet deal. All you have to do is use coupon code "LULURC" to get this deal.

Usually you can only use coupon codes once, so make sure you figure out what you want to buy from Lulu before applying the code and finishing your purchase.

Free GM Resource: Discord

Usually the things I manage to find as Free GM Resources have been around a while. Sometimes I'm just late to the party, and other times it might be a goodie just hidden away and forgotten about on the interwebs.

I'm pretty certain this is a brand-spanking-new resource that will benefit a whole group of RPG Gamers, specifically those that play online with a Virtual Table Top (VTT).

Discord is a free all-in-one voice & text chat program that essentially replaces the need for a Ventrillo or Teamspeak account. Now I know some folks use Google+ hangouts, and if that works for you, great. Personally I always preferred using a Ventrillo server because the quality was so much better.

Discord looks like it is built from the ground-up to work for gamers with an easy-as-heck interface that uses minimal bandwidth. I like the fact it'll work with mobile devices and even has a game-overlay feature you can pop on & off as needed.

You don't need to download the client, but it looks like things can run smoother if you do. I'm just getting into playing with Discord, but I think this will work great for my future online gaming plans.

Frugal GM Review: Deadly Trappings from KenzerCo

This week I ended up picking up an old favorite, well kind of an old favorite, of mine to review.

Deadly Trappings, from KenzerCo, immediately takes me back to my early, way-too-lean days of gaming. Back when the majority of outlets to scratch my gaming itch consisted of choose-you-own adventure books, painting minis with enamel model paint (hey, it is what I had), reading the odd copy of Dragon, and nerd-lusting over mini catalogs or a borrowed copy of Grimtooth's Traps.

Yes, these were lean times indeed for me, but then I grew up and stopping living in the middle of nowhere.

Now, full disclosure, I have written up a trap or two for KenzerCo's Knights of the Dinner Table, but none of them are in Deadly Trappings. I don't know if this is a matter of timing or if my traps simply sucked. I'm inclined to think the former just because it makes me happier than would the latter.

Frugal GM Review Delayed This Week......

Just a quick head's-up that due to a wonderful collision of time-sucks and opportunities I'm going to have to push off a RPG Review until tomorrow.

I'd rather not half-ass a quick review as it isn't fair to the publisher/creator of what I'm reviewing.

Free Map064: An Underground Lake

While I have several writing projects in the works, I felt compelled to try out a few new techniques to see if they worked for me.

For the most part they did. I like experimenting a bit and while not every step worked out the way I wanted it to, I figured out how to essentially fix a few things instead of having to start over.

I was working on another larger map that I re-sized down to Arch D (24" x 36") and today was the 1st time I didn't crash my programs because I was asking it to do just too much. Hopefully this was because I changed my work-flow up a bit to minimize trying to do more than the computer could handle......

....I guess if I pull this off 2x in a row I can consider myself successful. Of course I still have much to learn...like not sizing my web graphics at 300 dpi...whoops.

While the freebie map is 11" x 17", the Patron version is the larger 24" x 36" and doesn't have the Patreon "ad", which isn't shown in the graphic below. Like always, click on either graphic in this post to go to the page to download the free map, or use this link.