Free Map(s) 005

With the recent posts regarding the Roleplaying City Map Generator allowing you to generate a city and this week's City Generator allowing you to make a map.....I decided my next project had to be a marriage of the two.

The cool thing with the map generator is that you can plug in some specifics from the city generator, like a certain number of gates, buildings, and wall dimensions.

After generating my city I plugged in the parameters into the map generator and cycled through a series of random maps until I found one I liked. Next I exported the map into 16 sections, giving me a HUGE map to play with. Stitching up the sections and extending the roads out of town left me with this to play with.  The larger map is 300 DPI and 24" square....which you can find here.

Now I realize that simply sharing this map isn't really worthwhile because if you got the City Map Generator you can get this far without any real effort.

Free GM Resource: City Generator

Last month I posted about a pretty cool city map generator that gave you a lot of options for building any sized city on the fly. The only real problem I saw with that program was that while a map is useful, it is only part of what a GM needs to build a city.

This City Generator, from CrystalBallSoft, is a simple & easy to use generator that has a number of options that really lets you tweak the city to your needs. The greatest part of this generator, the thing that puts it above just about every other generator I've ever seen, is that you can tweak the number & type of city wards. Combine this with building & profession generation and you've got a decently fleshed out city that doesn't take up a lot of space.

Frugal GM Review: Under Fogbreath Peak

Under Fogbreath Peak is a free one-page Labyrinth Lord adventure by Joe Johnston (Taskboy Games). I find it interesting that this is actually the third review of his DriveThruRPG products:
          Brave the Labyrinth #1
          The Manse on Murder Hill

When you factor in that I don't even play this system.....

I was drawn to each item for different reasons. The Zine because....well because it was a Zine. The adventure caught my eye initially because the cover reminded me of the old AD&D adventures. This particular adventure caught my eye because it was a simple one-page (landscape) adventure.

Instead of a free map, how about a free font?

I have a couple of map ideas I'm taking far too long working on, including a few ideas for a vertical dungeon tile set to share on Dave's Mapper.

One map I wanted to do with Dundjinni, but for some reason my program would not run properly. I decided to update my 1.04 version to 1.07 and.....well it didn't go well. A fresh install was in order and that created even more problems.

In the end there was far too much wasted time and while I do have Dundjinni 1.07 on my computer, the initial problems that necessitated the jump-through-hoops effort still remained.

So....instead of a map today you get a different file. This last week I've been messing with font creation and on a whim I made a simple RPG cuniform font. The whole idea was to make a font using a small set of shapes. The font is the same for capital and lower-case letters and this set has numbers, but no punctuation.

Here is an example of the font used to mark off a section of an older map.

Here is the shortcut for the font.

Guidebook to the City of Dolmvay Kickstarter

Personally I have had a bit of a love-hate relationship with Kickstarter, and "professionally" I'm not one to usually push a project unless it resonates just right. IIRC correctly I've only promoted the Reaper Bones Kickstarter because that was a great deal for GMs and it could only make getting cheaper minis easier down the line.

I've reviewed a couple of products from Small Niche Games (or are about to....I tend to work ahead on some entries) and while they were all geared at Labyrinth Lord for the underlying game system, I've found them all quite useful for conversion to just about any Fantasy Role Playing Game.

Yesterday I discovered that SNG has a modest Kickstarter for an upcoming City Guidebook. As of this post, the project is already funded, but any more funds are intended to be used to add extra/better art.

The cool part is that this project will be made available to everyone using DriveThruRPG's Pay What You Want Program. If stretch goals are made then there will be some additional product made available at a reasonable cost, or free for certain donation levels.

This is the kind of Kickstarter I can get behind and it seems like a win-win for everyone.

Free GM Resource: Dave's Mapper

Even if....or maybe especially if...you have a large selection of maps, sometime you just need something quick and easy.

Dave's Mapper is definitely quick and easy.....and pretty fricken cool to boot.

A quick overview: you can quickly make a number of map types (Dungeons, Caverns, City, Side View, and Sci-Fi Ships). Select a type and your desired size and whammo! A new map is made. You can deselect map tiles from certain artists, if you wanted, and editing the new map is quite simple.

Dave's Mapper is easy enough that you can use the website from your tablet.

There are tons of options for creating a map: size, offset, grids......you can even create foldable map cubes!

Although there are already 32+ artists creating tiles, the program is still accepting new tiles and there is a weekly contest (#TileThursday) for new tiles.

This is a great project and a wonderful tool for GMs.

Frugal GM Review: The Mysterious Shrine

It isn't a big secret that my favored game is HackMaster. The thing is when I get to play it is in my wife's campaign which is often completely home-brew.

When we first started her HackMaster Basic campaign though we got to play in the pretty cool Frandor's Keep setting. One of our group's adventures was dealing with this odd "savage" obelisk in the foothills surrounding the Keep. I remember a bit of this adventure, but one thing I don't remember is that the adventure was a "bonus" adventure from KenzerCo's Steve "Stevil" Johansson.

Free Map 004

A couple weeks into this map-a-week bit and I'm already using somebody else's maps.....

Actually this is a "quick" map that my wife made for a one-off. While I really enjoy the creative process and labor at putting things together in writing or any other "art", I'm more at home screwing around with the technical aspect of things. For me it doesn't really get fun until I can scan it in and start playing with Photoshop.

My wife is 180* out. She's the artistic one who would like to become better playing with the computer.

I guess the grass is always greener on the other side....