Free GM Resource: More Map Porn

Today's Free GM Resource is a little bit of map porn* courtesy of the American Geographical Society Library Digital Map Collection (say that five times real fast) via the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Libraries.

The collection is well organized and if you need/want to get some high-resolution TIFF files you can actually order them for $15. That might be a bit much, but if you need the high-resolution it is nice there is an option.

I've only barely peeked at the collection, but I've already decided it was worth bookmarking.

*As a bit of an aside....don't google "map porn" with safe search off....I didn't see one map!

Frugal GM "Review": 4x4 Tudor Building with Attic

This week's Frugal GM Review is going to stray off of my normal beaten path. The #1 rule around here is "If you send me something (within reason), I'll review it" and rule #2 is "I'll be honest in said review."

This week I'm in a bit of a bind because I can't quite follow these rules when reviewing this 4x4 Tudor Building with Attic made by a friend of mine. Now before one of my twelve readers gets their panties in a bunch crying foul because I consider Jolly Blackburn a friend, let me explain.

This Month's Free/PWYW d30 Table is up!

By my own math I've made 45 d30 tables so far. Of course a huge part of this collection are the various combined height & weight tables, in both English and Metric, and some of the tables haven't been released yet.

I've been trying to work on a buffer so I can make sure that there is a new d30 table being released every month. My Patrons get the tables as soon as I'm done, so if you don't like waiting,,,,,

This month's table is the d30 Random Punishment Table. Do your players like to run amok and afoul with the law? Do you have that one guy.....we all have that one guy....who plays Chaotic Stupid PCs? An appropriately modified roll on this chart might bring him back in line.

This punishment table is a bit random, but has huge modifiers based on the severity of the crime committed. You start off with the most severe offense and add a simple +1 for each additional crime. Since some most of the punishments might put a bit of a crimp in your campaign there is a much simpler alternative punishment table that you could use if that helps you out as a GM.

Like usual, click on either graphic to go to the download page, or use this link.

Free Map #67: The Slog

This week's free map is a bit of a Frankenstein in that I used a couple very disparate maps (type, scale, and location) to create this one map I had an idea for.

I'm also working a bit backwards with the ideas behind a Tweak & Toss adventure influencing the map I wanted to make. Now I might have an idea for the adventure first and look for a good location for the map, but hobbling different parts together usually makes for an unpleasant time creating the map.

This wasn't too painful.

The free maps are tablet sized again, with and without contours. Because of the elevations involved, I don't think folks will get a lot of use out of the contour version. My patrons get these two tabloid sized maps and two Arch D (24" x 36") maps as well, all of which do not have the "check out my Patreon" ad. I should mention they get the map as a High Quality PDF print as well.

Like usual, click on either graphic in this post or use this link to go to the map.

Free GM Resources: A Twofer From Goodman Games and Blue Boxer Rebellion

Today I'm highlighting two smaller Free GM Resources instead of just one thing. The selection here is really to bring to your attention to a couple of good gaming "stuff".

First off we have a free 13 page adventure called The Museum At the End of Time which is written for the upcoming Mutant Crawl Classics (MCC) game currently up on Kickstarter. I got to play an early playtest of MCC last year and I liked it quite a bit. The link to the free adventure, as well as a rulebook preview, is on the Kickstarter page.

The second freebie is another cool dungeon map from Doug Anderson over at Blue Boxer Rebellion. I love his isometric-ish maps (even though I've had some critical reviews here and here) and have long thought that his rpg game DungeonTeller would be an excellent 1st foray into RPGs for younger players.

The map is at a different scale than he normally makes, but it is a must-have if you've picked up his other maps.

Frugal GM Review: Heroic Maps' The Deepwood Catacombs

I know I've reviewed a few other Heroic Maps' offerings before, but I don't think (at least a quick search didn't find) I've reviewed one of their larger battlemaps.

The Deepwood Catacombs is one of those maps that I wanted because it is a nice small area just perfect for a planned side adventure or an impromptu dungeon delve to throw at the players when they go off in a direction you didn't expect.

Free Map #66: Twisty River

Yesterday I posted I was trying to use some new techniques for making maps and today I made a new map for an up-coming Tweak & Toss.

That Tweak & Toss will probably be delayed a bit so I can make a few more maps and get the whole work-flow down as a new habit. It looks like these new techniques might allow me to make much larger (print-size) maps. My working size for this map was an unbelievable 36" by 48". Normally my computer would buckle under the strain of such a large map.

The maps are PDFs......I don't try to do anything "fancy" with the PDF maps. I don't bother to fill out the properties tabs or make any of it a hotlink to this blog or my Patreon site. The free maps are just standard, tabloid (11" x 17") PDFs. My Patrons get high quality PDFs at both Tabloid and Arch D (24" x 36") sizes. The Patron maps are also missing the Patreon "ad".

To get to the free map, click on either graphic in this post, or use this link.

Working on Some New Map Making Methodologies

I've been so far behind some projects as of late that I'm past the point of getting too worked up about them. Instead of working on a future map I spent all of today trying to figure out some new software that might make some of my map efforts a lot better.

The process I was using was a bit laborious and certain parts of my maps I wasn't happy with. This new software is not only overkill, but one of those things you practically need a year's worth of college coursework to understand. At best I'd only be scratching the surface of what this thing can do and I think it took me four or five hours just to figure out how to consistently get the data I put into the program back out in a format I could use.

The bad news is that I can't rely on this software to do my entire map. The good news is that the two most difficult & largest time-suck parts of my map can be done in a fraction of the time it has been taking before, with much better results.

This is the map I made today, which is the same area as Free Map060:

This is a relatively "quick" map which I'm not happy with at all. The good thing is though that this map's layers were easy to create and instead of taking up a lot of time getting the base layers I can spend more time tweaking and finessing what I have here while still adding the missing elements like I had been doing all along.

When I'm working on very large scale maps, being able to skip hours and hours of layer cleanup with my old methodology will be a huge boon. I should be able to create a large map and then zoom in to a smaller section much more easily.