Free Computer RPG Game (Limited Time Offer)

Normally I don't post twice in relatively quick succession, but when a cool, limited-time freebie pops up.....time for a post.

Neverwinter Nights (Diamond Edition) is FREE for the next day and a half (or so) over at GOG.com

You have to have an account (no big whoop) and it is free for the taking. I've loved every D&D computer game I've played so this is a no-brainer for me.

I'm downloading it now....

December's Free/PWYW d30 Table is now Available!

Another month, another d30 table.

The month I've put together an Alternate Familiar Generator. What's so alternate about it you ask?

Well, this table comes complete with a new Find Familiar spell, should your RPG not have that spell, or as a variant if it does. This version has 25 different animal spirits that can be called to service, the ability to call in several spirits and choose one to take physical form to become the magic-user's familiar.

Oh....and each familiar has some possibly cool strengths and weaknesses. You roll your dice and takes your chances.....

This table is now up at DriveThruRPG and you can click on either graphic in this post to go to the product's page, or use this link. My patrons over at Patreon get the tables when I first create them, which is usually a couple months ahead of their release. Right now this is the last d30 table in my Patreon "buffer" so I'll have to make some more tables this month.

Free GM Resource: The Craft Planner

OK guys, this one might seem a little odd for a Free GM Resource, but I think it could help a lot of folks out.

A month or two ago I bought-in on a Kickstarter for the Cräft Planner from the folks over at Cobbery. Basically this planner is aimed not at just keeping your appointments and such, but helping you work on specific projects. Brainstorming, breaking down the big tasks into smaller achievable goals, etc.

Now I don't know about you, but I've had several "big" projects "planned", but have been going nowhere. I thought a little more organization.....plan the fight versus fighting the plan, as it were, would be helpful.

The Kickstarter didn't fund, so no planner for me......or so I thought. Cobbery is still selling the Cräft Planner, but you can get a free digital copy for the cost of an email address (if that is an issue you can easily bypass the address by going here.)*

I thought this might be a good tool for some GMs to use in planning some of their RPG projects. I plan on printing me up a copy to put to good use and if I like it, pick up the nice copy from Cobbery.





*Normally I wouldn't suggest jumping right to the download, but I figure that is better than giving a junk email address and the goal is to introduce folks to the Cräft Planner in the first place.

Frugal GM Review: Grimtooth's Traps Ate!

This morning I let nostalgia get the better part of me and I sunk $4.95 into the digital download of Grimtooth's Traps Ate!, which is normally $14.95. As a budding GM I adored Grimtooth's Traps and I still do enjoy reading up on the various traps.

I'm sure that by now you've seen the whopping two stars I gave  Grimtooth's Traps Ate! and wonder why I rated it so.

First off, the cover you see in the lead-in graphic and on the products DriveThruRPG page is not part of the PDF download! Seriously? The PDF starts on the title page and ends on a page of Flying Buffalo ads.

Second, and a big thing for me, this PDF isn't "digitally redone by the artist". It is clearly just a scan of a printed book, albeit cleaned up some. If I wanted a scanned copy of this book I'm sure a little sleuthing could have gotten me a torrented copy or three. Now I tend to stay away from those sorts of books if the product is available legitimately. Since it is just a scanned document I cannot use the search function to locate anything in particular.

Speaking of searching, while this PDF is bookmarked, the bookmarking is useless. Each bookmark is noted as "TrapsAte page ##" if I wanted to just go to a specific page number, it would be easier to just use the toolbar and type in the page I want to see.

Of course, the PDF is secured so I cannot just go through and remove the crappy bookmarks and add my own.

Overall I did enjoy reading through the 100 traps in  Grimtooth's Traps Ate!, but the PDF's production quality leaves much to be desired. I really don't think this download is worth $14.95, but at $4.95 it is OK.

Free GM Resource: Free 3d Printer Files from Rocket Pig Games

OK folks, this week's Free GM Resource is a bit convoluted and not appropriate for everyone (when has a resource ever been for everyone?), but bear with me and hopefully it'll all work out.

Rocket Pig Games is nearing the end of their Kickstarter campaign for their Tilescape Dungeons, which is even more 3D printer terrain. If you've been considering getting a 3D printer you might want to check out the Kickstarter, which ends on November 29th.

There is the almost-requisite Kickstarter campaign video that lets you look at some of the finished prints, but I really don't think that video really shows them in that great of a light. My assumption is that they needed to show "finished" product as it would look out of your 3D printer....not actually "finished" models all painted up. Good thing that Rocket Pig Games gave a set over to a previous Free GM Resource of Drunkens & Dragons:


So at this point you might be wondering, "Where is the GM Freebie?!"

If you head over to Rocket Pig Games's publisher page on DriveThruRPG you'll see a bunch of 3d printer models for sale, and over 20 free models. Basically Rocket Pig Games is pushing out one free model a day for the duration of the Kickstarter campaign.

With only a week to go, you might want to check out the free models and see if the Kickstarter is for you.

Frugal GM Review: The Item Hack

This week's Frugal GM Review is on The Item Hack from Tricky Troll Games. The Item Hack is a collection of magic items for use with the Black Hack.

Actually, the magic items can easily be used with just about any Fantasy RPG. There are a few rules-bits here and there, but nothing really important enough to get in the way of tweaking things.

This watermarked PDF is 9 pages and comes in at a hefty 5.08 MB, which seems awful heavy for an A4 sized fully black & white document with roughly one small piece if art per page. It looks like most of the artwork is greyscale and the document was actually distilled as a full-color document, which explains the size and the look of some of the art. The contents of The PDF is secured and doesn't have any bookmarks, which I think is needed for a collection of 80+ magic items.

Right off the bat I liked the content of this download, but the design and layout choices make this a bit more difficult to use than I'd like. First is the size, which I already mentioned, but the font choice for this document works for normal text, but doesn't work for the three tables or the magic item titles. There are two main tables, one for Uncommon Items and one for Rare Items. Each of these tables takes up on full column of space and then the document goes into an alphabetical sorting of the magic items. This makes perfect sense, but there is no space between paragraphs on the magic item listings and the name of each item is a barely-larger font than the item descriptions. This makes the majority of the document visually difficult to read, which further compounds the need for some bookmarking. The layout of the tables is also a bit visually..."off". I think using an additional font or changing to a bold for item names and adding a blank line between items would have made a huge difference.

Personally I wouldn't have minded an extra page or two to account for this space and a full title page wouldn't have hurt either. The cover, shown in the intro-graphic above is white on a black text which looks good on screen, but isn't something I'd want to print out. Some basic tweaks could have made this download something I could use electronically or have printed out.

Still, the magic items are pretty cool. There are a few I'd tweak, but that is to be expected. For the price of a buck I still think that The Item Hack is a worthwhile download.

A Long, but Worthwhile, Interview from the Dorks of Yore

I thought that some of my 12 regular readers might get a kick out of the Dorks of Yore YouTube Channel, specifically the rather long 2 hour interview with Tim Kask.

You can see the interview here.....or watch the video below.

Last summer I lucked out and got to play in one of Tim Kask's games at NorthTexas RPG. I managed to survive the game and got my PC Sheet signed with an "I survived" by the man himself. It was an enjoyable game peppered with some talk of the olden days.

 Growing up I had trouble trying to game and getting to hear stories from those days of the games/systems/companies I wished to play with.....

Free GM Resource: Abulafia Wiki (RPG Generators)

I don't know quite what happened to yesterday's scheduled post, but here is this week's Free GM Resource....

Abulafia is an...interesting random table generator in that everything is set up as a special Wiki page. You can navigate to the tables you want and just refresh the page to reset the tables and get new results.

While I find it a bit clunkier than dedicated table generators, the fact that it is basically a web page means you can use any browser to get some results. The wiki's built-in search feature is quite helpful as well.

Take Abulafia for a spin for yourself.