Free Map #73: A Large Mountain Lake

Squeeking in a free map before the end of the month. Some of you might know I have a retail job, so this time of year is a bit hard on trying to maintain regular posts.

This map is of a large, mountain lake. The original map created for my Patrons is sized A0, while the free map has been scaled back to a much more manageable A4 sized.

The free map has the same layers as the Patron map, one for adding contours, and another to add a suggested scale.

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

Free GM Resource: TabletopMusic.com

I love being able to bring in some elements that can help kick my home game up a notch. One relatively easy way of doing this is by introducing sound effects into your game, and the easiest way of doing that is to just use some good background music.

There are some CDs (Midnight Syndicate anyone?) available, but I've always liked music that was a little more customized. I've featured some sound track resources before and here is another one.

TabletopMusic.com is an online music player that you can check out for free, but it features a music randomizer. Great news is you can also register for free and establish a playlist.

If you like the music you can always sign up on TabletopMusic's Patreon. The reward levels on Patreon start at a $1 a month. Not free like the online player, but hey, 50¢ a track is damned cheap! Right now there are about 38 tracks, give or take, and this Patreon is a new endeavor, so you could get in on the ground floor.

You really should check out TabletopMusic.com

Free GM Resource: Quassi's Bell Tower YouTube Channel

You'd think with all of the crafting video I've been putting up lately that I've been waist-deep in my own crafting projects...but not so much. With the holidays coming up, work, and working way too slowly on my game room, I've made 0% progress on the tabletop crafting.*

As you can undoubtedly tell, this week's Free GM Resource is another Crafting YouTube channel: Quassi's Bell Tower.

The channel is about a year old at this point and while there aren't a ton of videos, the content is stuff I really hadn't seen elsewhere. What I really like, though, more than anything is the ability to see the crafting process through yet another set of eyes. While there are a lot of guys making similar(ish) props and tiles, being able to see how different people approach a build is quite useful. Ultimately when I/you start crafting we'll have to develop our own styles, but being able to pick up tips and approaches is really beneficial.

Check out Quassi's Bell Tower YouTube Channel.








*About a month ago I did actually build my own hot wire foam cutter station, but despite my best efforts I'm not all that happy with the end results. Great for rough cuts though and it was a fun exercise since almost all of it was made from bits and bobs from a reclaimed building materials place.

Free Monster Ecology: The Carnivorous Caterpillar

So yesterday I published what I think was a bit of an odd Tweak & Toss, because it seems a bit....well sometimes our real-life adventures don't quite add up or seem to be what we expect....and I'll leave it at that.

In conjunction with The Eaters of the Dead Tweak & Toss I did a write-up for a rather benign creature, just something interesting to inhabit a little corner of your game world.

The Ecology of the Carnivorous Caterpillar is available for free off of DriveThruRPG and also on my Patreon page. Clicking on either graphic or using this link will take you to DTRPG, while this is the Patreon link.

New Frugal GM Tweak & Toss: Eaters of the Dead

With all of the unexpected curves that life like to throw at, well everyone, it has been far too long since I've out out a Tweak & Toss OSR Adventure Seed.

FGM044a: Eaters of the Dead is a short little adventure seed that has the party trying to investigate something that the villagers cannot. It could be a rather trivial thing, or not....just depends on how the GM wants to take things.

This download drops on Tuesaday, November 7th and I'm writing this post in advance, so if there are any problems it might take me a couple of hours to figure it out, but figure it out I will.

These kind of items hit my Patreon page earlier than they get released on DriveThruRPG. Patrons also have access to better/larger maps used for my Tweak & Tosses....

Like usual, you can click on either graphic in this post or use this link to go to the appropriate download page.

Free GM Resource: Reddit D&D Maps Page

As far as I can tell I'm not re-hashing this Free GM Resource, which is odd because I have a graphic that I evidently created last year, but I cannot find the post...

Anyway, I was surprised to find a Reddit D&D Maps page. Now I'm not a big Reddit fanboy and have only popped on once or twice in the last, well ever actually, so while this might be old hat for some of my readers, I'm willing to bet that it is news for plenty more.

I'm a big fan of the search function which you can limit to the D&D maps page....

Free Map #72: Another Lake!

I posted another freebie map on my Patreon page and pretty much forgot to post it yesterday.

For someone who doesn't swim (much) and really doesn't fish or boat I have to say I love the water. The home I'm living in was chosen mostly because the back of my property line is the center-line of a year-round creek (quite uncommon here).

When I'm making maps I start with an interesting water feature and work backwards from there. I had a particular area in mind for a Tweak & Toss adventure seed and I got about 1/2 way through making the map when I realized that I really wasn't going to be able to add the features I wanted, so I scrapped that map and started over again. On these style of maps I'd rather have it turn out the way I want even if it takes a fair bit of time.

Anyway, this map was close enough to a specific paper size that I went ahead and cropped it to an inch under tabloid size so the finished map would have a 1/2" border all around. This map is more than just a lake, it is a small village by a lake. Some of the village is in the marshy wetlands around the lake and there is just one road in/out of town. Another road just winds up to a center-point of the lake.

My Patrons' map is the same size but a better resolution (higher PDF production settings) and is layered, so certain features can be toggled off if desired. As a last-minute thing I reduced the resolution of my base file from 300 DPI to 100 DPI, but I tripled the size and saved it as a .PNG file so the GM could slice it up as desired for a VTT.

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

Free GM Resource: FastStone Photo Resizer

This week's Free GM Resource (I am aware I missed last week) is another great tool that has absolutely NOTHING to do with gaming, but has been quite useful for me in game prep.

FastStone Photo Resizer is a free program that doesn't have any adware/spyware/limited features for use.

Yes, on the surface this program resizes photos....and it would be worthwhile if that is all that it did. Why would a GM need to resize "photos"....or more appropriately graphics? Well if you are running a Virtual Table Top (VTT) game, FastStone Photo Resizer can take all of your 300 DPI graphics and reduce them to something more appropriate, like 100DPI.

Now the cool thing about this program.....well, there are quite a few cool things, but as far as resizing goes, you create an input list of files to tweak. This means you don't have to have all the original files in one directory. You can not only resize your graphics, but you can rename them AND change the file types (.JPG to .PNG, etc). You can have the new graphics be dumped into a folder of your choosing and/or have the old files over-written (which I wouldn't recommend).

You can also use FastStone Photo Resizer to simply rename a batch of files, which is quite useful as well. What I like to do is get everything I need for one encounter together in one place, not a folder, but an input list, tweak as needed, and then have the encounter in a new folder with appropriate names.

FastStone Photo Resizer is really worth a download!