Just a Little Info on the State of The Blog (and General Frugal GM "Stuff")

Just wanted to let my 12 readers know what's been going on and where I'm at now with regards to several RPG efforts, including this blog.....thankfully it's good news.

I wasn't shy about posting that I was leaving Boise, ID for a position in Oklahoma. A good, I'd dare to say great, job opportunity came up and I had less than a month to move out, sell the house, and move me, two cats, and a dog the 1400 miles and change. I'd lived in Boise...in one house, since 2002, so I had a lot of crap...er belongings to go through, deal with, whatever.

Anyway, I get down here, move into a house and show up for my 1st day on the job only to be told I don't have a job to go to. There was an issue with the government contract the job was for, namely that a different company had been awarded the contract! I held fast here for a couple weeks before I was actually allowed to start work, but things were really tenuous and most everything just seemed on hold for a couple of months until the contract was hammered out. Basically a lot of drama well above my paygrade and probably par for the course, but what the hell do I know? The company taking over the contract extended me a worthwhile offer and I'm signed on and it should be a relatively seamless transition, at least for me. I fully expected last month to be squared away with the whole work thing, but this only came together last week.

That's great, but why should you care?

Since May I've been operating off of a laptop and a backup drive while pretty much living out of my suitcase and a few opened boxes. Now that I know I have a job when the "other guys" take over I can actually set up my new office and get back to this blog and a handful of other gaming projects that had to be sidelined. The joys of being able to use a real keyboard, my scanners, and even a proper desk!

Good times ahead if I have anything to say about it!
-Christopher

Free GM Resource: RPG Market Generator

This week's Free GM Resource is an online market generator called, simple enough, RPG Market Generator. It is easy to use and if you set up an account you can generate the shops of a simple town and edit the contents of the shops.

You can really only edit the shop items themselves and add items for the random items to pull from. There are some additional fields generated, like shop names and a bit about the shopkeep, but you cannot tweak that at this time.

Being able to save the towns/shops/items is a nice touch. The RPG Market Generator isn't going to replace your own tables made in the like of TableSmith or Inspiration Pad, but it might be something you can use in a pinch.

Free GM Resource: Duncan "Shadow" Louca (Artist Website)

I tend to drift towards small arcs or themes when it comes down to finding/selecting Free GM Resources. Lately it has been 3d printing because there are so many cool models out there and so little time....

...speaking of time, there wasn't a Free GM Resource last week so I'm tossing out two this week...

Giants, as in plural!

Duncan "Shadow" Louca is a 3d sculptor who has some amazing sculpts....I highly suggest checking out his Instagram and maybe even tossing a few bucks his way on Patreon. While the actual freebie is right off of his website, you do have to do a little work for it.....by giving up your email address to sign up for a newsletter. A small price to pay to be able to get a free model of a couple of giants (the current freebie for the newsletter). I have a feeling there might be some differences depending on your web browser, but when I went to the site I immediately got a pop-up offering the email/file exchange. If that doesn't happen for you there should be a little side-notice that reads "Free Offer!"

Seriously though...check out his Instagram because a lot of the pictures there are of actual prints. The prints I was looking at were made on a DLP printer, so don't expect that level of quality on a FDM printer, but the better the sculpt, obviously the better the print.

Free GM Resource: DungeonPrint Studios

This week's Free GM Resource is something that is pretty cool....providing you use a 3d printer to make dungeon tiles and that you use Fat Dragon Games 3d models (which you should...if you do 3d print).

DungeonPrint Studio is an online service that lets you set up a map of a 3d model (lay out tiles of 3d .stl files you own) and then save/print the map and generate a list of which files, and how many, you need to print.

If you've ever seen a 3d diorama you've undoubtedly noticed that it is made up of a bunch of smaller tiles that are connected to each other. Well, when you have hundreds of these files in your collection.....which you will have soon after starting this hobby, trust me, knowing which tiles you need for a project can be a bit of a PITA. Sure you could just print a bunch of blank tiles and pull what you need, but to do that you'll need a LOT of tiles printed that you might never use. Sure, the tiles are relatively cheap, but they take some time and effort to create so why waste those resources if you don't need to?

Here is a sample map I made up real quick:

Click to make larger

Not perfect, and being able to rotate the build map shows me I need to clean up a few sections, but whatever....it's just a test model. This map generated a 7 page build list, but I'll just share a quick shot of the 1st page and one of the build pages:

DungeonPrint Studios is a useful tool for GM's that use 3d printed terrain!

Free GM Resource: Creation and Depiction of Fantasy Cities

This week's Free GM Resource is a neat little "guidebook" for creating Fantasy Cities for your game world. It's not long at 19 pages, but there is a lot of good content.

This guide was written by Ravi Shankar, a community leader over at the Cartographer's Guild (which I'm certain has been listed as a resource before). You can find links to the guide here at the Cartographer's Guild. It is available for online viewing, but I recommend just downloading the PDF.

Since it's only 19 pages, some of which are not really filled with content, it isn't going to be much more than a big-picture type of guide, but it does that 10K' view well and...well...the price is right. I think it is well worth the read if for no other reason than to help a GM get his/her head a bit straight before settling down for a mapping session. It doesn't really make sense that just because you are creating a fantasy world that your cities don't make much real-world sense, and this book can help with that.

Free GM Resource: Dwarf Fortress

This week's Free GM Resource is a bit of twofer again....but not really...maybe more of a singular resource with a couple of applications (pun intended).

Dwarf Fortress is a free game that has been around a while and by the accounts I've heard about, quite a detailed game. Now first off you just have the basic enjoyment you can get out of any game, but evidently Dwarf Fortress makes some rather detailed randomized game maps that you could re-purpose for your table-top RPG.

Here's a blog post specifically about using Dwarf Fortress to make RPG maps.

Sweet Paper Terrain Sale You Need to Check Out!

Special Note: I'll be posting a Free GM Resource later this week

I can only speculate that Tom Tullis, from Fat Dragon Games, went a little overboard on GenCon expenses (either that or "expenses"...like bail) because FDG is offering a too-good-to-be-true sale of all of their PDF terrain.

2018 Paper Mega Bundle for no more than $39.99!

To say this is a good deal is a bit of an understatement because the original price on all this stuff is over $300! If that isn't enough to make you stop by DTRPG, the sale already takes into account stuff you're already purchased, hence the "no more than $39.99"!

Wow.....with the money you save you could also purchase a decent color printer and just go to town!

Free GM Resource: Static Grass Applicator (V2) Plans/Build

My house is still way too packed and I'm in training at my new job, so there's a reason the Frugal GM is behind the curve with posts. My new game room/office is still a work in progress, but I hope to at least have the new desk squared away this weekend. Then I can stop trying to do everything off of my laptop and backup drive.

Of course my 12 readers probably don't care about that...(tough, I'm sure I'll post pics of game room progress because I can!)...they want the freebies.

This week's Free GM Resource is just some information, albeit some (I think) cool information: how to build a static grass applicator. I've seen some DIY static grass applicators a couple of times now and this one is the most DIYest and best finished result that I've seen yet. A lot of GMs make their own terrain, or paint their own miniatures, or more than likely try to make/do these things but.....

Flocking terrain and mini bases really makes home game table efforts look more polished and/or professional. For years my go-to was to just lay down some glue and sprinkle the grass on and call it good. Well, "good" might not be the best adjective, but it beats having to purchase little grass tufts.

B.C.R. Model Scenery Made Easy is a website devoted to model scenery (duh), but in my experience that usually means model trains. This site is well worth poking around, but I'm specifically highlighting the Static Grass Applicator Version 2. The build video is well-made and there are some additional videos highlighting using the applicator.