Free GM Resource: Landvaettr's Lair

I was doing my normal thing, link-hopping, checking out YouTube and I came across another YouTube channel that I think is worth mentioning.

Landvaettr's Lair "only" has seventeen crafting videos, but they are good videos and the end results? Awesome!

To be fair it looks like those end results entail a lot of work, but with those kinds of results, I'd be willing to put in the work.....and hopefully will.

Here are the title screens for four of the videos.....see for yourself if this level of quality is worth checking out (the pics are :

Free GM Resource: GM Friend

This week's Free GM Resource is a simple online hex-mapping tool called GM Friend.

It isn't a huge, feature-rich hex map maker, but it is quick and easy enough to use. I particularly like the random map maker. Truth be told this is a bit of a twofer because there is also a dungeon maker, but it's more of a note manager for a dungeon map.....truth be told I barely checked it out because I was playing with the map maker.

GM Friend is worth checking out.....especially if your do hex crawls.

Free GM Resource: Wizardawn

This week's Free GM Resource is something I almost decided to save until Christmas time, but then I remembered Fall just started, so screw making folks wait a few months.

Wizardawn is a pretty cool site from the folks over at & Magazine and it features a metric crap-ton of freebies spread out all over the place.

I could waste many paragraphs highlighting the available resources, but really you should just head over, bookmark it, and check it out for yourself. Seriously....go check Wizardawn out now!

Free GM Resource: VGMaps

I like it when I find a Free GM Resource that is a little off of the beaten path, like this little gem.

VGMAPS.com is essentially a collection of screen shot maps of various games. On a cursory glance there doesn't seem to be a lot of value in these maps, but if you squint your eyes and tilt your head just right you might see what I see.

Depending on the game you choose you might have the makings of a simple map layout for an adventure. I think that's a bit of a long shot, but I have used game maps before to good effect.

This time around I was thinking more along the lines of taking a decent map for use with a Virtual Table Top (VTT) game. The usual thing to do is to simply show a top-down view, but with some of these maps you could go isometric or even just a side view. One quick example I grabbed was from a Castlevania. Tweak a bit in Photoshop and there you go, one side-view castle map. This pic is a down scaled/sampled view:


You might want to poke around VGMAPS.com and see if anything piques your interest...

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!