Free GM Resource: Tomb of 3D Printed Horrors YouTube Channel

I'm not sure how many of my 12 regular readers are into 3d printing, but I'm trying to get spun up myself.....

There is a decent investment up-front and 3d printing isn't a quick process, so it doesn't naturally fit in to the idea of frugality as one would expect to find here. I had about 300 words written expressing why I want 3d printed tiles, but in the end it's really just another set of terrain for my table to work alongside everything else. I'm not planning on forgoing flat sheet terrain, cardboard models, foam core buildings, or even a virtual table-top. It's all good and I want to use it all.....

If you are like me and want to get into 3d printing terrain, then you should check out Tom Tullis' YouTube page Tomb of 3D Printed Horrors. This channel isn't about printing terrain per se, but more about setting up and tweaking your printer. While he does focus on one particular model, there are a lot of take-aways that can be applied to whatever model you choose. There is also a Facebook group (a Free GM resource twofer!) more for fans/builders of Fat Dragon Games specific terrain, but it is a great source for information in general and some good specifics for settings and slicers (if you don't know what a slicer is, then start with the YouTube channel).

This is a new channel and as of the time of this posting there are 55 videos full of great info.

Upcoming Kickstarter You Need to Know About

Just a head's up that Fat Dragon Games is going to have a Kickstarter for their upcoming line of miniatures that starts on February 5th.

Now I'll freely admit to being a bit of a fanboy when it comes to FDG, but Tom Tullis (the head honcho) has always been a stand-up guy and I've yet to see his efforts fall short of stellar. If you're into 3d printers for gaming in pretty much any way, shape, or form you really need to check out his Youtube channel.....which is going to be this week's Free GM Resource.

You  might also want to signup for the Dragonlock & Dragonbite 3D Printer Gaming Terrain Facebook group....so yeah, that'll be a bit of a twofer.

Free GM Resource: Google Slides

This week's (I know I haven't been too consistent lately) Free GM Resource is a bit unexpected, at least to me. I had never even heard of Google Slides until this afternoon.

With Google Slides you basically have a free way of sharing a screen. Essentially your table can collaborate within the slide(s). You set up a background, add tokens (which can be manipulated by those you share the presentation with) and show the presentation.

Combined with a projector or TV, you can easily just use this as a digital map. Forget the screen sharing and moving tokens...or that's what I would probably do.

I did find a YouTube video with a quick overview.

Happy New Year Everyone!

I hope everyone had a safe and sound holiday, preferably with some gaming!

While I am a big HackMaster & OSR fan my next game will probably be D&D 5th edition because a friend's teenage daughter wants to play and her parents are not only encouraging it, but willing to make it a family game.

I had some less-than-stellar D&D experiences with 3.5, but I'm more than willing to give DMing 5th edition for my buddy's daughter. I so remember wanting to play in middle & high school and for the most part I just couldn't. I don't think there was a game store within 100 miles, not that I had much transportation until my Junior year anyway. I'm so going to run a game or fifty for them...

I've picked up the PHB, DMG, Monster Manual, and the DM Screen so far (and enough dice that each player gets a set.....they aren't using my Gamescience dice!) I'm still in the reading/learning phase, but I'll get there.

Since I figured we start with a character creation session I've been looking for DM aides and came across this on reddit and thought I should share:

Click to embiggen

Free GM Resource: OSR PC Sheets over at En World

This week's Free GM Resource is a collection of OSR PC Sheets from (hosted by) En World.

I've featured PC sheets before...a couple of times actually:
      Hand-Drawn OSR Sheets
      Mad Irishman's Sheets
      Some Sheet I Made (link to the DTRPG site)

There is a post about my HackMaster Sheet, but the post is specifically about a paid version, so I linked the free/PWYW version.

I still see some awesome sheets here and there, but they are almost always one-offs, which is why I'm linking to this collection over at En World.

Free GM Resource: Game Music Radio

This week's Free GM Resource isn't for everybody.....but I could say that for just about anything I post here.

Game Music Radio (or more appropriately Video Game Music Radio) is an interesting web-based music player featuring video game music.

The player is skinnable.....the Metal Gear skin is what I used for the graphic to the left, and the whole thing works a little different than a lot of web-based streaming sites. The site also uses a 100 song playlist to reduce song fatigue. Also there are no commercial and limited station identification breaks.

Again, not for everybody, but I could see Game Music Radio working for some table-top RPGs and maybe even to play as a replacement for some of my own video game sessions.

Free GM Resource: 2nd Edition AD&D Character Generator

Here's a pretty cool Excel-based 2nd Edition (AD&D) Character Generator, courtesy of the Reddit  r/Dnd forum. This Chargen works with LibreOffice but the real selling point is that it incorporates far more resources than you'd normally see from this sort of thing.

In addition to the PHB and DMG, this Chargen includes info from (maybe all?) the Complete series of 2nd Edition books and the Player's Options Skills & Powers book.

The current release is version 4.1 and can be located here.

No Free GM Reference This Week....Yet

I know my...."participation" here as the Frugal GM has been a bit more sporadic than I have anticipated. Between training up at the new job and more stupid health problems (mostly stupid things like an emergency root canal and fallout from that....like pain meds) too much has been up in the air and I was really hoping that this week's Free GM Resource would be the beginning of a great restart.....because it was an awesome resource...

.....a too good to be true resource....

...which it is, or so I think it is. I found a link to an interesting collection of old RPG material and when I was doing the pre-requisite poking around I found what most definitely WAS NOT new material, stuff I had just paid for a month ago and even more stuff I know is still for sale and should be for sale instead of some type of of huge info dump.

So I cannot in good faith recommend a site that is sharing stuff for free that shouldn't be free.....so I'll have to find something else later in the week to share.