Free GM Resource: World Anvil

I know I'm a couple days late here, but this week's Free GM Resource is something one of my GMs uses and I thought that others could find some good use out of it.

World Anvil is a website where the GM can essentially....you know, I should just use their own words: "World Anvil is a worldbuilding tool for Authors, Storytellers and worldbuilding lovers. It's an online set of tools specifically designed for  Bloggerworldbuilding. It will allow you to organise your world, search through everything and anything with ease, present it publicly and get feedback from a community of worldbuilders around the globe."

I did some of this once with Blogger, but it was a lot of work. If you actually share world-building chores you'll probably want to upgrade to a paid membership, but there is a feature-packed free version.

Google is Killing G+ but Frugal GM is not Going Anywhere

Courtesy of James V. West

If you haven't heard, Google's G+ is going away because they don't wish to support it anymore. Invariably this means that some of the comments on Frugal GM posts will disappear, if theiy haven't already.

Some bloggers, probably with a lot of activity stemming from G+ participation, aren't happy and I've heard more than one state they were going to move away from Blogger. While other platforms like Wordpress can offer a lot of functionality if you have a good host, I highly doubt that I'll be migrating away from Blogger anytime soon. In the future I may add an additional site specifically for product sales, but posts shouldn't be going anywhere.

Why.....you might ask....because Blogger is pretty damned simple and solid. My friends with Wordpress sites might have awesome pages with some cool features, but they have to occasionally deal with their site going down because of some new plugin or mandatory Wordpress upgrade. The only time I've had problems here is when I've tried to screw around with the coding for this site (which is kind of unique).

Commenting still works here and if I need to do something different I'll make sure to give everyone a heads' up.

Fat Dragon Games Has a Kickstarter You Should Check Out

As a service to any one of my 12 regular readers that didn't already know, Fat Dragon Games is in the middle of another promising Kickstarter, this time for DRAGONLOCK™ 3D Printable Miniatures.

I'll admit I'm borderline fanboy for FDG (they are on the +12 Links of Helpfulness page for a reason), but why wouldn't I be? FDG's products are right up the Frugal GM alley. Inexpensive & light (mostly terrain), the stuff they put out has always been pretty awesome......and there is absolutely no reason to think these .stl files will be any different.

One of the cool things that Fat Dragon Games does with their Kickstarters is that the don't do a metric butt-ton of complicated levels with a bazillion add-ons that require a pen & paper, an abacus, and help from your 10th grade algebra teacher to figure out. There are no "special" limited deals for early adopters or people who were just fortunate enough to come along at the right time.

.....but maybe you should just check this out for yourself.

Free GM Resource: The Black Isle Gazetter

This week's Free GM Resource is a freebie from the about to die Tenkar's Tavern G+ Community. In case you didn't know, Google is killing the G+ platform, which is the reason the community would be "dying".

I personally doubt these folks are going away....they just won't be using G+ anymore.

The Black Isle Gazetter is a 442 page crowd-sourced campaign setting. Sorry folks, but that is about as much as I can say about it right now. If you want the setting and a map, you cant post find the Dropbox link from this pertinent post over at Tenkar's Tavern. Sure I could post it here, but I've never been a fan of direct-linking someone else's work.

I have downloaded the file and map, but haven't looked at them so I'm not able to speak as to the quality. Why? Well, I'm treating myself to a Lulu-printed copy and I want reading the softcover to be my 1st time reading the material. There is a link to the Lulu copy and even a coupon code over at that Tenkar's Tavern post.

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