Another Shill Post For The Man!

I know I've already posted about the current Fat Dragon Games Kickstarter, but today the campaign enters into its final 24 hours.

Now I'm not normally a big shill for Kickstarter because I've been burned before, but FDG has consistently (like 110%) fulfilled their obligations, often before the established release dates (hence the 110%) and the product has always been well worth the money, in my opinion.

For example, the current campaign has three simple tiers, bonus items, and a bunch of stretch goals. FDG doesn't screw around with expensive "limited tier" pledge levels or reward those already on the inside track for gobbling up the good tiers.

You want the product, you got it. The more the merrier, which really leads to the reason I'm "shilling for the man": I want the stretch goals....ALL the stretch goals.

I realize at this point of the post I hadn't bothered to even explain WHAT this Kickstarter is....this FDG Kickstarter is for .stl files for those of us that have access to 3D Printers. Who doesn't want affordable minis?

So check out the Kickstarter, see if it's good for you, and pledge (or not). Seriously though, if you do have a 3D Printer you should also check out the add-on pledges. Compare the price available for this Kickstarter with the price over at DriveThruRPG.

The Free GM Resource will be posted later this week....AFTER the Kickstarter Campaign ends.....

Free GM Resource: Some Background Prelude to a History Lesson (Lesson not Included)

Ok, so this week...well specifically today, I'm phoning it in. It's the final day of a three-day weekend and I haven't gotten nearly as much done as I wanted to. I'm hoping I can free up some time for a new project, but until I get some other things off my plate, it isn't going to happen.

So what happens when the Frugal GM phones it in instead of just skipping a week or three?

A bad movie and a bit of a history lesson.......

If you were a satanistic hopeful like I was in the late 70's or early 80's, then the worst thing that could happen is that your parents happened to watch Mazes & Monsters....probably at the behest of an overly zealous church or BADD, also known as Bothered About Dungeon's & Dragons (link to the Wikipedia entry on BADD's founder).

OK...for the record I was never a "satanisitc hopeful", but that's what BADD and some churchfolk pretty much chalked AD&D players as. This movie was some powerful and misguided propaganda from back in the day. Personally I've never seen it, well before now.....

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.