DTRPG Deal of the Day Worth Checking Out: Old-School Essentials Player's Rules Tome

This one almost slipped by me, but I thought it was worthwhile to share, so here I am....

For the next 13 hours or so the Old School Essentials Player's Rules Tome is on sale for $5. That's half off and for over 100 pages of content.....totally worth it.

You'll have to just take my word on this with a grain of salt because technically I haven't read this particular tome. I picked up the all-in-one Rules Tome, which contains the info from the Player's Rules Tome.

Anyway I have been enjoying Old-School Essentials quite a bit and so far I dare say it's my favorite BX flavor yet. The cool thing, aside from the the sale itself is that if you're on the fence you can check out the art-free light/free/sample edition of this product here.

Free GM Resource: Real Terrain Hobbies Youtube Channel

It's been a while since I've posted a YouTube channel as a Free GM Resource and since I'm wary of over-doing this as a whole, it might be a while before I post another one......

...that and as more of these channels grab my attention, the bar for even being considered for inclusion (I hope) goes up significantly. Basically as I see more "stuff" I usually just end up seeing more of the same stuff......and I don't know about you, but I'd rather see newer tips, techniques, and builds.

Real Terrain Hobbies came onto my radar when the channel was building a HUGE gaming diorama. Huge might be an understatement as this thing was something like 6'x4'x3' castle build with a ton of resin pieces that took two men about a week to paint and assemble. It's a glorious thing and I learned a thing or two I hope to be able to use in some of my future builds.

This is the 1st video in the playlist for the big build. There are five videos total.....I particularly liked the use of pigments and some of the final touches with plants in the last video. 

Free GM Resource: Freesound

This week's Free GM Resource is going to require a little bit of work from the enterprising GM, but what you get out of it should be directly proportional to what you put into it.

Freesound is a really cool online depository of assorted audio clips. Sounds simple & stupid....until you actually go and check out the clips. Lots of great mood "music" to be found there. Some are created  by piecing together different sounds and a lot are just straight up recordings.

I've enjoyed just hunting around and previewing sounds, but I need to go back, make an account, and start hunting for background loops and sound effects. In the first few minutes I found several sounds I wish I had available for earlier games.......

In Case You're Interested, I'm Guest Posting Over at Tenkar's Tavern

This is actually more of a admin post than anything, but I thought I should let my 12, er 13 regular readers know that I've been posting over at Tenkar's Tavern lately, and will be doing so on a regular basis from here on out.

Erik had to have some surgery and his something like 7 year blogging streak was going to be broken, so I decided to step up and make a few guest posts. Allegedly the posts were well received and Erik asked me to do a weekly post.

I agreed because I get to post a bit more casually about gaming stuff that isn't the kind of thing I would post about here since this is basically a themed blog.

If you're interested, feel free to pop on over to Tenkar's Tavern.....I'll be posting there on Sundays.

Free GM Resource: HeroQuest Ye Olde Inn

I was watching some YouTube this weekend and came across some history/documentary concerning D&D and I stuck around a bit and watched some other video (same channel) about HeroQuest. Now I've never played HeroQuest, always wanted to, but never had.

I had a chance to pick up a copy at Half-Priced Books, but I was just coming back from a con and it was either this or some other purchases, including an early copy of Dungeon.....I clearly went with the latter.

Anyway this HeroQuest video mentioned there were some online resources for finding all the various adventures that have been released for this Out of Print (OOP) game.

A quick Google search later and I found Ye Olde Inn. Holy cow....pretty much everything you could need for the OOP game can be found there. I was surprised by just how much is available there.....including a rather active forum!

I've barely scratched the surface on this is resource...now to just find another physical copy.

Free GM Resource: NVIDIA Ansel Plug-In

Ok, this week's Free GM Resource is really limited, definitely only useful for very specific people, but for those that "qualify"....it could be pretty damned cool.

I have what feels like a bazillion computers at my home. Between hoarding, projects, and micro-computers I'm certain I have at least 20 different computers, but only a couple (maybe even only one) with a NVIDIA graphics card.

If you happen to have a NVIDIA card and you use that computer to play computer games, which you probably do 'cause why bother with a graphic card (I know there are other reasons for having graphics cards.....just roll with me here), then you can download the Ansel plugin and then BAM!  you can now "take stunning in-game photographs in nearly 40 games, from virtually any angle, at super resolutions, and in full 3D."

I know some folks might be going, "so?" but think of it......if you can take high res screen shots wherever you want then you can capture your in-game footage to use at the game table. Like the terrain of The Witcher 3? Put that camera up in the sky, take some screen shots, and then you have a game map. Trying to make some cool isometric maps.....screenshot. Cool monster...screenshot.

Anytime you see something useful you can screenshot it and what you do with the graphic is up to you, but as they say, "A picture is worth a thousand words".


If you don't have a NVIDIA graphics card and/or play computer games using said card....sorry.

Head's Up that I'm Guest Posting for a Spell Over at Tenkar's Tavern

Just a head's up that I'm guest posting over at Tenkar's Tavern for a bit while he deals with some medical stuff. He's posted every day for like 7 years and it didn't seem like a good idea to me to let that run slip for something as little as big-time surgery.

Free GM Resources: Old School Essentials PDF Form PC Sheet (Modified)

Sorry for the delay in handing out this week's Free GM Resource, but it couldn't really be helped. I had totally intended something else entirely, but an opportunity arose and in order to fully take advantage of it I had some extra work to do....

I've recently started playing in a BX game and I've been trying different PC sheets that I've been cycling through, trying to find something that fits what I wanted. During said "tryouts" I came across Old School Essentials. I have my hardcopy of the OSE Rules Tome on it's way and I started looking at their PC sheets....one caught my fancy but wasn't quite up to spec.

Much to my surprise this one kind-of-close sheet really piqued my interest and...this was the important part, not a locked-down PDF. This let me open it up and fiddle-fart around a bit tweaking this, that, and the other to my heart's content. Even though this was 110% for my own use I had some extra space here & there and thought I'd add a few things that might be useful for a new player, mostly just repeating some modifier info where one might look for it.

Of course while this was for my use I knew someone else may have use for it so I reached out to Necrotic Gnome and showed them my tweaks. Now I figured at most I'd just print this sheet up for use at a convention and my own use and that be that. I didn't expect to get a response allowing me to share the sheet as long as I noted it was modified by me.

I certainly don't need credit, but I can easily comply as long as I get to share the sheet. Might not be your style, but hey....it just might.

Now I got this word yesterday (Monday) and could have easily just made the quick attribution and been on my way, but I figured that if I was going to share this then I should at least go ahead and tweak it out to be a form-fillable PC sheet. I'm on the fence a bit on PDF for PC sheets, but I do like to keep copies of sheets on file as my (and players when I GM) PCs level. Never know when you need to whip out a Xth level whatever for a pick-up game.

Anyway, if you find this PC sheet useful send me all your money! Just kidding.....I suggest you use it to have fun playing some OSR game and take a minute to check out Necrotic Gnome and Old School Essentials.

I haven't made up my mind quite yet on which particular flavor of BX/OSR to call my favorite, so I won't extol the virtues of one vs. the other, but I've liked what I've seen of OSE so far. Expect more on that front later......

Meanwhile, feel free to check out the custom PC sheet I "made" from my Google Drive.




PS. Inevitably there will be some stupid error I made on the form since I didn't take an extra day to QC it personally. Give me a head's up here and I'll see what I can do (if you just don't like the default font or something like that.....you can tweak that yourself).

PPS. I completely failed to mention that this is a US Letter sized PC sheet, 'cause I'm American and we just have to do things differently here and I'm just following the norms for my location.