Free GM Resource: Village Generator from ChicagoWiz

This week's Free GM Resource is a quick down & dirty Village Generator from ChicagoWiz's Games.

The thing I like about this site, aside from the simple fact it's one single-fricken-button for generation, is the fact that....well, it's simple, or "down & dirty" as I put it. There's not a lot to it, which you might think is a detractor, but really......

...well I don't know about you, but I don't need all that much but a skeleton to work off of. Sure, I do more for myself at my table, but if I'm reaching for a Village Generator I only need so much, and that's what is here.

For example:
Harttage
Population- 276
Ruled by- Magistrate
Defenses- Ditch and Palisade
Policed by- Militia with 8 guards.
Water supply- Stream

Places of business-
Elf's Head Tavern
Blacksmith
Carpenter
Mill
Shrine
Temple

Resources are Average. Availability of goods: 30%

Special-
There is a weekly merchant fair held here.

Free GM Resource: Kanka Campaign Organizer

[Frugal GM Note: I'm on vacation this week and I thought about phoning this one in, but I actually have good internet where I'm at out in the country]

If there was one thing I would wish for myself as a GM, much less wish for all GMs, as if I had access to a (not screwed with) 9th level Wish spell, is for all GMs to be able to easily organize their campaigns. It seems like staying on top of things is an uphill battle.

I've tried a bunch of stuff in the past, everything from a free-form TidlyWiki to custom "website" using Blogger. They all have their advantages, but what I've liked, and what seems to be a commonality is something web-based, or at least a web-based interface, that can be used by multiple people.

This week's Free GM Resource is a cool Online Table-Top RPG Campaign Organizer called Kanka. The front-page blurb says it all:

"Kanka is an easy, intuitive, and flexible tool for worldbuilders, authors, story tellers and tabletop RPG players to digitally track their worlds and campaigns. Create and organize people, places, organisations, events and much more for free."

The Kobold level is free, while the Owlbear level is $5 a month and the Elementals level is $25 a month. The main functionality though is available for the freebie users. All your really get with the paid tiers is larger uploads and some customization. You also get these Campaign Boosters, which...if I can figure this out correctly, lets you essentially gift free campaigns the higher level tier access to those larger uploads and customizations.

Personally I think I could easily handle my campaigns at the Kobold level and if I was to use a paid tier ($5 a month is chump-change for something that truly makes me managing my game easier.....I think it'd save me more than $5 worth of my time every month) it would be to support the developers.

Anyway, if you want to check it out you can setup a free account, but you can also check out these public campaigns and get a better picture of what all Kanka can do for you!

Free GM Resource: Mapire

This week's Free GM Resource is another cool map resource. If you want to look up old maps, something I like to do in order to tweak my own map projects.....then Mapire is a pretty cool place.

For the most part you just get to view the maps online, but if you have some online web-based needs for the maps you can embed these maps.

Personally I like the ability to zoom in & out on the main page...

As a bit of a twofer, one of the associated websites, Hungaricana, has some cool maps you can view as well. They're probably on the Mapire site as well, but easier to find (assuming you want the Hungarian maps.....)

Free GM Resource: WinX YouTube Downloader

Okay, I realize that this week's Free GM Resource is non-conventional and going to hit from far left field, but I've really been enjoying WinX YouTube Downloader and I see just how useful it is going to be for quite a few projects I have lined up.

Now I've recommended quite a few YouTube channels in the past and there are a lot of terrain builds I want to try for myself, but there are other useful channels I've recommended, such as Fat Dragon Games' Tomb of 3d Printed Horrors. Now I watch a lot of YouTube when I'm working on projects and.....yeah, I'm not a fan of trying to navigate through the videos to follow along or repeat info I need. While the videos are useful, the YouTube interface is not.

For a couple of reasons I find it incredibly useful to be able to watch, and re-watch, some of these videos and simply having them available outside of the online YouTube connection is useful. It might be odd, but I can easily have one video on my TV playing in the background and have my laptop, or tablet playing the video offline.

WinX YouTube Downloader has been the answer to a problem I've been having trying to build out in my garage where my network is crap (for one example).

Free GM Resource: SmartEdit Writer (Novel Writing Software)

I was watching YouTube the other day, like I do, and came across a video concerning a GM's setup. For the most part I didn't get much out of the video, but the GM used a computer program as a virtual GM screen.

Now that piece of software was designed for novel writing and it wasn't free, but I was able to find a free alternative that did the same stuff.....providing you use Windows. There are other similar-ish programs that'll work with Mac/iOS, but SmartEdit Writer did everything I was looking for.

I'm not sure I would actually use SmartEdit Writer to write an actual adventure, but I'm really biased for reasons, and think the idea of character development that this program could lead to would be lost on an adventure.

The reason why I recommend SmartEdit Writer for a virtual GM screen is because you can use the basic organization the program provides to layout your assorted graphs, tables, charts, and assorted bits of information. Being able to make notes on characters....NPCs specifically, campaign bits, etc, would be really useful:

• Project Management (can you say "Adventure Management"?)
• Scenes, Fragments, and Notes
• Searching
• Automatic Backups
• Customizable Interface

There's a lot to this tool and it looks like an awesome Free GM Resource. Check out SmartEdit Writer today.

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.......