Free GM Resource: A Free Steam Game you can Enjoy to Help Celebrate Gary Gygax Day

Today is Gary Gygax day, celebrating the birth of the Godfather, er "Gawdfather" for the HackMaster community, or the modern Role Playing Game.

The lead-in graphic is a version of the commemorative magnet I made for my guests at the GaryCon my home-group hosted a week & a half after Gary had passed.

I hope that everyone got to roll dice and enjoy this hobby with friends and/or family this weekend in celebration of our holiday. If not, I give you the free Steam game Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms. The game "...is a Dungeons & Dragons strategy video game that brings together D&D characters from novels, adventures, and multiple live streams into a single grand adventure."

So, if you couldn't sling dice this weekend and cannot do so today, at least you can enjoy a game directly inspired by the game and game worlds created by Gary.

Courtesy of Jim Wampler

Less than a week left for the Vallis Mortis (Fat Dragon Games) Kickstarter

Now I've never been shy about promoting Fat Dragon Games, and if you haven't ever tried their products, you really should......

Tom Tullis, CEO/Owner/#1 guy over at Fat Dragon is a great guy who puts out great product at a fair price. He gives back to the community in a couple of ways, and I've personally experienced his generosity, although I didn't take him up on it......and $5 says he doesn't even remember the offer.

Anyway, he currently has a Kickstarter with a week left and straight-up it's a good deal. If you do 3d printed terrain, you should....at a minimum check it out. I'm in for the maximum of $90, which should prove how I feel on the topic.



Now to be fair, if you decide to buy-in on the Kickstarter, I do stand to benefit because of stretch goals......but then again, so do you.

Free GM Resource: Megadungeons Discussion over at Beyond the Black Gate

I'll be blunt: I'm not a fan of megadungeons. Just not my thing in general, but I could definitely see some settings (like an Underdark campaign) that are pretty much megadungeons, but not always named as such.

I could go on why I don't like megadungeons, but who cares? Nothing to be gained from dissing what some of my regular 12 13 readers might like. If you're like me and generally don't care for a megadungeon, then don't run one. Simple solution.

Now Al.....Al likes megadungeons and he has some great articles about them on his blog (Beyond the Black Gate) and he even has a master list of megadungeon articles on his blog, which is what I'm putting out there as this week's Free GM Resource.

Al's got some great articles/posts about design philosophy, some special megadungeon "crunch" (equipment, monsters, spells, etc), and even a free megadungeon level.

Even if you're like me and not a megadungeon fan (seriously, how many times can I work "megadungeon" into a single blog post) I still suggest you poke around these articles because a lot of the ideas can work for smaller dungeons and even ruins.....you don't have to use them just for megadungeons (at least one more!)

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.