Free GM Resource: Modellismo Fantasy

 

I'm just coming off quarantine after my business trip, and also resting up after a back injury, so I've had waaaaaaaay too much time to myself....and "lost" too much of it to YouTube.

I know I said I wasn't going to do too many YouTube channels....I think my goal was no more than one a month, but I did one last week so I should be good until October, BUT I found an awesome terrain building channel and I'm not waiting a month..

Modellismo Fantasy does some pretty cool stuff at a level of detail that I found pretty aweseomtastic (yes, I made up a word for this channel). I stumbled across one video and thought that this might be a bit overkill for some table-top RPG use and more appropriate for diorama, but if you want to make something drool-worthy for your players............

 

It's in Italian so you might want to make sure that you have the close captions on......

New Frugal GM PWYW Tweak & Toss Location/NPC

A conversation on Facebook yesterday made me think of a particular establishment I created in one of my campaigns to serve as a potential base of operations for a new fledgling party.

I couldn't get the idea out of my head, partially because I barely tapped into the potential I had planned for the place, but the campaign didn't last....as these things happen. The next best think I could do is try to get they crap, er stuff in my head down on paper in some fashioned and set if off into the world where maybe some other enterprising GM can makes some tweaks to it and call it their own.

I had never tried doing one of my "Tweak & Toss" supplements on this particular laptop and I was having some issues with the PDF printing I'll have to iron out, but since I started late and it was after 3 AM when I finished......well I just made it a full page landscape print you'll have to duplex and then fold yourself instead of a simple "booklet print". This exchanges the ability to print the inside fold page which is the map for the ability to easily navigate it as an electronic document.

Of course this isn't an exact copy of what I used in my campaign, and I had to leave some details out, but the base shell is there and I think there is enough "meat on the bones" for a GM to work with, which is my general point with these things.

It's PWYW and believe me you are not insulting me by downloading it for free. Getting this idea out of my head and out into the world is plenty good for now. Like usual, click on either graphic in this post to go to the appropriate DTRPG page, or use this link.

Free GM Resource: Spray Primer "How To" Video

I'm not sure if I mentioned here, or over at Tenkar's Tavern, that recently I've been going through my literally thousands of minis that I have that are unpainted and needing some attention.*

I'm trying to get thing set up to start making them table ready and so I've been investigating the possibilities of airbrushing them instead of hand-painting, which has been my go-to....when I can get around to it, which was maybe a few years ago. Part of my problem is that it's just a daunting task.

Anyway, I have been picking up the supplies I need to start the task and I've been reviewing YouTube videos for equipment/supply reviews and also some introductory "How To's". One great video I found with some tips I hadn't seen elsewhere is the Vallejo Surface Primers from Scale War Machines.

Now this guy paints on a scale (literally) that I'm not going to be, but there is still some great carry-over to what I'm going to be doing.



*My mini collection has been a couple decades in the making and I have maybe 10 minis that I have HUNDREDS of dupes of because I bought them in bulk for less than the cost of the base metal because a game company just wanted them gone. Even without those I have a lot though....

Free GM Resource: Digital Comics Museum

Frugal GM Note: I'm technically on quarantine for the next two weeks due to work, and moving slow due to a recent injury so I'm slow-rolling it for a few weeks. I'm supposed to both rest and not sit around on my ass or back at the same time, so go figure.

This week's Free GM Resource is another odd one.....I like pointing out some of these odd resources that the average GM might not even have considered. If you happen to be one of the writing/publishing-type GMs ideas for new encounters/monsters might not....."flow" as easily as you'd like. Finding art to back up you idea might be a bazillion times harder.

Kind of a twofer here, a Free GM Resource and a GM Prep-Tip: work backwards. Find some cool art and then write to it. I don't do this too often, but I have done it...specifically working on Creature Catalog Vol 1. I'm not going to link it as it's one of my few products I put up for  couple bucks on DTRPG. The cover was the after-thought, but the genesis of that product was that I found a book of weirdly drawn creatures and thought I'd turn them into monsters.

A veritable treasure-trove of cool, public domain art that can be mined for sweet ideas (maybe more for certain genres, but still...) are Golden Age Comics.

The Digital Comics Museum is a cool website where you can download old Golden Age comics that have been researched and verified to be public domain. You'll need an account to download the comics, but that's it.

Browse to your heart's content.....oh and just because I'm approaching this from an art to ideas format.....it doesn't mean you cannot also/instead look at it from a story-line perspective.

Free GM Resource: Font Space

I was working on a project the other day and realized that I had "lost" some of the fonts I wanted for the project. Well, "lost" might be a bit strong because I'm not 100% sure I had the font to begin with, but I was looking for a "rune-light" font that looked like a rune, but you could probably read it anyway.

My 1st step was to go through my Table of Contents here to see if I could find it, figuring I had to have posted about it before....but nope, not there.

Well I just ended up going to my go-to font depository which is Font Space, and I thought I'd go ahead and share this as a Free GM Resource.

One caveat though.....if there is a chance you might end up using any of these in a commercial design I'd make sure you keep track so of which fonts are free to use and which are "personal use only". That's a headache best avoided....

One thing I really like about Font Space is that you can type in some sample text and it'll show all the fonts with that text. If you then do a search or do some navigating that sample text will carry-over to the new results.

Free GM Resource: Guild of Ambience

This week's Free GM Resource is a YouTube channel that I was definitely NOT looking for and almost completely missed.

I sometimes travel for work and a couple weeks ago I was on a trip. My employer's employer decided that I have to undergo a two-week quarantine upon my return, so for the last two weeks I've been pretty much sitting in front of my TV all day sitting at a small folding table banging away on my laptop instead of going in to work and banging away at a laptop there. I do more than that, but indulge me in a little hand-waving.

During said "work" I usually have the TV going, playing something interesting, but not too interesting. Something that doesn't matter too much to me 'cause I cannot give it my my real attention. So movies are generally right out, but YouTube videos usually do just fine. I've really liked Adam Savage's Tested Channel, but that's not my focus here...not really a Twofer.

Anyway I'm plugging along, not really watching TV, lost in what I was working on and next thing I know I'm no longer hearing people talking, which is pretty much my background "music". I look up and it doesn't seem like a video is playing, but technically it is. What had happened is that I had stumbled upon a background music/sound channel called The Guild of Ambience.

So The Guild of Ambience isn't a large channel, but the videos they have....are rather long, HUGE even. As of the time of writing this post there are 21 videos that total a little over 46 hours! Wow...that's a lot of background sounds.

For example...here's a 9 Hour The Guild of Ambience video of Rain on Roof Sound....9 Hours!

Just a Little Appreciation for Tom Tullis & Fat Dragon Games

I've NEVER been shy about how great Tom Tullis and Fat Dragon Games (FDG) is. When I had first met Tom I had already purchased most of his paper terrain sets on CD and I was wanting to do a bit of a collaboration with FDG.

I had just started heading up the HackMaster Association for KenzerCo and was in my initial drafts of writing a three-part tournament adventure. I'd already done one three-parter, but that was more for local use and this one I only had some rough outlines for, but it was going to be for the HMA Wurld Championship. Anyway, I thought it would be cool as a bonus to be able to provide pre-printed maps and even paper terrain. I didn't necessarily need anything special, but I wanted to get permission to use FDG terrain at up to eight tables and maybe.....maybe get a coupon code for a percentage off for the players/GMs to purchase the files for the terrain used in the game.

I'm not even sure Tom completely "got" what I was suggesting, because...come on, we're at GenCon and it's busy. I'm a fricken stranger and all I'm hoping to accomplish is to plant a seed, follow up with an email after the convention, and let Tom check with KenzerCo at his convenience to verify my backstory. I doubt I was nearly as eloquent as I could be here pounding away at this keyboard.

Didn't really matter. Tom indicated that he knew I was trying to support a convention game and started handing me CDs clearly indicating "Take what you want." I didn't actually take any CDs of terrain files 'cause I already had them all, but the fact he was so willing to support gamers/gaming really sat with me.

That's just a personal example from my past, but a more current example that you can see on your own here: "The remastered DRAGONLOCK Dungeons Expansion Set 1 set has now been uploaded to DrivethruRPG. This is a FREE upgrade for anyone who bought their set from FDG (either our website/DrivethruRPG or Kickstarter.) Just log into your DTRPG account and re-download from your account library. 🙂"

Now Tom & FDG is currently in the middle of production of files to fulfill pledges and stretch goals for their most recent Kickstarter. To be spending time (and money!) going back and improving older, already paid-for products? Who does this? Evidently Fat Dragon Games does.

I think most companies would update files to make things work/print better, but to add content and just pretty up sculpts?

This is the kind of thing that makes Fat Dragon Games stand out to me. It isn't the only thing.....I'm a HUGE fan of their naming convention, which should be a 3d Printer standard, but if you don't have 160+GB of stl files like I do.....you might not notice.

Free GM Resource: D&D Solo Adventures

So yesterday I was writing about "playing with yourself" over at Tenkar's Tavern....specifically referring to RPGs, and I needed to look up the name of a solo adventure I had played before. All I remember was that it was an official TSR product and used that weird red film window to let your read the "hidden" text of the module.

I found it with a quick Google search, but not until after stumbling across the website "DND Solo Adventures". Wait....what? That's an actual thing?

Sure enough. "Paul" has put together a series of series of quests/dungeon delves into a campaign of sorts and bundled up most everything but the dice and rules you'll need to tackle the campaign solo. His website steps your through the process (handy "How to Play" as well as print & play accessories) AND the adventure itself. It's online, but if you're reading this so are you.

Paul's Dragon Shore Campaign is written with 4th Edition D&D in mind. I don't have a single XP in that 4th Edition so I'm not going to pretend to say if it's a good adventure or not, but there's a lot of solo gaming on this one campaign. If 4th Edition is your thing, or if you think you can make it work in another edition (again, no XP on that front), you really should check out D&D Solo Adventures.

If you do though, and like it even a little bit, send Paul an email of thanks....he deserves that much!