Free GM Resource: Crypt of the Crimson King 5e Adventure from Nord Games

This week's Free GM Resource is a 5E Freebie Adventure from Nord Games. If you head on over to their website you should see it as a pop-up for their "Spooktacular Sale", but you can also find it on their adventures page (or right here....) 

Now I know a few folks will scoff at the fact that this is a 5E adventure, BUT...and please hear me out, grabbing adventures from other RPG systems and then converting them to your system is a great thing to do, especially if your players are also GMs or collectors. If you've got players that seem to know all of the published adventures for your preferred RPG system, then begging/borrowing/stealing from other systems is almost a no-brainer.

I'm of the opinion that almost no adventure goes unchanged by the GM, so trying to find something that requires no GM effort to run is an exercise in futility....

Go ahead and grab your free copy of  Crypt of the Crimson King, and if you do play 5E, check out the rest of Nord Games offerrings.

A Bit of a Flip on the "Free" Resource

 

I've been silent here for a month because of a personal loss and I really wasn't up for this, but it's been a month and life has to go on.....

I was looking for something specific to share with my 12 13 regular readers, and technically I did come across a free player resource for a specific subset of players: teens (possibly teens in Utah, but I think they aren't that restrictive).

Now the thing is the charity behind Tabletop for Teens is pretty much maxxed right now so this free resource isn't really available, BUT I think that a few like-minded gamers (like my 12 13 regulars) could probably do something to change this.

Now I've always been of the opinion that the future of our hobby is really with the next generation, so even if I didn't care about Tabletop for Teens' mission:

"Our quest is to defeat the demons of youth depression and suicide through the power of tabletop roleplaying games. Tabletop roleplaying games empower a player’s imagination, confidence, and social skills by challenging youth to work together to forge their path to glory. Grab some dice, create your character, and roll initiative as you make new friends and memories that will last a lifetime!"

....even if I didn't care about their mission I'd still be in favor because of that opinion. I don't know about you, but when I'm an old.....er older grumpy gamer I'm not sure how down I'll be with having to GM a bunch of other old grumpy farts.

Yeah, I think we'll need fresh blood.

So I'm seriously thinking of reaching out to Tabletop for Teens and seeing how I can help, but GMing D&D, well at least the current version, isn't something I'm up for. One thing I can do though is support them through my shopping.

Yep, since they are a 501(c)(3) Nonprofit set up with Amazon Smile, I can support them at no cost to me through my Amazon shopping. Talk about win-win!

Free GM Resource: Thundar the Barbarian Gaming Supplement

I found this one interesting, if not kind of messed-up and hilarious, post in my Facebook feed regarding somebody trying to get $250 for a printing of a freebie 110 page gaming supplement that was available, again for free, by the original author.

Now I haven't made a 110 page gaming supplement myself, but I'd be both amused and pissed if someone was trying to sell something I'd written to be given away for free.

So this Thundar the Barbarian RPG supplement is available on The Savage AfterWorld blog. Scroll down the page and you'll see the cover graphic shown used as the lead-in for this post. Clicking on that will get you direct to the GoogleDocs file for this supplement.

Obviously I think you should click on the link and if you feel like it, have it printed up at your local copy shop. Do not print it up and try to swindle someone out of $250 and....it should go without saying...pay $250 for a printed copy off of eBay!

Free GM Resource: Mystara World Guide for D&D 5e

 

This week's Free GM Resource is most likely a limited-time thing so I do not feel at all guilty of piggy-backing (or just outright stealing) this post idea from today's post over at Tenkar's Tavern.

The RPGmp3 blog has a labor of love posted that is the Mystara Guide for D&D 5th Edition. 

"5 years. 224 pages. Countless hours of playtesting. All original art. The Mystara Player’s Handbook is a labor of love to bring the Known World, the greatest Dungeons & Dragons setting of all time as determined by science, into the 5th edition.

Inside you will find everything you need for your players to get started adventuring in a setting rich with culture and history. Five new races, over two dozen new subclasses, countless new spells, new forms of magic in the secret crafts, runes, and the incredibly powerful but dangerous Radiance. Featuring maps by Thorfinn Tait, a list of Immortals by Marco Delmonte, art by Rubus, Mischa Cel Frumos, and many more, is everything you wanted for a new setting."

Yeah......while I don't see Ha$bro ever putting out their own Mystara guide I can see them quickly doing a Cease & Desist on this project, so please, grab it while you can!

Free GM Resource (Freebie): Old School Essentials Newsletter

I found out about this too late to add to last week's Free GM Resource, to make it a twofer.

Evidently Necrotic Gnome is putting together a newsletter where you can find "The latest Old-School Essentials news, including product announcements, highlighted third party products, free resources, and much more!"

All you need to do is head over to the Necrotic Gnome webpage and scroll all the way down to the bottom (right) and enter your email.

Now I/we don't have a clue how good this newsletter will be, but it's OSE so it shouldn't suck and why not get in on the ground floor for what should be some good stuff.

Free GM Resource: Old School Essentials Generators

This weekend I stumbled across a set of OSE Generators that I found useful and figured would be a great Free GM Resource.

There's four main categories:

• Treasure
• Encounter
• Spells
• Magic Items
• NPCs

Free GM Resource: Reddit

 

During my way-too-long bout of unemployment for the 1st half of 2021 I spent waaaaaaay too much watching YouTube. Eventually I fell into the rabbit-hole which is a number of channels that feature the highlights of several specific stories from Reddit.

Now I'm not much of a Redditor, but eventually I figured I should kind of skip the middle-man and just start reading the original stories there instead of having them read to me on YouTube.

So I'm definitely a newb there, but basically Reddit seems to be a wild-wild-West bastard sibling to the forums of old. They have all kind of thread and groups there.....

...including this OSR subgroup and another (that I shared a long time ago) for D&D Maps. 

Now I'm certain there are more cool RPG/gaming sub-reddits, but again.....I'm a Reddit newb, so I know didly-squat as to what's out there.....

Please, if you know of some, shoot me a comment and I'll update them to this post.

r/osr

r/dndmaps

r/OSRNewArt

r/AskGameMasters

r/rpg

r/d100

r/DMAcademy

Free Quick-Start Rules and Adventure for Call of Cthulu

 

I'm officially back to work this week, which is waaaaaaay overdue, but also a source of some nervousness as I have to hit the ground running and pretend I'm not six-and-a-half months rusty doing something rather detail oriented for money.

I'm kind of triple-dipping on a subject this week, having blogged in general about Call of Cthulu over at Tenkar's Tavern and guest-hosting a podcast with this free adventure review as part of it.

Now, I have to admit that I am so not a fan of the free Quick-Start rules for 7th Edition Call of Cthulhu and the accompanying adventure The Haunting.

Obstinately this Quick-Rules and adventure is designed for new Keepers (GM's) and players who have never played a RPG before, and I will say that I think it utterly fails in this regard. There are clearly references to rules not included, too many throw-away bits of information that don't matter, and in several ways I felt dumber as a person reading this than I did before I started.

Now if you pick this up with the starter set or full-blown rules a lot of problems might make sense, but I looked at this as a stand-alone thing. I really think that there should have not only been a lot more editing, but they needed to get some people that have never played CoC (or possibly even any RPGs) involved.

Things is, even with the numerous flaws, I think there is some value to this freebie and if you wanted to introduce your gaming group to CoC you could use this if you put some serious time and effort to work out the kinks. Honestly I think the best use of this is as a guide to writing your own adventure and not what to do.

Personally I think that this is just a missed opportunity from Chaosium and I hope that they make some good tweaks in the next edition/printing to entice some players into the game.