Nothing to see here...(actually posting in a few)

This blog has really been on the back-burner for a while.....as they say "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." Now I'm not going to promise to be back to posting on the regular, but mostly because that's more a "show, don't tell" kind of thing. I can tell my 12 13 readers that I'm fully moved into my new house, although I still have some furniture to get (tomorrow) and boxes to unpack, BUT I'm pretty much done with my work travel for the rest of the year. Moving into a new place and then being on the road for 2/3 of the time since puts a BIG strain on life in general.....

Freebie HackMaster/OSR Mini Adventure

When I get an opportunity to share some gaming goodness from friends of mine, or former acquaintances....hell, people I know even....I'm going to take it.

The other day I found out one of my old HackMaster buddies revamped one of his old blogs/websites that he had been using to host a toolkit/game aid for HackMaster (4th Edition). Recently he put up a short level 1 adventure for HackMaster that is easily convertible for 1st Edition or OSR.

How easy? Take off 20 hitpoints off the top of every monster and while you're at it ignore the ToP stat......should pretty much do it.

The Goblins is a short, 7 page adventure that pits the PCs against a group of Goblins with a mission....(as in the Goblins have a mission......). This adventure shows as having been available since 2019, but Steve just told me about it (albeit not directly) last week, and his site HMTK.com has a few other entries/goodies to read, so.........twofer?

Free GM Resource: Monday Blues Maps from Paratime Design

I know it's been a while and it is what it is.

The last few weeks I've been seeing some cool "old-school" blue maps from Paratime Design and honestly I thought I'd posted them before and figured I haven't talked about these guys for years, so why not a refresh/additional look?

Well evidently the "Monday Blues" line of maps is not nearly as old as my previous Paratime Design posts, so this is a new look at the line.......

The free maps aren't that big, roughly 7" x 9" at 72 dpi. Not good enough to use in print as-is, but more than enough for a GM to use for planning and on a screen or VTT. The page for each map also has a bunch of applicable notes that are helpful.

If you want a high-res version of the maps, there is a link to a $2 DTRPG file. While not free, $2 for a printable map, assuming you need a printable map, is not bad, not bad at all. Far cheaper than what it will cost to print said map.

Free GM Resource: Free 3d printing files from Iconic Minis.

I'm in the middle of a busy work project and trying to buy a new home, so I've been a bit task-saturated, but today I was sent a blog-contact-email with a Free Resource. I'm not one to turn down some good low-hanging fruit.....

Iconic Minis has quite a few free 3d printing .STL files for download. Most of them are minis, but who doesn't want/need more minis, especially at the price of free?!

Iconic Minis does have a Patreon, but as of now only three Patrons. $3 a month for a new mini a week? Sure, they are being given away for free, but that's $3 a month well-spent IMNSHO.

Free GM Resource: OSE Basic Rules

I got an email from Necrotic Gnome telling me about an update to a freebie that is the Old-School Essentials: Basic Rules. After looking through my old posts I realized I hadn't shared the free basic rules for OSE....so that's this week's Free GM Resource.

Now the Basic Rules will only whet your whistle for a little bit, but for the four basic classes you can get at least a couple levels of play out of just these rules, so it's nothing to sneeze at. You'll probably want an adventure as I don't think there is much in the way of monsters in the Basic Rules:

• The full introduction and character creation rules.
• The four core human classes: cleric, fighter, magic-user, thief.
• Full lists of adventuring equipment, weapons, and armour.
• The rules for dungeon adventures, encounters, and combat.
• The full rules for spell casting, and the list of 1st level spells.

Still, for the price it's worth checking out. I personally enjoy this particular flavor of OSR and I like the layout and ease of use.

Free GM Resource: D&D Facebook Group

Kind of a surprise find this week that I needed a little bit of time to check out for myself ...well at least the non-free common-sense follow-on......which came in today.

I know, I know...way too vague so I'll kind of jump in by saying that my recommendation for this week's Free GM Resource is a Facebook Group, specifically Dungeons & Dragons B/X (Moldvay/ Cook & Marsh). Now that is a fricken mouthful!

Lots of cool resources in the group, but the one that has inspired me today is basically an omnibus collection of the Basic & Expert Rules for D&D.  Now I don't think the Omnibus itself is in the group's files section, but there is a TON of other awesome files and, more importantly for me today, a whole collection of different covers for if you want to print out a hard or soft-copy of the Omnibus. Now I already own the Basic and Expert rules, recently purchased off of DTRPG, but having the two rulebooks expertly meshed together all professional like? Not until the Omnibus. 

Getting the Omnibus is one thing, but in general I have better things to do than try and screw with Photoshop (much) for a good hard or softcover. The covers available from the group are generally already setup for hardcover printing over at Lulu.com

My hardcover was roughly $15 and the softcovers were half that. I did try to tweak the softcover a bit and I probably shouldn't.....but the end results were still good:

Free GM Resource: Easy/Simple Mass Combat Rules

This has been out for a few years (like at least an edition ago), BUT it is largely system-less and can easily be adapted to other versions of D&D or even other RPGs. One thing I see "lacking", assuming it is even needed/desired, is an option for larger-scale, or even mass, combat.

The fine folks over at WotC put out this Unearthed Arcana Battlesystem (pulled from this page). I recommend downloading a copy, giving it a once or twice over, then file away for the 1st/next time you need to figure out how to do some mass combat.

Did Not Realize That Free RPG Day was LAST Weekend: DCC QSR Still Available Though!

What we missed this year!

I did not realize that last weekend was Free RPG Day, as it had been moved from May to October 16th.

D'oh!

In looking over some of what I missed I found a nice little gem from Goodman Games, which is a FREE PDF copy of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Quick Start Rules. This is normally $5. While I've seen this freebie before, I have the full set of rules that I tend to use, but on a quick 2nd look this 44 page PDF only has a couple pages of ads & covers. There's enough "meat" in this freebie that you can roll up zero level PCs and easily run through the three-page adventure The Portal Under the Stars.