Free Role Playing Game Supplement Review: GM’s Monthly Miscellany: April 2014

GM’s Monthly Miscellany: April 2014 is a free role playing game supplement published by Raging Swan Press, which is primarily intended for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. This is one in a regular monthly series which is published eleven months of the year, with the twelfth being a compilation that is also available as a print on demand softcover. The supplement is covered by the Open Game License and therefore some of it is considered to be Open Game Content.

This is a sixteen page bookmarked PDF. Three pages are the standard plain front and rear covers of the publisher as well as another, similar page. One page is the Contents and front matter, one page is the Open Game License and one page is the Foreword. The supplement is also available in two formats; one optimised for screen and the other for print.

GM Advice: Designing Unique Magic Items is an article from the Raging Swan site on customising magic items to give them flavour, ties to characters and to make them stand out.

Trickletrek At a Glance is an overview of the village from Village Backdrop: Trickletrek. This is a gnomish village currently afflicted with a disease caused by a meteorite (this sounds like a Colour out of Space, but it isn’t stated). There is a map of the town, notable NPCs and locations, demographics and marketplace as well as lore and rumours.

Goblin’s Pockets: Broken and Battered and Goblin’s Pockets: Yummy Nibbles are two d100 tables from Dungeon Dressing: Goblin’s Pockets. Although these are d100, there are only around half that number of items on each, and are full descriptions of worthless junk (for the first) and disgusting items (for the second) that could be found in a goblin’s pockets.

The Sunken Pyramid: Sharkjaw Skeletons and The Sunken Pyramid: New Magic Items are both from the adventure The Sunken Pyramid. The first is a new creature and the second has two new magic items (three are mentioned in the text, but only two are covered; this is because the text has been taken straight from the adventure without change).

From My Campaign: Vilimzair Aralivar and From My Campaign: Belak the Red are two non-player characters from the publisher’s campaign which have been thoroughly detailed. The first is an occasional ally and the second was an enemy.

GM Advice: Why Urban Adventures Are Different is another article from the Raging Swan site and covers a few points as to the differences between urban adventuring and regular ones – such as there tend to be laws and widespread death and destruction is frowned upon.

The PDF is unusually well bookmarked for one of this length and it maintains a two column layout throughout. The illustrations are black and white and are stock images, as well as a couple of illustrations which look like they may be specific.

Although supplements like this are often intended to be used to promote a publisher’s supplements, this one also has use in and of itself. Trickletrek could be used as a village, although a GM would need to flesh out the disease mentioned. The two goblin’s pockets tables are both system neutral in nature and the new magical items and detailed NPCs could easily be dropped into another campaign, although they, like the village, do have Pathfinder stats. GM’s Monthly Miscellany: April 2014 is another useful collection of articles, and it’s free, so click here to get it.