Free Role Playing Game Supplement Review: GM’s Monthly Miscellany: August 2015

GM’s Monthly Miscellany: August 2015 is a free role playing game supplement published by Raging Swan Press, primarily for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. As such, it is covered by the Open Game License and some of it is considered to be Open Game Content. This is one in a monthly series that consists of eleven regular supplements followed by a twelfth compilation supplement that is also available as a print on demand softcover.

This is a sixteen page bookmarked PDF. Two pages are Raging Swan’s standard plain front and rear covers, one page is an advert for their Patreon campaign, one pages is the front matter and Contents, one page is the Open Game License and one page is the Foreword. The supplement comes in two formats, one optimised for print and one for screen.

GM Advice: How to Name Roads in Your Campaign is a short article from the publisher’s site on various conventions and principles for naming roads.

Coldwater At a Glance is from Village Backdrop: Coldwater and gives an overview of the titular village, which is the location for Fane of the Undying Sleeper, giving some background, demographics, marketplace, notable NPCs and locations, village lore and whispers and rumours.

I Loot the Body: Trinkets is from I Loot the Body and is a d100 table with 100 results of different, usually worthless but sometimes puzzling or possibly magic, items that can be found in a person’s pockets.

Scions of Evil: Gahlgax Atarrith is from Scions of Evil and describes a pretty lethal vampiric balor and primary lieutenant to Orcus, along with some lesser, but still dangerous, bodyguards.

20 Things to Find in a Smuggler’s Storeroom lists 20 valuable, if perhaps different, items that might be found in the possession of smugglers.

The PDF is well bookmarked for one of its length, although there are a couple of errors which decrease their utility. The text maintains a two column format and seemed error free. There are a number of black and white illustrations, but these would appear to be either stock or from other supplements.

This series may be primarily intended to promote other supplements from the series, but it has utility in itself. The loot table can easily be used in any campaign. There is a fair amount of information provided on Coldwater, but there are some references which make it unlikely to be possible use the village as anywhere unusual without the full supplement. The balor is incredibly lethal, and is unlikely to be seen outside of a very high-level campaign – if The Throne of Bloodstone was a Pathfinder adventure, rather than AD&D, that would actually be a great supplement to use the balor in. GM’s Monthly Miscellany: August 2015 is not the most useful in the series, but it still has useful content and it’s free, so click here to download it.