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

GM’s Monthly Miscellany: February 2015 is a free role playing game supplement published by Raging Swan Press, primarily intended for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. The supplement is therefore covered by the Open Game License and therefore some of it is considered to be Open Game Content. This is one in a series of monthly supplements which consists of seven standard issues which are then combined into a twelfth that is also available as a print on demand softcover.

GM's Monthly Miscellany: February 2015This is a sixteen page bookmarked PDF. Two pages are Raging Swan’s standard, plain, front and rear covers. Previous supplements to this in the series have had a third similar page, but this one instead has an advertisement for another product, The Sunken Pyramid. One page is the Contents and front matter, one page is the Open Game License and one page is the Foreword.

Player Advice: Inventive Uses for Mid-Level Spells is an article from he publisher’s site. This covers four different spells, giving non-standard but effective uses for them.

Aldwater At a Glance is taken from Village Backdrop: Aldwater. This gives a background for the village, which stands on the edge of the marshes, and an overview of the current situation. The village demographics, marketplace, notable NPCs and locations are also detailed, as well as lore and rumours, and there is a map of the settlement. The village of Furhurst Moors (an overview of which can be found in the October 2014 issue) is apparently nearby.

War-Town Town: Sights & Sounds is from Urban Dressing: War-Torn Town. This is a d100 table with 100 different results for things to see and hear in a war-torn town.

Henchfolk & Hirelings: Hiring Henchfolk is an extract from Henchfolk & Hirelings. This is a set of rules for hiring henchfolk, paying them, adventuring with them and dismissing them, with different ways of hiring and different results in different sized towns.

Gloamhold: Rivengate continues the description of the Gloamhold megadungeon started in the previous issue, with details on Rivengate, a huge, ancient, largely abandoned fortification that guards an entrance.

GM Advice: Why a GM Should KISS As Much As Possible is another article from the publisher’s site, this one on simplifying things as much as possible – but not too much.

The PDF is well bookmarked for one of its length, but not as well as these supplements used to be. There are also a couple of errors in the bookmarks, degrading their utility. The text is in a two column format and only a couple of errors were noticed. Bar the map, these would largely to appear to be stock black and white illustrations.

Although this is the sort of supplement intended to promote other products, it is still useful in itself. There are enough details on Aldwater to use it as it is, and it could be fleshed out more as an adventure location. The war-torn town dressings and the hiring henchfolk article are both useful and effectively system neutral, and could be used with most fantasy systems. This makes the content useful in itself and not just promotional in nature. GM’s Monthly Miscellany: February 2015 is another decent collection of useful articles, and it’s free, so click here to get it.

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.