Free Role Playing Game Supplement Review: GM’s Monthly Miscellany: February 2017

GM’s Monthly Miscellany: February 2017 is a free role playing game supplement published regularly by Raging Swan Press for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Raging Swan release one of these free eleven months of the year and for the twelfth publish a compendium of the previous months, which is also available as a print on demand book. The supplement is covered by the Open Game License and therefore some of it is considered to be Open Game Content.

This is a seventeen page bookmarked PDF. One page is Raging Swan’s standard, plain front cover, one page has a black and white stock image, one page is the Contents and front matter, one page the Open Game License, one page has another illustration and is essentially an advert for the Raging Swan site and one page is the plain back cover. The supplement is available in two formats, one at a resolution optimised for screens, the other for print. There is a one page Foreword giving an overview of the contents and a mention of the publisher’s Patreon campaign.

10 Atypical Caves has ten cavern and cave descriptions that may be found by players underground.

Bleakflat at a Glance gives a summary of the village from Village Backdrop: Bleakflat, including a map of the village.

Similarly, Dulwich at a Glance gives an overview of the town from Town Backdrop: Dulwich, also including a map of the town.

Gloamhold at a Glance is a preview of an upcoming megadungeon series.

From My Campaign: Undead Stat Blocks of Doom is a collection of stat blocks for various undead monsters.

20 Things to Find in a Subterranean River is from the supplement 20 Things #11: Dark Caverns, and is as it sounds.

Having bookmarks in a free PDF of this size is definitely a plus; unfortunately, quite a few of them lead to the wrong page, greatly decreasing their utility. Otherwise, the supplement seemed free of errors. Having two PDFs, one optimised for print, is a useful feature.

Although this monthly supplement is essentially an ad for existing and upcoming products, it has quite a bit of use to it. Both 10 Atypical Caves and 20 Things to Find in a Subterranean River are system neutral, and provide a useful set of encounters that can be used as-is. Bleakflat and Dulwich, despite only being overviews of the complete supplements, contain enough detail, including maps, that they could still be used in a campaign. They might require more fleshing out if players were spending more time there, but there is still a fairly decent amount of information. Gloamhold is simply a teaser, but the stat blocks can be useful for busy GMs.

GM’s Monthly Miscellany: February 2017 is not simply an advert; it is quite a useful resource in itself, and it’s free, so click here to get it.