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

GM’s Monthly Miscellany: July 2017 is a free role playing game supplement published by Raging Swan Press. The supplement is written for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and, as such, is covered by the Open Game License with some parts considered to be Open Game Content as a result. This is one in a series which consists of eleven regular issues and a twelfth, compilation, supplement that is also available as a print on demand softcover.

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

1,000 Abnormal Troglodytes is a means of making troglodytes more individual. There are 3 d10 tables, one for appearance, one for battle tactics and one for trinkets & treasures.

Skaalhaft At a Glance is taken from Village Backdrop: Skaalhaft. Skaalhaft is a whaling village which hunts aquatic creatures both mundane and magical and harvests both food and alchemical ingredients. The village’s demographics, background, marketplace, lore and whispers & rumours are provided, as well as a list of notable locations and a map. Oddly, notable NPCs are not provided for the first time in these supplements.

Beacon Promontory At a Glance is from Places of Power: Beacon Promontory. This was a port village which got mostly flooded; a few inhabitants remained behind to wait for the village to reappear and to man the lighthouse. The location’s overview, demographics, marketplace, lore, notable NPCs and locations, events and whispers & rumours are given, as well as a map.

6 Will-o’-Wisps with Personality gives details of six of the creatures that glow with a different colour and behave slightly differently to normal.

The PDF is well bookmarked for its length but some of the bookmarks are wrong, as is usually the case these days, decreasing their utility. The Contents is not as thorough and includes a subsection for once. Navigation is as a result okay but it could be better. The text maintains a two column format and no errors were noted. Apart from the two maps, there are a couple of pieces of stock art.

These supplements are intended to showcase products from Raging Swan, but they are also useful in and of themselves. The article on troglodytes is probably not as good as the title suggests; although there are 1,000 possible results, there will be a lot of overlap between them, which will as a result make a lot of them sound similar – something that it is specifically created to avoid. It’s useful for low numbers but not large ones. The article on will-o’-wisps is more interesting and adds flavour to this monster.

There are enough details provided on both Beacon Promontory and Skaalhaft to use them as-is, although there are various hints related to possible adventure hooks in the latter that aren’t really detailed and the lack of NPCs does decrease its utility slightly.

GM’s Monthly Miscellany: July 2017 is one of the poorer entries in the range but it still has useful material and it can be obtained for free by clicking here.