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

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

This is a fifteen page bookmarked PDF. Two pages are Raging Swan’s standard plain front and rear covers, one page is an illustration promoting their Patreon campaign, one page 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.

Fixing At-Will 0-Level Spells is an article from the publisher’s site on why having unlimited 0-level spells is a bad idea and ways to fix it.

Sea Bitch At a Glance is from Village Backdrop: Sea Bitch. This is a village founded by pirates and named after their ship, which still rots in the harbour. There is a brief history of the settlement, demographics, marketplace, a list of notable NPCs and locations, rumours, lore and a map of the village.

Trade Town: Sights & Sounds is taken from Urban Dressing: Trade Town and is a d100 table with 100 different results of various things to see in a trade town.

Ancient Empire of the Troglodytes is an extract from the supplement of the same name and gives a history of an ancient, and now long gone, underground empire, from when the troglodytes were a more notable race. It details the empire’s history, ecology and society, its enemies and lack of allies and some information on its writing and the deity they worshipped.

Gloamhold: The Duchy of Ashlar gives an overview of this duchy which is the region in which the megadungeon of Gloamhold is located. Some notable physical and adventuring locations are listed, which includes The Sunken Pyramid.

Featured Map: The Duchy of Ashlar is a map of the aforementioned duchy.

The PDF is well bookmarked for one of its length, but there are a couple of errors in the bookmarks, decreasing their utility. Given its length, this is not a big problem. The text maintains a two column format, and seemed free of errors. There are a number of black and white illustrations, but these would appear to be either stock or from other supplements.

As always, this is primarily intended to give a taste of the publisher’s work, but it has use in itself. Enough details on the, somewhat unusual because the inhabitants are primarily good, village of Sea Bitch are provided to use it as is. This village can be dropped into a campaign easily enough, but it is also located near the also-pirate towns of Deksport (overview in November 2014), Red Talon (overview in April 2015) and Revenge.

The trade town table can be used in a trade town, but there is no reason why many of the results couldn’t be used in other urban settings. This is also system-agnostic.

The article on the troglodytes is probably the least useful, as there really isn’t enough detail to use it, only enough to pique interest in getting the full supplement. Barring this, GM’s Monthly Miscellany: June 2015 is still a useful collection of articles, and it’s free, so click here to get it.