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

GM’s Monthly Miscellany: October 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 with some parts considered to be Open Game Content. This is the tenth in a regular series that consists of eleven normal issues and a twelfth, compilation, issue which is available as a pay what you want PDF and as a print on demand softcover.

GM's Monthly Miscellany: October 2015This 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 page is the Contents and front matter, 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.

20 Things to Find in an Alchemist’s Laboratory is an article from the publisher’s site. This is a simple list of twenty detailed things that could be found.

Idyll At a Glance is an extract fromĀ  Village Backdrop: Idyll and has a brief overview of the village, its demographics, marketplace, lore, rumours, notable NPCs and locations, as well as a map of the settlement.

Abandoned Village: An Alternate Dungeon is from Alternate Dungeons: Abandoned Village. This has information on designing such a “dungeon“, what could be found there, possible loot and possible dangers.

Logging Town: Sights & Sounds is taken from Urban Dressing: Logging Town and is a d100 table of thinks to see and hear in such a place.

Mounts: Warhorses and Mounts: Ponies are both from So What’s the Mount Like, Anyway? Each provides three different steeds of increasing levels of strength, to account for the fact that normal horses and ponies would quickly be killed in the situations that higher-level characters encounter, as well as a d20 table of names for each.

20 Things to Find in an Abandoned Building is another article from the publisher’s site. This d20 table has various different things to find in this location.

The PDF is well bookmarked for its length. Unfortunately, some of the bookmarks point to the wrong pages. Navigation is therefore okay but not brilliant. There are a few black and white illustrations; these would largely appear to be stock in nature apart from the village map. The text maintains a two column format and some errors were noticed, most noticeably in the list of locations for Idyll, all of which appear to be ten higher than they should be.

Idyll is not quite suitable for use by itself; the village would appear to have unusual features that are not really covered in this extract. It could perhaps be used without the full supplement, but only by removing said unusual features. The Abandoned Village article is a useful step for designing such a location and the logging town table should work in any fantasy setting. Both articles on mounts are usable as is.

This may be intended to primarily promote other supplements from raging Swan, but the articles inside are still useful in and of themselves. GM’s Monthly Miscellany: October 2015 is another useful entry in this series, 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.