Westeros and the Cheap DM

The Cheap DM is back and this time, he sets his sights on Westeros! So, are there enough free resources on the web, to provide the basic info we need to run a campaign set in this world? Without resorting to out-and-out piracy? Between the fact that I'm posting this and the new HBO series, firing things up, there's really no doubt that the answer is yes!

Sure, you can just go out and buy that expensive newfangled rpg (which is actually reasonably priced for the print version, but I'm trying to stay in character, here). Or, read the books and pull out the info for yourself. But, they may not be practical, desirable or doable, for all sorts of reasons! Besides, many of my reader's will have no use for the d20 game info, so why pay for all of that? We can do our own stats. We just need setting. That's why the Cheap DM is here!

We need maps, ones that are good enough, so that they'll at least look ok, printed out. A Gazetteer, so that when the players point to a location on the map and say "what's that?", we'll at least have some sort of an answer. Some history. The gods. And, considering the setting, as much NPC info as we can get! Whatever other info we can find, to help out, as well.

It's been a while since I've done one of these, so let's take a quick look back at previous entries in the series:

• Conan and the Cheap DM provided everything we needed to put together a campaign set in Hyboria. Indeed, there was so much useful stuff out there, that I posted a part II. (The title of the post was a reference to some of the Tor Pastich books, "Conan and the Grim Grey God," etc. I kept the joke going, for the follow-up entries in the series.)
  
• Prof. Tolkien and the Cheap DM was no sweat, at all! There's a ton of awesome material for us to plunder! Much more than enough, to make running a campaign set in Middle-Earth, easy!
  
• Zagyg and the Cheap DM was, thanks to all the wonderful Greyhawk devotees on the web, a piece of cake!
  
• Elminster and the Cheap DM was a bit tougher! The vast majority of the Forgotten Realms sites, which were once so numerous, are gone. But, thanks to a few, comprehensive sources, we were good to go!

Now, let's get started on Westeros!

Warning! You may encounter spoilers, so, if you aren't up to date on the novels, you might want to be careful.

Allright! I'll admit it! I chose an easy target, this time. I had another one in mind, which, while doable, was just barely so and left me unsatisfied. I might go back and see what else I can dig up for that one.

A Game of Thrones.net. From the about page:

Game of Thrones.NET is a persistent role playing game world built upon the Neverwinter Nights 2 engine that is based upon the best selling novel, A Game of Thrones, by George R. R. Martin. It is a permadeath world in which players play a preeminent role in the evolution of the world through the actions of their characters.

Ok. What matters to us here, is that it's got a ton of info and maps! Really, everything we need and then some! Click on the various sections and then, most of the listings have more pages, nested within. I mention this because the pages are brown on brown and an eyesore! Pretty much every word that you have to nose up to your monitor to read, is a link to more detailed info! The whole thing is quite thorough, though I can't vouch for how accurate it all is. The author(s) state their devotion to adhering to canon, so there you go. There's gazetteer info, maps, npc's, religion, culture, etc., etc., etc! Someones put a shitload of work into this site! I love gamers, I really do! Nice, huge, expandable maps! For the d20 players, there's game mechanics, prestige classes and what not.

Now, we can declare victory right here, but let's go for the overkill! We might find some better, cooler, stuff. Or, at the least, have some more fun!

Ooh! Look at this. Westeros: The Song of Ice and Fire Domain. A Wiki, a Concordance (for more in-depth coverage of topics), Heraldry, Maps. Plenty of stuff to scarf up.

A hexmap, is called for. John at Campaign Mastery did a review of Hexographer. Featured in his article, is a hexmap of Westeros done with the program. Click and expand. It's huge. No number labels, though.

The Song of Ice and Fire Animated Timeline Map site may be of use. If you go to the faq, there's a link to download the really nice map used.

The Illustrated Guide to Houses & Character Relationships will help you keep all those damn npc's straight!

As you might expect, HBO has some material available. Including this downloadable viewer's guide. Some pretty pictures and a nice map.

Granted, the thrust of this post is telling Green Ronin to suck it (no offense, GR,) but you might find their A Song of Ice and Fire free quick-start, useful.

And, as you might expect, Wikipedia has some nice overview info.

I'm sure there's more out there, but this will suffice to run a campaign and let you devote your hard earned cash, where information is more scarce. Like Tekumel, or something. 

Zagyg and the Cheap DM – A Guide to Free Resources for Running a Greyhawk Campaign

So, continuing with our series, can we garner enough free resources from the web, to allow us to run a more or less canonical Greyhawk campaign? Without resorting to piracy or ebay? Hell yes! Thanks to the many dedicated Greyhawk scholars active on the web, we’re set!

Let’s start with some maps!

The Maps Compilation Index at Greyhawk Online is the only link we need. Go there and be prepared to spend a couple of hours, scarfing everything  up! There are certainly other pages with other maps, floating about. But this site has you covered.

Ok, that was easy! Now, what about a Gazetter/Encyclopedia?

This will be easy, too! The Great Library of Greyhawk, a Greyhawk Wiki, will be our main resource, here. The Locations Index page, is a good place to start. The Realms sub-page is here. Here’s the url  for the Greyhawk Deities page.  From there, just follow the links or type something into the search box. The statistics page, estimates that there are 1,254 pages with content on the wiki. Many of the pages I looked at were illustrated as well. Very pleasing! This comprehensive site, has fulfilled our needs, very well!

So, it’s quite early in our quest and we’ve already pretty much accomplished our mission! But, let’s not stop yet. There’s a whole bunch, of really useful resources available. Let’s look at a few!

More Greyhawk!

The Oerth Journal. 25 issues and counting. History, timelines, locations, gods and more.

Grodog’s Greyhawk site. Greyhawk scholarship, for your reading and gaming pleasure!

Canonfire! has some things for you to check out. Be sure to visit their forums.

Maladin’s Greyhawk is another good site. Be sure to check out this page, for the Encyclopedia Subterranica.

Gord’s Greyhawk, contains material derived from the Gord novels by Gary Gygax.

Help from the Blogosphere.

Joe Bloch of Greyhawk Grognard fame, has some great material for us! Including his Castle of the Mad Archmage megadungeon and maps of the City of Greyhawk!

Grendelwulf from Axe & Hammer has some more Greyhawk Goodness, including work on his herculean task, of bringing us a certain Grey City!

Lord of the Green Dragons, has plenty of material of interest, including the Cold Text File WG4 Series by Scottsz.

All right, that one was too easy!

A hearty thanks to all the awesome gamers, who’ve went the extra mile to give us everything we need to run Greyhawk! If you’ll look to the left, my Greyhawk links section will lead you to a even more, awesome Greyhawk material.

Prof. Tolkien and the Cheap DM – Online Resources for Putting Together a Middle-Earth Campaign

I never got into Rolemaster. My gaming friends and I, were quite happy with AD&D, thank you very much. Today, I wish I had started exploring what I.C.E. had to offer. If I had done so, I would no doubt now own some of the many Middle-Earth supplements the company produced. It would take quite a hefty bag of gold, to rectify that, now. Ebay beckons, so maybe someday.

But, aside from the concerns of the Collector, if all I want to do is run a Middle-Earth campaign, then I already have everything I need. There’s so much material on Prof. Tolkien’s milieu available on the web, that sorting through it all, is the real chore.

Though I didn’t spend a whole lot of time digging, actual Merp resources on the web, seem to be rather scarce. I did find a yahoo group, dedicated to Middle-Earth gaming utilizing Merp and other systems, which appears to be fairly active.  Membership pending.

All in all, I found very little in the way of specifically RPG tailored material for Middle-Earth. I ran across several references to instances of Tolkien Enterprises giving some gamer and fan based sites a hard time, so that’s probably a contributing factor. Over and over again, I found dead sites, abandoned sites, or sites where the owner’s had changed the focus of their gaming. I thought I might come across some useful work on Decipher’s Lotr RPG, but I found nothing of substance.

Regardless, there’s a ton of general info on the milieu. You’ll have to do the rules adjustments yourself, but for setting info and maps, we’re covered!

Maps! Some links to high quality maps of Middle-Earth.

Here’s the Complete Map of Middle-Earth website, hosting a 506k PDF map, which is very nicely done.

The Map of Middle Earth Version 7 by Thierry Jungels is a 1.02 MB JPEG file.

The Mearth Map site has a 1.15 MB PDF.

A 794 KB JPEG by Thomas Lornsen.

A 736 KB JPEG of Prof. Tolkien’s Red, Black & White map.

The Arda Library Maps Page, has some good files! This one in particular, is rather pretty.

Lastly, Maps of Middle Earth has some files, which you might want to check out. 

That fulfills our basic map needs. Several of the sites, which we will now be taking a look at, have some more map files and ones of specific areas, but the sites listed above contain the nicest and highest res maps, which I found in my search.

Now, we need a Gazetteer!

I am nowhere near, to being a Tolkien Scholar. I’ve also, only perused the following sites. So, I cannot vouch for their fidelity to the source material or general accuracy. They look pretty good to me, though. The list given here, is by no means complete. There’s a ton of material out there.

The Encyclopedia of Arda is damned impressive! Really, the only link we need in this section. It’s frickin Huge! The maps section has a clickable map of ME, zooming in to provide many, many small area maps. A list provides direct links to these. I’m not sure how many entries the encyclopedia contains. Far, far more for me to try to count and I didn’t see any statistics on the site, itself. An offline version, is available for purchase.

Moving on, let’s see what other nifty sites, we can find.

Tolkien Gateway is another Encyclopedia.

“the J.R.R. Tolkien encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

8,340 articles and 5,433 images”

Tolkien Fans, have been busy!

Wikipedia’s Portal: Middle Earth should keep you occupied, for a while. The main Middle Earth page at Wikipedia, has a nice overview.

While smaller in scope than the previous sites mentioned, Finduilas’s J.R.R. Tolkien Page, has some essays and material, which you might find useful.

And for the last of the Encyclopedia’s The Council of Elrond. There are others, out there on the web. But this should be more than enough!

For the Hardcore DM: Language Studies!

So, if I don’t create a language for my homebrew, does that make me a Poser as a World-Builder? I’m far, far too lazy busy, to learn enough about linguistics to even think of attempting such a task. Even were I so inclined. I’m geeky enough to think it’s cool, though.

Here’s the Quenya Course site.

I’m not sure what the name of this site is. The heading at the top of the page is in some form of Elven. Amongst other things, it contains a Sindarin Language Course, composed of 22 lessons. Get to studying!

Finally, the Resources for Tolkienian Linguistics site.

A few more Odds & Ends

Other Hands contains an archive of a Middle-Earth gaming zine.

Tolkien’s Parish: The Canonical Middle-Earth, has some essays, you might enjoy.

That should be enough to get us started!

That should about do it! Without resorting to piracy, or even purchasing, we have enough materials to run Prof. Tolkien’s milieu! Just throw in some Old School Elbow Grease and you’re all set to go. Here’s a couple of links from the OD&D Discussion Forum, with discussions about using OD&D in ME: here and here. A bonus map link, which I think you’ll like, appeared in one of those threads, as well.

“Conan and the Cheap DM” Revisited – A Few More Free Resources for Running Hyboria

In my original post, Conan and the Cheap DM – A Guide to Free Resources for Running a Hyborian Campaign, I gathered and spewed forth all the free Conan material I had found, which I thought would be useful for DM’s looking to run a Hyborian Campaign. One based entirely on free resources. I think the links provided, led to enough material to get the job done.

Though I’ve never played it, I have some of Mongoose’s Conan RPG books. In particular, The Road of Kings, their Hyborian gazetteer for the game. I took this from my shelf for a little bit of reading, last night. Conan was on my mind. I had been organizing some of my files, earlier in the evening and had temporarily moved my Conan stuff into my Download folder, where I usually keep things I’m currently working with. I had also, just run across another Conan Download.

Here's a Castles & Crusades fan made Conan Supplement by David Bell. Direct Link. I couldn’t find the page with the author’s link. Eight PDF files, totalling over 60 pages.

Ah, but there’s more. Check out Andrew Picciau’s page for his Hyborian Adventures True d20 supplement. A 34 page PDF.

I’m not sure how complete it is, but the Conan Wiki has a Gazetteer and more. Thulsa’s Gazetteer at The Hyborian Age, mentioned in Part I of my series, looks to be far superior, but you still might find the Wiki useful.

Speaking of Wiki’s, you might find the Age of Conan Wiki, to be worth your time.

Here’s an Obsidian Portal campaign, The Nemedian Chronicles.

Another copy of R. E. Howard’s The Hyborian Age, at Manybooks. Read online, or download as a PDF. The Author’s Page for Mr. Howard, has more R.E.H. Goodness!

As I was reading Conan stuff last night, I started considering the idea of creating a free Conan fan supplement. Writing a Gazetteer, making a Map, the whole nine yards. Then I considered:

• That would be a whole lot of work to put into a copyright violation.
• Between the free stuff and the Mongoose stuff, all I really need to do is write a few houserules for LL, S&W, or whatever. I do want to run a Hyborian Campaign, one day.
• It would still be really fun to do!

Maybe when I have more time. It wouldn’t hurt to start re-reading Mr. Howard and taking some notes, though.

Conan and the Cheap DM – A Guide to Free Resources for Running a Hyborian Age Campaign

A couple of years ago, the thought occurred to me that there were now so many free resources available on the web, that enough material could be garnered to run several of the most famous fantasy worlds as RPG settings. So, with nothing better to do, I set about to see what all I could find. I started with R. E. Howard’s Hyborian Age and quickly found more than enough! New material has appeared, since I first started collecting.

So, here’s a list of resources, for DM’s who might be interested in dropping a group of player’s into Conan’s world!

 

Our first stop, is Jason Vey’s Classic Edition Fantasy Resources Page. There, you will find his OD&D supplements The Age of Conan and The Secrets of Acheron. These feature rules for running an OD&D campaign in the Hyborian Age and the main focus is on adapting the game to Howard’s setting. There’s not a lot of info on the milieu itself, but definitely of use. Contains an excerpt of Howard’s essay The Hyborian Age.

Next we come to The Hyborian Age page, by Thulsa. This site really has everything you need. Gods and Demons, a Gazetteer and Maps! Plenty of Maps! Not to mention magic items, famous sorcerers and other personages. The crunch is d20, but if you’re playing an Old School game, it’s easy enough to make your own and truth to tell, you would probably prefer to anyway! The site also reproduces Howard’s The Hyborian Age essay and a ton of other stuff I haven’t mentioned. Including rules for using Black Lotus!

Dragonsfoot # 13 has an AD&D Conversion of Thulsa’s Tower of the Elephant adventure.

Vincent Darlage’s Conan d20 site is another fantastic resource! Lots of info on important NPC’s and a ton of really, really cool Weird Tales artwork and covers!

Mongoose Publishing has a free Map of the Hyborian Age available for download, here.

For some scholarly information, you may find Mysteries of the Hyborian Age by Dale Rippke, to be inspiring.

This one’s rather interesting. Someone put up the Hyborian Age Appendix to the  Handbook of the Marvel Universe.  It’s rather large and contains a ton of Marvel Pictures! For those who aren’t sticklers for purity, an excellent resource!

Hyborian War is an archive of an old Play-by-Mail game, which contains Kingdom Reports and what-not, which you may find useful. No idea if this is still going on or not. The various kingdom reports have some detailed maps of the regions and are in pdf format.

The above links should provide more than enough maps, but if you crave more, a Google Image Search will turn up quite a few.

Conan: Savage Hyboria is a Savage Worlds Conan conversion, which might provide some useful tidbits.

Of course, Howard’s stories are the richest source of Hyborian knowledge. Scroll down this Project Guttenberg index, to find a ton of Kick-Ass Conan Adventure!

Lastly, if you haven’t decided upon a system to use for your Swords & Sorcery gamefest, there’s always ZeFRS – The Retro-Clone of the rules from TSR’s old Conan RPG by David Cook. You can download it here.