Frog God Games Grab Bag

Ye old Frog God Games, aka Necromancer Games recently sent out a coupon for the Grab Bag. It's $300 retail worth of product for $100. The coupon was $25 off of that.

I put in an order, mentioned a few of the things I already have, as a former backer of some of the Kickstarters and long time purchaser of Necromancer Games and Frog God Games products.

It was VERY quickly delivered. Packaging was top notch. Everything very well protected. Separated into different sleeves for maximum protection. There is a mix of OSR material in the form of Swords & Wizardry, as well as more modern gaming material in the form of Pathfinder support.

And here's what's in there.

PRODUCT	RETAIL
Swords & Wizardry Coloring Album	4.99
Hex Crawl Chronicles: The Golden Meadows	9.99
Hex Crawl Chronicles: The Troll Hills	9.99
Hex Crawl Chronicles: The Pirate Coast	9.99
Hex Crawl Chronicles: The Shattered Empire	9.99
Swords & Wizardry MCMLXXV	9.99
Grimsgate	9.99
Saturn Night Special: Ice Tower of the Salka	9.99
Castle Baldemar's Dungeon	9.99
Razor Coast Map Folio	9.99	4.99
One Night Stands: Curse of Shadowhold	11.99
One Night Stands: The Spire of Iron and Crystal	11.99
Swords & Wizardry GM Screen	11.99
Razor Coast Freebooter's Guide	19.99
The Black Monastery	33.99
Razor Coast Heart of the Razor	39.99	19.99
Tome of Horrors 4	44.95
Rappan Athuk  Level 7B	9.99
Rappan Athuk Bestiary	8.99
Rappan Athuk Player's Guide	9.99
Rappan Athuk Level 7B	9.99
Rappan Athuk Cylopean Deeps Part 2: Cult of the Khyrll	9.99
	318.74	293.76

Note that on the Rappan Athuk material, I'm 'guestimating' 9.99. There are no prices on it. I checked the Frog God Games website and they have a few of these listed, one of them for $8.99 so I adjusted that price, but many not at all. I also received two copies of Rappan Athuk Level 7B for some reason.

Note that where you see a secondary cost, such as with Razor Coast Map Folio and Razor Coast Heart of the Razor, I included that because when you pay full for the listed price on Paizo's web site, you get the PDF as well. If you were looking for a more 'accurate' count, you really should take the cost of the PDF , which gives you $294.76. Still a hell of a bargain. Less still of a bargain if you're a smart shopper and visit places like Noble Knight Games that have quite a few of these on sale for less, sometimes significantly less, than these prices.

Good news? I actually don't have any of it.

Bad news? Not a fan of Swords & Wizardry so the Razor Coast stuff, while useful for background information, will probably wind up going out.

The other stuff looks like it's useful for one shots. The Tome of Horror 4... I've read unflattering reviews of it but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt for now and try to find time to do an actual review later.

For those who've ordered the mystery grab bags from +Frog God Games , what did you get? Any stands outs? Any particular bits that you didn't know that you would love?

For me, I suspect the Black Monastery will be getting a run in the near distant future (meaning I'm in the middle of an Adventure Path now but...).

The Grey Citadel Adventure Prep

Many moons ago I reviewed The Grey Citadel over at En World. The individual reviews look like they're now in some type of feed system over here.

I've been thinking of running some D&D and nothing too deep. One of the problems with me is that letting my players know I'm doing an Adventure Path is they get all up in character creation from 1st-18th level and have these unrealistic expectations. The Grey Citadel is much smaller but still meaty and I can probably get over a month's play out of the thing.

So I've been rereading it and trying to determine what the best methodology for setting the game up is.I've been downloading stuff from Dark Loch, the original website that supported the adventure. It still has all sorts of goods on it.

One of the problems is that while not absolutely required, 3.5 and Pathfinder in general, use miniatures. As I look through the book, I count up some of the monsters. There are several encounters with striges, one encounter having eight of the things. In terms of skeletons, one with something like 15 of them. Ouch.

But skeletons aren't bad. I've messed with skirmish style war gaming enough to easily have twice that level covered. There are a lot of encounters with thugs as well. And if I wanted to use city guard? Something like ten to an encounter. Ouch again.

Mind you I can use say Fiery Dragon and their digital counter collection. I know somewhere around here I have one of the CD's. Hell, I've used those magic life counters for miniatures in the past.

Still, there's nothing like the physical presence of miniatures on the table. Of course it helps that I like painting too mind you.

I'll have to start going through the old collection and seeing what I can find.

Another 'problem' is that I like having maps. Mind you there are some fantastic maps in the book but I'm talking full scale maps. There are also a few potential fights that don't have maps so I'll have to figure out where those could happen and review my various Paizo Pathfinder maps. Love those suckers as they have so many of them that might fit some of these scenarios.

In terms of the adventure set up, because I'm probably just going to run it as a one-off, I'm thinking of two itnroductions. The players have been summoned for their skills to the Citadel, they happen to be in the Citadel for their own business, or, the more likely possibility, is that they were escorting a caravan here.

I say most likely because The Grey Citadel includes a bit of information outside of the city and it appeals to me that I can use that information already included in the book to get some more mileage out of it and act as a way to introduce the characters to the city.

I've also started to make a few notes outside the book where I think the players would ask for more information. For example, there's a 'celebration' of a rival party of adventurers and I know the first thing the players are going to want are details on what they look like, weapons, etc... so I'm cribbing that in a separate piece so I can have easy access to it outside the book instead of flipping through it.

If the group does decide they're cool with it, and that's a big if as right now they're doing some World of Darkness stuff, which frankly isn't my cup of tea which is why I'm not playing with the amigos at the moment, (yeah, I know I'm a bad sport), I may have to make some more changes deciding on what character class and races the players pick.

The Grey Citadel is available from Drivethrurpg in a few formats. In e-book it's $7.98, in print it's $19.95, and combo is $20.95 The combo is probably the best value and I admit to being a little shocked at the print price as that's what it was when it first came out in 2003 and I assumed there would be some cost association with printing it.

For those who run prewritten adventurers like this, how do you go about it? How many read throughs? How much customization? Do you prefer to have specific miniatures that match the adventure or are you okay with substitutions?

Barrowmaze II and Rappan Athuk have arrived

So Barrowmaze II, which I also got Barrowmaze the original, and Rpapan Athuk were both at my door today.

Dudes from Frog God, please see if you can use the guys who did the Barrowmaze dice. They look nice and apparently didn't hold up the project.

Your special die is essentially a d6 with the Necromancer Games logo. Theirs is a little more colorful with a few icons.

The shipping packages were both the same type but apparently someone told the USPS dude to go hog wild on the Rappan Athuk boxed set.

The shinny one under it? Yeah, Barrowmaze. Ugh.

So overall, I would do another Indiegogo for the guy who did Barrowmaze. The material arrived on time. The price was reasonable. The goods were neat. Unless Frog God really kicks up its game with its next Kickstarters, I will only buy their product on the shelf or from Paizo when I want the PDF/Print combo and discount and discounted shipping.

I've gone over the reasons why before but a brief recap.

1. Selling it at Gen Con. Now mind you, selling it at Gen Con in and of itself isn't bad. But when miniature companies like Blackwater Gultch and RPG companies like the guys who did Shadows of Esteren, where you could pick up a book with a customized picture in it...

2. Delayed Shipping.  This isn't too bad to be honest. August to October is only two months. Some people were like, "But you get the PDFs and other freebies!" to which I could point out many people who backed it going, "Like the PDFs but waiting for the hardcopies." Mind you, the real pisser for me, is that as a Paizo subscriber, if I ordered from Paizo, I'd get the PDF. I'd also get a discount. I'd also get a better shipping price. Not some of the freebies like the dice, which caused another delay but I'd get the book and PDFs.

3. Shipping Charges. Many of the projects I've backed had no shipping charges. I fully understand that's not always possible. Charging people for shipping well before you have the product to ship out? Simply put, not cool. Not cool at all. If you don't have the package, you dont' send a shipping invoice. Period. End of story. Mind you, I can see the reason why they did it. How are they going to know that they're going to be boned by the dice people? If it had been me? I'd have made the dice people ship out those dice specifically to the customers but that may not have been possible. If they had held off on the shipping charges, are they going to scramble at the last minute waiting for everyone to pay when even now they're waiting on people to pay?

4. The damn thing was damaged. Not huge damage. Not something I'm going to cry about or ask for a refund, but the front corners were crinkled on the top and bottom. Ugh.

'Outside' observation though is that whenever you bring up some disatisfaction someone else will pipe up that they love the company. I'm not saying burn Frog God Games to the ground or anything like that. It could just be the nature of the Internet that some of these posts sound 'angry' or something. But really, s0ome of the time when you mention dissatisfaction with X, Y, or Z and so many people jump in to 'defend' the company, I have to say, applause to you. Fans like you are a great resource for the company to rely on and its great that such fans enable the companies to keep pumping out material.

Both books will go on the bookshelf. The Frog God one will go next to the other two mammoth tomes I have from them while I may put the Barrowmaze ones by the reprinted 'preimum' copies of the AD&D 1st edition stuff.