At Will

Playwrite has a bevy of cool tools that I’m downloading as I type this and will be testing out shortly — I’ll give full video reviews soon, but in the meantime you should check out the following Windows software and see what you think as all the tools seem promising:

• Trackworks - an initiative tracker, compatible with 4e.
• 4th Edition Power Creator - easily the best looking power creator I’ve seen.  Nice interface, HTML export features. One of the tools I’m most excited about.
• Crawlnotes - So. Fricken. Cool.  It might replace my current tool for session notes, The Journal. Mock out  dungeon visually and attach your notes to it!
• 4e Class Creator - Not out yet, but worth watching and waiting for.

Some great software here, so I hope there’s more to come.

…with Asmor’s latest web-based utility, Quartermaster.  He has links to AppleSeeth’s site as well, which has an offline generator (Windows/.NET only).  I tend to like selecting treasure tailored to the party, but if you want a more organic feel, or are in a pinch, this would very helpful.

Buy this screen!  A lot of screens have come my way in the last two decades, and this if by far the coolest.

It’s low and wide design fits my uses perfectly, and it’s beautiful.  The quality if nice as well.  Thick laminated cardstock and beautiful artwork. Look:

And it’s cheap.  Ten bucks.  I appreciate that they didn’t try to inflate the price by adding in some “extra” adventures or reference that I was not going to use ever again. 

So…please.  Stop reading.  go and buy yourself a copy of this book.  You’ll like the screen, and you’ll love yourself for doing so.

I’ve discussed my search for a good play-area here, and in the end I settled on Dungeon Tiles.  I still mean to experiment with Heroscape tiles, but in the meantime I like the art on the Dungeon Tiles and I can get them up and working with minimal fuss. That is, until you get something a bit more complex than usual, say:

Please forgive the picture fidelity –all I’ve got on hand is my cellie cam.

This table spanning epic is what I mapped out for my players.  It’s the product of two sets of Lost Caverns of the UnderDark and  one set of Fane of the Forgotten Gods.  Pretty cool, but how in the heck am I going to assemble that without either showing the whole map come game time, or incorporating “build lag” between every room.

Then an idea hit me. Actually my wife hit me. With an idea.  There was conversation we had about this, but I’ll give you the equation.  Dungeon Tiles + Foam Board + Double-Sided Tape = modular, reusable terrain tiles.

Once you’ve layed out the dungeon, you can then cut out foam pieces and tape them onto the foam boards.  You make the sections what the PCs will see, and then you can easily lay out the dungeon a chunk at a time with about as much lag as takes you to connect two boards.

The boards are in progress here.  I confirmed that the double-sided tape is indeed safe for your tiles, so you’re not yanking the print off the other side.  The first time you do this, I’ll confess, is going to take a bit of time.  But after you’re done, you’ll have the boards cut, now all you’ll have to do is re-tape the new boards.  I think you could even grid the foam board out and have uniform slices, which is something I’ll try on the next iteration.

After enough cutting and taping, you get this:

Definitely pick black foam board, as it just looks better and white is going to get grungy super-fast.

It’s not a Games Workshop table, but it’s solid and works at right around my craft level (I’ve only levelled craft once, ever.)

Hope that helps all my Dungeon Tile using brethren!

It’s funny.  No, not my horrible pun about traps, but how the universe brings you things that you need at the exact moment that you need them.  I”m building a dungeon, putting in some traps, and then I come across a whole article describing traps in 4e, complete with solid advice on ‘re-skinning’ (Which I’ve already done at least once in 4e) traps, and more sample traps.  Requires a D&D Insider account, but I assume you have that until we have to start paying soon

I’ve made some monsters, played around with the game, and so I did what anyone interested in the guts would naturally do: make a new class.  I won’t ramble on too much, I’ll Just give it to you as it stands at the moment.  Critiques and comments welcome!

Mindwitch

“Most seek their powers from outside themselves.  All of my power comes from within, and I am stronger for it.”

Read the rest of this entry »

…now it all needs to do is play for you!  This character sheet at pfhoenix (needs .NET/Mono to run) has some promise.  It includes a fully detailed list with power descriptions and abilities, so it can get you up and running with a character very quickly.  Magic item select/auto-fill isn’t in yet, but this program is about 80% of the way to being perfect.

Propagandroid just released the coolest thing on the Gamer Dome:  a useful PHB.  I’ve gone through it, and it is full of awesome.  If you find yourself wasting time looking for info, then you owe it to yourself to grab this great download.

Thanks Propagandroid!  Now if we can WotC to put this in the next printing…

Greywulf had the epiphany that 4e’s movement frees us from the gridmonster.  I brought up the point that, well, freedom isn’t necessarily free –you go gridless and have to bring a bunch of tapemeasures and template and what have you to the party.

But then, propagandroid, as if to supply a riposte to my naysaying of a gridless roleplaying world, built an encounter board based on the maps in Keep on the Shadowfells.  I would gladly lift up my tape measure (I do play Warhammer 40k, after all, so it’s not like it’s absent from my gamer toolbox) to play out encounters on cool tables such as this.

Once he builds out all the encounters, he’s going to have a cool basis for future sessions.  Like I already commented on his blog, I’m a little jealous of his players.  Now that I’m all inspired, I might have to build something like this myself.

One thing I’ve contemplated is the use of my Heroscape tiles for terrain.  To me it seems a neat blend of the gridless approach (3d on the cheap) and the grid-based approach, with hexes instead of squares.  If you haven’t seen Heroscape setup, it is rather cool.

Because I’m a colossal dork, I raided a closing Toys ‘R’ Us and got two sets on the super cheap.  I haven’t ever played the game, but I have recently scavenged the fantasy minis for my games.  Setting up wilderness scenes with the tiles is the natural progression, methinks.

Back to the realm of grids, I just bought multiple sets of Dungeon Tiles — wish I had this 3-d sattori before that purchase — and the only complaint I can really levle against them besides their flatness is storage.  Storage is going to be a problem with any of these solutions to representing terrain of course, but it seems particularly easy to get disorganized with all the little tidbits associated with the dungeon tiles. I need to make a trip to the store and rustle up some huge econo-size ziploc bags.

The last bit of terraining that’s available is the Worldworks approach, i.e. paper terrain.  The lads at WorldWorks do stuff with cardstock that I honestly wouldn’t have thought possible.  A beautiful forest built from cardstock?  Surely you jest.

Apparently not.  With quality models like this, it’s very very tempting. You can print however much you need, so the cost will be a one time affair.  It’s probably the cheapest method of making terrain, but it also appears that it would take the longest.  I lack the skills with paper and cutting to make this a definitive assertion, though.

So, how are you thinking of escaping the grid?