RPG Miniatures and Tokens

Combat in a roleplaying game can be a difficult beast to manage. As I was cleaning the multitude of old links in my browser, I stumbled across this video for a gaming table. I thought initially, "Wow, this is awesome." The clip gives a good demonstration oh how it is used.

Reviewing the video, I started to think that this appears to be a lot of pre-game work for the DM to have the adventure map loaded and pre-populated. And what happens when they party does the unthinkable, like go off in a completely opposite direction. I am familiar with techniques on how to bring the party back to the story line, but I have recently had some issues with a player 'testing' his character's free will in the game. While I still think this table is pretty cool, I'll wait for the iTable to become cost effective [holding breath].

This has lead to the thought, how do most people utilize character and monster representation in combat. Aside from power sinking hundreds in prepainted/unpainted/partially-painted miniatures, here are a couple techniques that we've employed. The first one is the use of glass gems to represent creatures. We generally try to use miniatures to represent are own characters, but hunting for the right monster to represent one you didn't have could be time consuming, especially if you are playing a game that does not have its own miniature line. We found glass gems did the trick nicely, with different colors representing different types of creatures. One group I played with did the exact opposite, they still used the D&D prepainted miniatures for the monsters, but each player had their own gem stone with a symbol painted on top of it.

At some point, my wife had bought a number of extra Scrabble tiles and I thought that these would be perfect to represent monsters. Not only are they the perfect size for maps, but the letters make it easy to determine which monster you want to attack, "I'm going to attack skeleton 'G'." I tried purchasing some off ebay, but I came to find that Scrabble tiles are highly prized among the scrap-booking community. As a result, I found it was just as cheap to buy a new Scrabble game. So then I started looking for Scrabble games at thrift stores. Due to the popularity of Scrabble, used Scrabble games is pretty easy to find. Since I only wanted 26 letters from a set, I kept searching until I found two different sets of Scrabble tiles. The common lighter color ones pictured here, and a darker set from a 'Deluxe Scrabble Edition'.

Amongst my searches, I found a small set of tiles from a travel edition, a game of banangrams that also use tiles, and a rare "Alfred's Other Game" from the creator of Scrabble; the last two do not have numbers along side the letters, which is nice if the numbers annoy you. All in all, I'm pretty happy using the tiles. Characters are able to articulate their battle plans easier and I am able to keep track of the opponents more efficiently. It may not be as efficient as having the monsters preset into a computer program, but I think using tiles and a dry erase map is quicker when you have to create something on the fly.

What does your group use to represent monster and player character's on the battlefield?

Game Continuity

Well, I have waited too long since I posted an article. The year started off good and, as usual, life churns and everything becomes a tangled mess of putting out fires. This brings me to the topic I would like to discuss in this post, Game Continuity.

Game continuity is something I learned at an early stage of game mastering, and I believe this lesson has garnered me praise for my games. I do not think continuity is difficult to employ, but using it does require an attention to detail, fastidious notes, and somewhat of a flair for the dramatic.

So what is game continuity? Game continuity the ability to make a series of gaming sessions appear as one intertwined story. Continuity is more than just a ‘campaign’, although campaigns use elements of continuity. Continuity is allowing the players to draw the conclusions and realize there are forces behind the scenes they are not aware.

I like to utilize pre-made adventures with my story arc. This allows me to utilize someone else ideas and blend them with my own to create a more detailed story. Some game masters like to use ‘home brew’ adventures. This is fine if you don’t fall into a flat arc. Often a game master will use his own adventure and the players will be railroaded into the story, making them feel like their actions don’t really matter. Other times the players feel that the game master is making stuff up ‘on-the-fly’ and that the he does not have the adventure planned out. Using a premade adventure, allows the game master to have a detailed plot to fall back on if the players go awry from the original story arc. If you can handle the detail, try running two or three premade adventure along with your own. This will confound the players as well as give them a sense that there is more in the world than they can handle t one time.

Using multiple adventure also link stories together is such away that the transition from one adventure to the next is seamless. This requires some work, especially if you use premade adventures, but from my experience keeps the players more engaged. There are some excellent premade adventures out that can easily modified to fit a campaign. Do not be set a single gaming system either, I have modified Science Fiction adventures for fantasy games, the idea is to take what you need for your game.

Be sure you keep good notes, when you create an non-player character out of the blue, write down the name. You never know when the merchant the party met at first level turns out to be an empire spy 7 levels later. If players do connect abstract references to previous games, award them experience. This will make player look for possible connections in the game a make the world more cohesive.

Fun with Dice

I am often rolling my dice; sometimes for no purpose other that to see what I get. One of the fun things that some of my players have liked is gambling dice games while the characters are spending time in town. The usual choice of games is…. Knucklebones. I’m unsure where we picked this little gem up and I did a little research, but if you have some idea, please post a comment.

So, Knucklebones is played with 2d6. Each player tries to roll as high as possible, once it gets back to the starting player, he has the option to reroll. If he chooses to reroll, each participant has the option to reroll or keep what they got. If he chooses not to reroll, then everyone is stuck with their initial roll. So this can be fun if everyone buys into it, add a little role-playing and you could possibly spend the entire evening at the knucklebones table.

The last part I want to leave is with card games… card games have never gone over too well because they take a lot more time. Well, while I was at the local thrift shop, I came across the game ‘Vegas 21′ by Fundex Games. This is a blackjack dice game with 6d12 numbered two thru ace. There is a missing number on each die as there isn’t enough sides for thirteen cards (the number is different for each die). Now this has made ‘rolling’ a poker hand pretty quick. If you have a player that fancies himself as a cardshark, this may allow him to play some quick hands without monopolizing game time.

What games of chance have you added to your games?

Timing is Everything

So your players have just crashed in on your nefarious mastermind behind the current adventure. After some light banter, one of your players make an unexpected maneuver and may possibly end the encounter prematurely. You really hadn’t planned for them to punk your billy bad guy, but they are a creative lot. What should you do?

Well, if you are like me you may have a tendency to to use your on-the-fly thwarting spell. This is like a contingency spell, but it magically conforms itself to thwart any actions of a player character that may end a scene prematurely. I can not say how much this irritates players, and rightly so. If your players feel that whatever they do has no effect on the game, they may loose interest. Your players want to be epic, and they want to do it their way.

So what do you do? Let them have their moment. If a player jumps up and fires an arrow at their nemesis during the recital of his dastardly plan and manages to score a critical hit, maxing out damage, and some how causes enough to just barely knock him unconscious… let him. It might not be the way you planned it to go down, but your players will talk about it for years to come. Remember, you control the rest of the world and they may have punked that necromancer, but what did they do about all his minions? That abused young man the character rescued could, in fact, be be a fiercely loyal apprentice to the necromancer.