Game Night - Retrieving Myrkul's Stone
in RPG Talk
Hi all. Last night we had our first real gaming session with my group.
We play D&D 3.5 with 6 people and have done so with the same group since 1992 (first AD&D 2e).
We come together, have dinner and then start playing. We do this about twice per month.
I DM a group of buccaneers who in this campaign have to retrieve a necromancer stone named Myrkul's Stone. When left in the open, it attracts undead and creates powerful undead from dead creatures around it. It was stored in a monastary in the capital. The thieves fled into an old Dwarven Hall called Salt Hall (search for it on the internet
).
I use a laptop as Server and DM and a second user on the laptop as the Client and move that window onto our TV screen. This setup worked quite well, although the players were too far from the screen to really appreciate the different token poses I added. When I enlarged everything in Windows it worked better.
The game went really well. Everyone really liked the FOW, movement animation, movement restrictor and switching the undead to a "dead" state (dead token with blood when not a skeleton). It was also faster than ways we used maps before. It also didn't crash the whole evening
What we missed:
- Measuring line for distances,
- AOO overlays to show what certain spells could hit. I made two tokens myself as a test (fireball and 60ft cone), but that was not enough and I found that it being tokens doesn't really work well enough, since a base is shown that is not needed for this. This could also be done with just lines to show the edges of the AOO shape.
- Height indication. I would be nice if a character can see a height indication for the spot he/she is in. This could possibly be done by drawing a blocked height map on top of the background map. This height map should not be visible to players during play, but some indicator on the screen can show the current height for a player. The DM should be able to view the height map at will and make changes on the fly if needed.
- Turn based sequencer. I still use an Excel sheet with initiative and HP of opponents. I didn't use the hp stats in Skirmish, because I still have to count the number of deaths for their experience rewards and set states (like pertificated, burning, prone, dead, etc) for effected opponents. If this could be included into the turn sequencer, it would eliminate my use for an Excel sheet. It should also allow creation of encounters beforehand and upload them when needed. Then you can change it depernding on the situation.
- Multi item/creature selection. Lots and lots of undead to go through. This cost me the most time.
- Auto save setting. The DM can set the time for the interval. The saved games should include a timestamp in the title.
All-in-all is was a great experience for us all and although we have wishes, this already works very well.
We play D&D 3.5 with 6 people and have done so with the same group since 1992 (first AD&D 2e).
We come together, have dinner and then start playing. We do this about twice per month.
I DM a group of buccaneers who in this campaign have to retrieve a necromancer stone named Myrkul's Stone. When left in the open, it attracts undead and creates powerful undead from dead creatures around it. It was stored in a monastary in the capital. The thieves fled into an old Dwarven Hall called Salt Hall (search for it on the internet
).I use a laptop as Server and DM and a second user on the laptop as the Client and move that window onto our TV screen. This setup worked quite well, although the players were too far from the screen to really appreciate the different token poses I added. When I enlarged everything in Windows it worked better.
The game went really well. Everyone really liked the FOW, movement animation, movement restrictor and switching the undead to a "dead" state (dead token with blood when not a skeleton). It was also faster than ways we used maps before. It also didn't crash the whole evening
What we missed:
- Measuring line for distances,
- AOO overlays to show what certain spells could hit. I made two tokens myself as a test (fireball and 60ft cone), but that was not enough and I found that it being tokens doesn't really work well enough, since a base is shown that is not needed for this. This could also be done with just lines to show the edges of the AOO shape.
- Height indication. I would be nice if a character can see a height indication for the spot he/she is in. This could possibly be done by drawing a blocked height map on top of the background map. This height map should not be visible to players during play, but some indicator on the screen can show the current height for a player. The DM should be able to view the height map at will and make changes on the fly if needed.
- Turn based sequencer. I still use an Excel sheet with initiative and HP of opponents. I didn't use the hp stats in Skirmish, because I still have to count the number of deaths for their experience rewards and set states (like pertificated, burning, prone, dead, etc) for effected opponents. If this could be included into the turn sequencer, it would eliminate my use for an Excel sheet. It should also allow creation of encounters beforehand and upload them when needed. Then you can change it depernding on the situation.
- Multi item/creature selection. Lots and lots of undead to go through. This cost me the most time.
- Auto save setting. The DM can set the time for the interval. The saved games should include a timestamp in the title.
All-in-all is was a great experience for us all and although we have wishes, this already works very well.
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Comments
Per height difference you want you can create a square of a different color.
For instance:
10 feet = white
15 feet = light grey
20 feet = grey
25 feet = dark grey
30 feet = black
Now you use these to draw onto the map to indicate the height. This should probably create a map layer only visible to the DM..
This way a PC can see how high the ceiling is when walking through a cave and take actions that fit the height (start flying, grow, place a wall of the correct size, fit a web spell, etc.)
So it's not to indicate how high a person is, but how high a ceiling or object is relative to the ground they are standing on (like the branches of a tree).
Hope this makes it a bit more clear.
I'm not sure how one decides a scaling factor, but if yo used 256 bits, with each representing 1 foot, that might do it. You could use the red value for floor and green values for celling. I can't immediately think whether the blue value would have any use...