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Post by Meph on Feb 17, 2017 12:23:24 GMT
Lol DndPaladin are we really comparing apples to apples here? I don't know anything about your life but I will tell you just a little about mine. I'm 42 and married. I have 2 kids that are 8 and 9 years old. My daughter currently is involved in scouts, band, and chorus....all after school programs. My son is involved in chorus and bricks4kids (lego architecture class), also both after school. I have 19 years as an Officer with the NYS Dept of Corrections. I get up at 5am daily and am at work at 6:45am for lineup. I rush home daily and get here by 4pm to get my kids off the bus at 4:05pm. I run around and pick them up from any after school programs, help with homework, prepare their lunches for the next day, and then make dinner. Wife gets home at 6pm, kids go to bed by 8:30pm. At this point I finally get a moment to breathe.
I have weekends off and usually a good part of Saturday is spent doing something with the family. I don't have time for long prep anymore, hence why I use pre-made materials for my base game. If you actually read my game threads then you would see that even with using pre-made I do a good amount of modifications to make it my own. Go back and read my 2E game threads and that was almost exclusively my own materials. Since 5E was a new system for all of us I elected to run LMoP and I am glad I did. From here on out I don't know what I will do. I have Princes of the Apocalypse, Storm Kings Thunder, Curse of Strahd, Kobold Press "Prepared Adventures" and "Book of Lairs", as well as many many 5E mini adventures or modules that have been released over the years. I also have many of the BX/1E modules that have been converted to 5E. I will probably cherry pick some of the outdoor Giant encounters from SKT, maybe a couple lairs from "Book of Lairs", a couple of my own mini adventures I have kicking around....no matter what I use I guarantee my players will have a great time.
Sunday is my day. My wife and I have an agreement that it's our decompress day. We might do something early in the morning but by noon on Sunday I am generally in my back room, TV on, setting up some things for our evening game. Now all that said, if you can't see why from time to time I get a bit burnt out and would just rather NOT spend my one free day telling a story for 6 others then I don't know what to tell you.
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Post by Meph on Feb 16, 2017 22:17:23 GMT
My prep time almost wholly consists of 3D Printing props, hand crafting terrain, painting minis, or printing maps and such. If I am running my own content I have an outline in my head and I run it mostly on the fly. If I am running published content I will usually print it out, read it though and highlight areas to focus on so I can run it pretty seamlessly. My burnout never comes from the prep time, it comes from playing every week all year. Sometimes I just want a week or two off to do nothing but I have a couple players that really take their game seriously.
I ran last week with 2 players missing (1 had Navy Reserve weekend and 1 skipped due to weather) and I had a good time. I do think my group of 6 wears on me. 4 players seems to be the perfect size to keep the game flowing nicely. Our group of 6 bogs down sometimes especially with one or two players that have trouble deciding what to do. After our small game last week I am in a much better mood about the game as a whole but I am already thinking about spring. Same as last year, I don't plan to run weekly Sunday evening (4-9pm) games when it's 85 degrees and sunny out.
Just for clarification though, I am not really sure how this got on the topic of making games easier to DM. I have been doing this for 30 years and really don't even enjoy "playing" a character. DMing is my thing. My problem isn't the game, it's more about the expectation of my players that I am always ready to go. Every player at my table has missed at least one game, some of them multiple since we started this campaign. I have no problem with that. I take the approach that life happens so if you have to miss a GAME, then so be it. My problem is that I don't get the same courtesy and that is going to change. I already told them last week that I was a bit sour about how things went down. Nobody else has the desire or experience to DM so if I don't make it, the game wont happen. I am fine with that and will be informing the players of that this week.
I appreciate all the input. Last week was really my chance to vent since none of my players read these forums. I have 6 players in my game now and turned away 4 others that I have played with for decades because the group was too big. If any of my current can't handle me taking a break once in a while, there are others waiting to play. =)
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Post by Meph on Feb 12, 2017 14:45:09 GMT
So after taking Superbowl Sunday off we are scheduled to be back to the table tonight. We got dumped with snow here in NY and I blew the gearbox in my snowblower at the beginning of the season, so I spent yesterday shoveling about a foot of snow from my 200 feet of driveway. Last night my 9 year old daughter and I did the daddy/daughter dance and today I am tired. It's freezing rain now and they are projecting another 12 inches through the day, yet my group still says they are coming even when I suggested the week off. The unfortunate side effect that they just can't seem to grasp is that they are pushing me towards another burn out. Weekly sessions are great but the players only need to show up and bring their character sheets. When I have long week, a busy weekend and just need the night off, they don't get it. I am playing tonight. It's our final bit of Lost Mine of Phandelver and I might push DMing off to one of the players for a couple sessions just to get a break and get some material prepared. We'll see how this goes. I am honestly at the point where even my 6 man group is more than I want. I would love to get it down to a slim 4 man group. I feel the games run so much smoother.
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Post by Meph on Feb 12, 2017 14:31:12 GMT
I post fairly often in my game thread and game prep threads, you just don't read them
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Post by Meph on Feb 5, 2017 18:48:46 GMT
I love it. Makes me want to try out something post apocalyptic!
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Post by Meph on Feb 3, 2017 0:27:09 GMT
Well we ended up taking this week off for the Superbowl so I have a couple weeks to prepare. I really want to move on to my homebrew world but I don't want to pull the players out of a campaign they are enjoying so for now I will continue. I want to spend my time working on my own world and house rules (which there are many) and less time preparing our weekly game right now so I am going to continue with published materials. I own Princes of the Apocalypse and just bought Storm King's Thunder tonight. SKT has an intro adventure to get players up to level 5 but mine will be right about 5 when we finish Lost Mine of Phandelver, so I might just run SKT. Going to enjoy throwing boulders at the players. =)
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Post by Meph on Jan 31, 2017 1:26:35 GMT
Session 10 - Wave Echo Cave pt. 2So this week we picked up where we left off. The players had just fought a tough battle against a room full of Ghouls. They were down but not out and decided they were going to take a short rest to use some Hit Dice and get some HP back. The group looking at their maps assumed that the north east hall leading out of this room led to the same forge room that they had seen the Flaming Skull in. They hatched a plan for a 2 prong approach with half the party head through that hall and the other half going back up the stairs and entering the forge from the west. As they approached the forge they again saw the floating skull on the opposite side of the room and decided to move in. They stepped around the corpses on the floor and moved towards the skull. As the players got into the room the corpses rose up and initiative was rolled. The shit hit the fan fast with every party member engaged. They decided to focus on the zombies in their faces giving the Flame Skull the chance to start attacking the party. The first attack the Flame Skull did was a 1st level Magic Missile at the party Wizard. I think this put their fears at ease thinking the skull would be a pushover, but ultimately almost screwed them. They stayed focused on the Zombies, whittling them down and the Flame Skull started to use its two Fire Eye attacks per round at 3d6 damage each! This quickly got the parties attention and those that could started to focus on the Flame Skull. 2 rounds of those Fire Eye's and then on the 4th round, as it was taking significant damage, the Flame Skull cast an 8d6 Fireball centered to hit 4 members of the party. Ultimately the party wont the battle but was completely out of spells with 2 party members at 0 HP making death saves. Given their current condition the party decided to back track to the room that the Hobgoblins had barricaded in and hold up there for a long rest. They barricaded both doors and held up for the night. They kept 2 hour watches and during each watch noticed a light under the door from time to time. They made a plan after their rest to go out and attack the "scout" which they assumed was the source of the light. They left the room and saw the light ahead in the Forge room so they decided to rush right in and attack it. Much to their dismay they ran back in to find the Flame Skull completely regenerated and intact (they smashed the skull once it died). They all rushed the skull so it opened its attack with another Fireball which really worried the party. It managed to get one Fire Eye off but they focused all of their attacks and killed it quick but not without using a bunch of resources (spells & healing potions). Next the party moved up the dry channel that feeds the water wheel to the chasm to the north west. Unseen to the Bugbears, the party came across one Bugbear on the opposite ridge overseeing 2 Bugbears in the ravine moving rocks. They decided to fire off their ranged weapons at the opposite ridge while the Paladin wanted to climb down and engage the Bugbears below. Of course the Paladin missed his athletics check with a critical fail, fell 20 feet and landed prone. He took 2d6 damage and both bugbears were on him fast. Another battle that just didn't go well for the party. The bugbear on the ridge was joined by a Drow with a crossbow and they attacked the party. As the party killed the 2 Bugbears in the chasm the 3rd Bugbear dropped down to engage while the Drow (doppleganger) ran off to warn Nezznar the Black Spider. This leads to the final battle of the night, Nezznar the Black Spider. The party found the Dwarven Altar room that Nezznar was using as his base of operations. Nezznar had been warned by the Doppleganger and they hiding in the room waiting for them. 4 Giant Spiders were in the room on the walls and ceiling, waiting for the party to enter. Of course like expected, 2 of the party members when not seeing anything immediately inside decided to "charge" into the room. Now to backtrack a little bit, 10 week into our campaign and there was one aspect of 5E that I had completely ignored. I had never awarded a single inspiration point to anyone in the game so prior to this battle I addressed that issue. I grabbed 6 arcade tokens and laid them in the center of the table. I explained inspiration, how it works, and how it's awarded. I told them since I had failed to award any of the last 2 and a half months that these 6 inspiration points were party points to use as they see fit. I am not sure exactly how they are supposed to be used by the book but I allow them advantage on ANY roll. Attack, Save, Damage, Hit Dice, etc....anything but they must be declared BEFORE rolling. They aren't to be used for a reroll, the have to be used before the roll for a better chance. Now back to Nezznar.... So they tried rushing into the room. The spiders began to web the players, then bite and poison them. The Doppleganger moved in to attack while Nezznar stayed hidden for the first round. The party moved into positions the best they could, some got webbed up, some poisoned. Lots of damage was sustained. Nezznar popped out and began with a Magic Missile, using a 3rd level slot firing 3 missiles at the cleric, 2 at the wizard. Chaos ensued. The paladin dropped and the two main fighters dropped. The party managed to kill the spiders and injure the doppleganger but their major damage (fighters) were gone and their Ranger was webbed and engaged by the Doppleganger. There was talk at one point in the fight of the CLeric and Wizard running but ultimately they stayed. Now I really could have killed the party on this encounter but I gave them a big break. The Doppleganger only attacked once per round instead of twice. So when all was looking lost the Wizard decided to go for broke and cast Scorching Ray on the Nezznar. Scorching Ray shoots 3 rays, each requiring an attack roll for 2d6 damage. With immediate approval from the group he picked up 3 of the 6 inspiration points and used them for his attack rolls. With advantage he was able to hit with all 3 rays hitting for a total of 20 damage. Nezznar only had 27 hit points so after suffering that attack he immediately cast invisibility and made his escape. The party was still preoccupied with the Doppleganger who had taken next to no hit points. Between the Wizard blowing his last magic missiles, the cleric attacking, the ranger attacking they managed to get the Doppleganger low enough to flee. Even with his attack of opportunity the Ranger was unable to take him down and he escaped. Now while this was going on we had 2 Fighters and a Paladin down making death saves. The Paladin and one Fighter saved, but the strongest fighter of the group had one failed save when he rolled a critical fail, killing him instantly! While the party was sitting there in disbelief of what had just happened the Cleric stepped forward with the scroll they had found a couple weeks ago, Revivify. The rest of the group had no idea what the scroll he had found was and there was much rejoicing when he raised the Fighter from the dead. So the party had no potions left and a single cure wounds spell. They got the other Fighter up leaving the Paladin still unconscious. They decided their only chance was to head straight for the entrance hoping they didn't run into a random encounter, the Doppleganger, or Nezznar. I did make one roll for a random encounter and they held their breath as I did so, but they made it out safely. They found a safe location, took a short rest for a couple hours and waited for the Paladin to awake, then they made their way straight for Phandalin. That is where we left off for the night. Now my initial concerns before starting this campaign about 5E being too "easy" on the players and death being hard have been laid to rest. Playing with another DM we saw how the system falls apart with a DM that doesn't play NPCs to their potential but I have seen no such problems. My 1E/2E campaigns were always gritty and dangerous. Death was always a possibility and resources were at a premium. I think I have found the balance here by tweaking my major encounters enough that the party is ALWAYS on their toes. I am really enjoying this system right now and the players are really liking all the options they have now that weren't available in 1E/2E. The party has yet to finish a major encounter in this campaign. Glasstaff escaped from the Redbrand Hideout, Venomfang the Green Dragon fled when they got him low, and now Nezznar the Black Spider has fled. I guarantee they haven't seen the last of any of them yet. Next week is the Superbowl. Given that none of us are Patriot or Falcon fans I said I would run our game if they wanted. The 50" TV sits right behind me and I would have the game on either way. Two of our party absolutely wont play because they have plans but it looks like the other 4 want to play. Since they are back at town I said we can roleplay their town activities and I will come up with a small adventure for the 4 of them. I am thinking next week may be the return of Glasstaff, we'll see. Here is a pic of our game this Sunday. The guy taking the picture is our Fighter that died. Next is the other Fighter and last is our Paladin. Sucks when your first line of defense gets KO'd And in case you missed it in my Game Prep thread, here is the 3D printed Flame Skull I made for this weeks game. It was well worth the effort and my party is sufficiently scared to hell of Flame Skulls.....little do they know that after killing it twice, it rose again an hour later. The party still has half of the dungeon to explore and they will need to go through that room yet again.
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Post by Meph on Jan 30, 2017 22:15:59 GMT
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Post by Meph on Jan 30, 2017 2:27:58 GMT
I don't know if this is starting a trend but the last two weeks, my Wife and Daughter have gone out shopping on Sunday mornings and both time they have brought me back something new for my game room. Last week was the Pathfinder Goblin bank and this week was a LED Light up Potion lamp. The lamp changes color on touch or be set to change automatically. I gotta admit, I like this new trend.
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Post by Meph on Jan 29, 2017 19:01:11 GMT
There are a couple ways to tackle those lines. Some people use an acetone wash the "melt" the lines but I think it makes most prints look to "soft" after that. Me, I just print and play. One thing about that skull is its pretty damn small. It's smaller than your average mini so that picture is zoomed in pretty close. To be honest, once it's sitting on the table in play you don't even see/notice the lines.
I will be updating my game thread either tonight after the game or more likely tomorrow after work.
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Post by Meph on Jan 29, 2017 18:33:53 GMT
Tonight the party should be finishing up Wave Echo Cave and Lost Mine of Phandelver. I really enjoyed this adventure. I think WOTC did a great job with a starter adventure for 5E and I see why it gets such praise. I am looking forward to running some smaller scale stuff (1-2 sessions each) since my party is all old guys (42-50) and seem to suffer from long term memory loss Tonight is session 10 and they have had to be reminded MANY times of what their objectives were, so I will be running much shorter adventures in the future. As for tonight, I have all of Wave Echo Cave done up in Photoshop along with Fog of War which I showed some of last week. Since then I added counters for every monster in the dungeon so I can also reveal them individually as needed. We will still be doing combat on the table using a grid. Last week they spotted the Flaming Skull in the forge area and decided to go another way. Knowing this party, they wont leave without exploring everything. I don't have a Flaming Skull mini so I decided to print one this morning. I painted it in the color scheme from the Monster Manual. Between a Flaming Skull, Spectator, Wraith, Ghouls, Zombies, Skeletons, Bugbears, Dopplegangers, and a Drow Wizard....we'll see how the party fares the night. Might be rolling new characters in my world of Thoros next week, we'll see.
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Post by Meph on Jan 24, 2017 0:57:49 GMT
Session 9 - On to Wave Echo CaveThe party began this week in Phandalin wrapping up some loose ends and then set off for Wave Echo Cave. The caves are about 12 miles East of Phandalin and the party decided to stake out the entrance of it for a full day and see what traffic they might see. I decided to use the random charts for the Triboar Trail area and then use Kobold Fight Club to scale the encounter for this size/level group. The party now consists of a 4th Level Ranger, 4th Level Wizard, (2) 3rd Level Fighters, 3rd Level Cleric, and a 2nd Level Paladin. I gave them a 15% change of a day or night encounter and I rolled 19 for the night....so I randomly rolled the Triboar encounters. It came up as a single Ogre which was designed for a party of level 2s. I scaled it in Kobold Fight Club and it said 3 Ogres would be a "Hard" encounter. Holy crap, I think the party nearly shit themselves. 5E Ogres really are just a bunch of meat sacks. They have no special abilities but the have a lot of hit points and they hit hard. To say hard is an understatement. The fighters used their second winds, the cleric and ranger used their heals, the wizard burnt a bunch of spells....a great time was had by me. The party had to pull out all the stops but ultimately was rewarded well for it and one fighter leveled to 4th and the Paladin to 2nd. This really set the tone for the night and the party was on the defensive. They made their way inside the caves and started exploring. The original map was 10 feet per square so I found one from Cartographers Guild where they redid the map at proper 5" squares with nice graphics. I broke it up into about 35 layers so I could reveal the fog as they moved down halls. Instead of displaying it on the table and using minis on it I opted instead to display it on the wall and we just roughly sketched out rooms when combat required it. I would like to find a mix that doesn't require a TV in the table. I want to keep my tabletop for 3d terrain. So the party only had a few encounters in the cave but it was nearly a deadly night. The first was an Ochre Jelly which the first fighter cleaved with his Great Axe, splitting it into 3 Jellies. That freaked them out and I allowed them to metagame and quickly realize that they shouldn't use slashing weapons. After the jellies they ended up exploring more and found a room with some bugbears barricaded inside. The party tried to draw them out and bottleneck them so I used the push rules to have the bugbears forgo their attack phase to made contested checks and push the party back, allowing the bugbears the stream out. Worked nicely and the party had their hands full. Lastly the party moved out the other side of the barricaded room to find themselves just outside an old dwarven forge room. There were corpses littered around the room with a floating flaming skull hovering over them. The party decided to skip down the stairs instead and avoid the skull. They came into a large room with 2 raised ledges on either side, one set of stairs leading up to each. There were bones strewn around the room. The Paladin decided to use Divine Sense which can detect undead within 60 feet. Much to his dismay he quickly detected a mass of undead on the ledge above them rapidly moving towards the party. This was the final combat of the night and it was a doozy. 7 Ghouls launched themselves off the ledge, 10 feet above the party. I played them like the zombies from 28 days later. The party was freaking out when one of the players was hit with both a bite and a claw in the first round taking 16 points of damage and paralyzing him. At this point the party unloaded everything they had and they needed it. Everyone lived but it took just about all of their resources. When it was all done it was a successful night for them. They gained a good amount of XP and lived, can't say the same for next week though. They ended the night right there in that room and we will pick it up next week with the party out of spells and abilities. They need a rest.
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Post by Meph on Jan 23, 2017 22:45:38 GMT
Session 8 - Finishing CragmawI never got around to updating last week so here is the session from 2 weeks ago. I am sure I will have forgotten some details along the way. The party continued on in Cragmaw Castle the first week. They proceeded to clear their way through the castle pretty easily. I won't bore you with the details of most of it, but they really were crushing everything they saw.....until...they moved into the Dark Hall. One of the Fighters opened the door to the hall and stepped right in. He carried a torch, saw nothing obvious and declared the room clear. The rest of the party walked right in, failed their perception checks and were surprised by the Grick sitting on an upper ledge. The Grick dropped among the surprise party and hit the Wizard with his tentacles, then hit him again with a crit with his beak, dropping the wizard unconscious in a single round. Once the attack began, the 3 Goblins in the attached shrine heard the commotion and jumped into the fray. The party pulled it off but not without quite the battle. I don't have an appropriate Grick mini. After the Grick the pary decided they needed to hold up and take a short rest. To play it safe they moved outside the castle through the broken wall just outside the Dark Hall. After their rest they decided to move in to finish up the castle. For some reason the party made the assumption that 2 doors went to the same room and decided to make a 2 pronged attack when they heard voices inside. They were partially right; the rooms were connected but had a bit of a bottleneck between them. The party moved in and essentially split the party for most of the last battle. They entered into the barracks intent on killing the Hobgoblins that were in there but in the process, alerted the Bugbear leader with his Wolf and the Doppleganger emissary that was disguised as a Drow. This battle was pretty intense and once the Bugbear went down, the Doppleganger changed into an Owlbear in an attempt to scare the party off so it could make it's escape. Instead the party pulled the door shut and setup outside the door. Eventually they hatched a plan to go in. They opened the door to see the Drow again in the room holding a knife to the chest of an unconscious Gundren Rockseeker. The drow threatened to kill the Dwarf if the party didn't back off. Of course in true form, the party thought they knew better and attacked. The drow plunged the dagger into the dwarf's chest before rushing to engage. The doppleganger was no match for the whole party and they quickly finished it off. Then the reality set in, Gundren was dead. Of course 8 weeks in the party had become a little disconnected from the full story line and barely cared. They searched the Bugbear and found him in possession of Gundren's map with the location of Wave Echo Cave. There was one last room that was barred from the outside. A little investigation told them that the barred door actually DID hold an Owlbear. After the damage they had suffered the party hatched a plan to release the Owlbear and try to lure it out of the castle. It succeeded and the party left the castle and headed back to Phandalin with the body of Gundren Rockseeker.
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Post by Meph on Jan 23, 2017 10:45:34 GMT
Well curufin , your table is a hit. I downloaded your pics as well as pics of about 15 other tables, most of them including LCD screens. At last night's game I decided to display my full sized map on the TV on the wall and have the players draw out individual rooms when they went into combat. That worked out well for us. So I showed them all of the tables and I saved yours for last. I figured they would all go for the LCD tables but when I got to yours it was overwhelmingly agreed, they liked your design best. So, that is what I am making. Once I get around to it I will post a build thread. Might wait until I am on vacation in the end of next month.....or I might start it this week. Who knows
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Post by Meph on Jan 22, 2017 3:05:50 GMT
Back in the 90s I was big into 1E and eventually 2E. In 1E I allowed most of the Unearthed Arcana classes but I was very much of the opinion that they were fairly overpowered. In all fairness though, when compared to the by-the-book 1E classes, they were overpowered. In 2E I doubled down and was pretty much against most kits from the complete handbooks. I remember thinking how they were overpowered and really unbalanced the game. In retrospect, they really only gave the character some background info, a couple free non-weapon proficiencies, and some more realistic weapon proficiencies. These days I am finding myself going to opposite direction and allowing the players to try out just about anything. Between the PHB, the new backgrounds and archtypes in the Sword Coast Adventurers Guide, the new races in Volos, the new races, archtypes, spells in the assorted adventure paths, and all the playtest stuff available from Unearthed Arcana, the players have a LOT of options available. My party really knows nothing about any of these options. I have all of the books available to them but I most haven't looked at them. I have pointed out some of the Unearthed Arcana stuff to specific players and they have tried some of it out. Last night I decided to take it a step further and print out all of the Unearthed Arcana stuff. I think I am missing one article but I printed all of the rest. I am really looking forward to the 3rd Mystic (Psionic) update coming by the end of this month. I put all of these in a binder and plan to sort them all by class. I am putting these out tomorrow for the players to look at. You can lead a horse to water....let's see if they'll drink!
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Post by Meph on Jan 21, 2017 0:05:56 GMT
Time to resurrect this thread since I am ready to build a table. I love this design and I think I am going to be stealing this from you. Given the size of this I am considering building a raised tier about 12 inches in from the edges. I would probably only raise it about 6 inches and would allow for a small shelf under the raised tier for each player to store a couple books. Since you have been using this table for so long, have you found yourself wanting for anything else?
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Post by Meph on Jan 20, 2017 23:10:11 GMT
Ya know I remember seeing a table here that I found really interesting. Of course after a quick search I found it again and of course, it's curufin's. You never seem to amaze me with the stuff you come up with. I really like your layout. So the real question is, do you still use this table and what have you found you don't like about it or would change? Do you have some actual dimensions handy? Fortunately I have the space for a table as big or small as I want. Your table looks to address my concerns. It has the space to do what you want but still keeps you close enough to the table to layout terrain or draw on a mat. Also any pics of the table in actual use? For those that don't know what I am talking about, this is the thread of Curufin's table. dmscraft.proboards.com/thread/2434/curufins-gaming-table-rolling-carts
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Post by Meph on Jan 20, 2017 22:23:25 GMT
So the more I work on this digital layout, the less interested I am in it. I worked on it today after work and got a 2 monitor setup going. The dungeon displayed full screen on the 46" with photoshop and the layer bar displayed on the 15" which I had at my DM spot at the table. It was setup for me to unveil all the locations at will and sized properly but the more I sat there looking at it, the less it felt like D&D to me. I have shown these pics before and gotten a lot of great feedback about the space, but one thing I absolutely hate is the size of the tables. I have 4 old computer tables pushed together creating this huge space. At one point our group was 9 players plus me. Now we have 6 players and I find it to be one too many players. Growing up we always played with a 3-4 man group. We didn't have a big pool of players so we just played with what we had. I really miss the smaller more intimate group. As you can see in the pic above, the tables are huge but I find it unwieldy at times. I have to get up and walk around the table to draw on a map or layout tiles. Everything about it is a chore for me. The players love it because they get all kinds of space at the table but I hate it. Part of the plan with the digital table is for me to push maps without having to walk around the table but once the novelty of the technology wears off (and it had quickly for me) then it loses it's attraction to me. I am starting to really push my group a lot more in the role playing aspect and plan to go with more overland encounters and less lengthy dungeons. That being said, I think less is more. I just started watching Acquisitions Inc. lately while I have been crafting stuff and I really like the simplicity of the table they use. I am considering maybe building a table similar to this. I also mentioned my idea of building a large square coffee table and making a setup with couches/chairs around the coffee table but got some push back from a couple players. To me that is the idea setup I would prefer. It really gives a more relaxed gaming area, very close to the TV on the wall for displaying things, and because it's a lower table it gives a better perspective for all the players. I am open to all sorts of idea so if you have any, feel free to post them. I am not interested in a huge table for more than 8 total people. I also am not interested in anything like the "Sultan" table, it just seems too cluttered for me. If it's feasible I would love storage for books, minis, maybe even an area for a laptop. I want to get away from a big bulky screen or anything that really separates me from the players. So.....give me some ideas.
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Post by Meph on Jan 18, 2017 0:56:12 GMT
I only set the minis on the screen to test it out. I am going to pickup an ultra thin sheet of lexan this week. Lexan is much softer than plexi and wont scratch like it. It will sit on top of the screen. My players are all about the mini. I ran Theater of the Mind a couple weeks ago and a couple players told me they really didn't enjoy it. They missed the minis and having a visual representation during combat. I am fine with that.
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Post by Meph on Jan 18, 2017 0:05:02 GMT
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