Post by Thor on Sept 17, 2015 10:21:19 GMT
I've lost track of how many times I've done these introduction things. Pulled the plastic off a D&D boxed set for the first time somewhere in the 80's, eventually played or ran my way through a dozen or two game systems, about ten years ago started getting serious about terrain.
Then I discovered myself in a job where it was impossible to game, and tabled everything. Now I've been running a series of games for the past year with players from work so we're all on the same schedule. Currently I'm using magnets on a whiteboard which is expedient and requires minimal storage as I no longer have a dedicated game room and everything has to be hauled up/down stairs and across a yard or loaded into a vehicle and set up somewhere. I rely on Google Drive, rulebooks on .pdf and use mapmaking programs by Inkwellideas. I'm starting to use mosaic printed maps for larger areas that I can simply post up for player reference, and getting into some 2.5D terrain for specific scenes that would take a long time to explain. (And I miss running with full 3D terrain)
I'm a bit of a stick in the mud and stay fairly close to first edition, I make spreadsheet cheats for faster encounter deployment and typically run a mix of original material and borrowed where I've typically done enough editing to really get intimate with the material. My notes are usually in a Gdoc with cross linking to the spreadsheets and embedded images of the maps. Hard copies of maps are in slipsheets and I edit them on the fly with transparency markers. I generally run "living campaigns" and the timeline is felt by the players as a progression of events in the background but also which frequently curtails some options. I keep lists of all the gems and items as some of them turn up again, and I use that information for a palpable feel of history in the gameworld.
One of my latest facepalms was rolling up three months of details for a brutal winter exacerbated by a conflict which destabilized the weather only to have the party cast Rope Trick to get out of the weather . . .and someone with a bag of holding entered it.
Then I discovered myself in a job where it was impossible to game, and tabled everything. Now I've been running a series of games for the past year with players from work so we're all on the same schedule. Currently I'm using magnets on a whiteboard which is expedient and requires minimal storage as I no longer have a dedicated game room and everything has to be hauled up/down stairs and across a yard or loaded into a vehicle and set up somewhere. I rely on Google Drive, rulebooks on .pdf and use mapmaking programs by Inkwellideas. I'm starting to use mosaic printed maps for larger areas that I can simply post up for player reference, and getting into some 2.5D terrain for specific scenes that would take a long time to explain. (And I miss running with full 3D terrain)
I'm a bit of a stick in the mud and stay fairly close to first edition, I make spreadsheet cheats for faster encounter deployment and typically run a mix of original material and borrowed where I've typically done enough editing to really get intimate with the material. My notes are usually in a Gdoc with cross linking to the spreadsheets and embedded images of the maps. Hard copies of maps are in slipsheets and I edit them on the fly with transparency markers. I generally run "living campaigns" and the timeline is felt by the players as a progression of events in the background but also which frequently curtails some options. I keep lists of all the gems and items as some of them turn up again, and I use that information for a palpable feel of history in the gameworld.
One of my latest facepalms was rolling up three months of details for a brutal winter exacerbated by a conflict which destabilized the weather only to have the party cast Rope Trick to get out of the weather . . .and someone with a bag of holding entered it.