Help! Encounter building resources.

[whearp]

Does anyone here know of a way of making encounter layouts such as in published adventures? The 4e rules make it simple and fun to build challenging and fun encounters, and the online tools are awesome for finding or building the perfect monsters. However, there is no convenient integration of these tools to make encounters that are easy for me to use at the table. At least not that I have seen.

The two-page encounter format has been the standard for years now, but there is no official way of generating these awesomely convenient layouts for homebrew adventures. What's up with that? Seems like it should be a feature in the Compendium or adventure tools. Anyway, I'm rambling.

What I want is resources on making my own encounter layouts so that I don't have to page around in books and single printouts of monsters. I'm figuring there must be some software, apps, or templates out there to accomplish this.

Any information is appreciated!

 

[Trit One-Ear]

I mostly use Masterplan to get all my information in one place. I'm still leaning anything besides the basics with it, but you can upload monsters, maps, traps etc fairly easily (especially from the DDI monster builder). I also love the Encyclopedia function when building a campaign world. It makes it much easier to keep all your ideas and details straight.

While this isn't specifically a format that they use in published adventures, I think with a little practice you can make fairly detailed and helpful encounter layout.

Trit

 

[whearp]

Wow! That's a really powerful piece of software! It would be really great if it had a better option for laying out and printing encounters. I'm definitely going to use this, though.

 

[Trit One-Ear]

Glad you're finding it helpful. I can't remember who first showed it to me but it's really changed the way I manage my encounters. I agree I wish it were formatted slightly differently, but since I play most of my games online for the moment, not being able to print out info has never been a huge drawback for me.

Trit

 

[Quickleaf]

Wow! That's a really powerful piece of software! It would be really great if it had a better option for laying out and printing encounters. I'm definitely going to use this, though.

You could do what I do: Make a MS Word template in landscape two-column format, then paste everything you need for the encounter into that. Replicates the Dungeon Delve format pretty well.

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Another "program" that can be quite handy is https://power2ool.com/login/ which is web based - its a much superior interface with the DDI info than the Compendium, and (although it doesn't work for my computer) I think it prints out monsters (or other things) in a way that gets as many as it can on one page.

 

[whearp]

Looks like I'm going to be busy learning all kinds of new software for my upcoming campaign! Thanks guys.