rexartur
Explorer
Thought I'd share what I'm doing for our KotS first run:
A little background; I've been playing D&D (and tons of other games) since the original pamphlets came out (41 yrs. old here) and have DM'd every edition. I did buy almost every 3.5 book out there, and run a weekly session in Massachusetts that goes from noon until about midnight every Saturday (occasionally interrupted by real-life commitments and Renaissance Faires). We currently number between 5 and 6 players (plus 2 when our kids play), one of whom is my wife. I am a lucky man, indeed! Those numbers have jumped a little for KotS and we'll be at 7 without the kids.
I have tried several different DM tricks and gadgets in the past, abandoning all for simple paper in the complexity that is 3.5 (I don't mean this in a bad way - we run a very technical game when it comes to the rules, and there's lots of 'em).
I'm not going to go into a review as others more eloquent than I have done that, and I am not very critical but love most games and the chance they afford to spend time with friends and have fun, memorable times together.
Scaling: I'm just going to calculate XP and monetary rewards as if the party had 5 and add extra monsters and treasure so the rewards stay the same for 7.
Location: We put up a gazebo every spring to try and enjoy as much of the good weather that New England allows, so we game outside until the bugs drive us in. Old-fashioned citronella torches help a bit with that (and add to the ambience I think).
Ambience: I have Renradio playing on Live365 on a PC or laptop. I don't control the mood of the music and I find it very relaxing (plus I'm a Ren Geek.) Very often, however, the music does fit the mood nicely.
Beverages: Beer, on occasion, depending on how technically involved I think the session will be. Sam Adams Heffeweizen, thank you. Chaucer's Honey Mead if it's going to be mostly role-playing and I am of a mood. More often than not it's just Mountain Dew or Vanilla Coke (these are fairly long session, after all, and I'm not as young as once I was!)
Battle Maps: I have a set of tact-tiles (graciously given to me by one of my favorite players) and use these exclusively, although I keep my beloved vinyl mats "just in case" (I can't bear to part with them and sometimes do miss the feel of wet erase on vinyl.)
Pre-Printed Maps: I'm going to lay a piece of Plexiglas (very thin; the kind you might find in a poster frame) over the map so I can draw on it and also to flatten out the creases and folds (minis and hills and valleys don't mix well when playing outside - one breeze and everyone on the map becomes expert tumblers.)
Player kits: We purchased inexpensive soft-side binders for each player, in which is a highlight sheet of the players' quick-play rules, a zippered pouch (holding a pencil, a set of dice, their miniature), their character sheet in clear page holders, some marking tokens (more on that in a bit), a few sheets of scrap paper, a CCG card holder sheet (for item cards) and the foam sheet from the tokens (hidden in a back flap). This all gets clipped to a clip-board.
Item Cards: I think I may use the Game Mastery cards for magic items. I used them in the past but got bogged down in my own OCD of having a card for every piece of treasure or item of masterwork quality or better. Dat's a lotta cards! For 4E I'm just going to use them for magical items. I put the cards in clear sleeves and insert a small piece of paper with the abilities of the item, once discovered. No fuss re-usable cards that way.
Miniatures: We use them; we love them. I have a huge amount of the D&D pre-painted miniatures, not to mention my friend's collections (which I only pull from ad hoc at the table if they don;t like the fact that a goblin is playing the part of a kobold - otherwise I'd be giving them a laundry list of the upcoming encounters.
Adventures: I only ever run pre-made modules. Never had a problem and we always have fun. Think of me what you will.
Initiative Tracking: I fluctuate between index cards (on which I can track conditions, hit points and all manner of timed events) and a magnetic dry-erase board (I love the idea of the Game Mastery board, (I just didn't want to devote a bunch of space to graphics and logos) so bought my own board and ordered their replacement token pack-their solution is cheaper, by the way.
Tokens: One of the things that I am always working on is ways to track conditions, etc. In 4E that becomes even more important for the players to be aware of (dangling participle - apologies). I have several of the Alea Tools magnets and love the concept. In reality, they attract each other bit (they are magnets after all) and several conditions make for one tall miniature. I had toyed with the idea of adding a thin rubber O-ring around each magnet so they wouldn't actually touch, but that seemed tedious and almost guaranteed a re-ringing after storage. I wanted a flatter solution for at least marked effects and bloodied, which would appear to be the 2 most common battlefield effects. We went to our local AC Moore and I was looking at felt (both the soft and the stiff) when my wife spotted a sheet of art foam (very thin and available in a wide variety of colors.) Grand! Two colors for each PC (one for their marking effects and one in case they are marked - this caused me some confusion as I was looking at buying one color for every possible monster, until I remembered you can only be marked by one enemy at a time; if kobold 1 marks the fighter and uses a blue token; and bugbear 5 marks that same fighter later, I just shift the blue token from the kobold to the bugbear). I bought extra colors so I could come up with a way to represent other effects (in case a PC can have more than 1 ongoing effect at a time, for instance). Cut into 1" squares and with the effect written on with a silver Sharpie and I have nice, flat markers to go under minis, with a rubbery surface so I can even use the Alea tools on top of them without adding significant height or sliding as they might do with paper markers.
Characters: One of each Pre-gen and 1 doubled up as we have 7 players. I'm going to take this nice and slow, since it's a new rules set and I want to interject as much role-playing as possible, so even with our long sessions, the core books (pre-paid through my FLGS, thank you very much, shameless plug for Battleground Games & Hobbies on the Abington/ Weymouth line, MA - "Derek rocks!" http://www.battlegroundgames.com/) will probably be out before we finish. I'm going to let each player re-design their character as they wish when that happens. A bit jarring from a continuity point of view but I want everybody to be invested as possible, and for some players that will never happen with a pre-gen.
Tools put away: My Critical Hit and Fumble decks from Game Mastery: I love 'em, but they don't belong in my 4E game. Oh well, I'll probably still run 3.5 games and Pathfinder, hmmm, you look interesting as well. Now I just need to get that pesky job out of the way.
"DM for hire! You name the system and I'll run it!"
I hope at least a little of this proves helpful for someone. Keep gaming, keep having fun, support your FLGS, and never cheat yourself or anyone else; you can't do one without the other.
Z
A little background; I've been playing D&D (and tons of other games) since the original pamphlets came out (41 yrs. old here) and have DM'd every edition. I did buy almost every 3.5 book out there, and run a weekly session in Massachusetts that goes from noon until about midnight every Saturday (occasionally interrupted by real-life commitments and Renaissance Faires). We currently number between 5 and 6 players (plus 2 when our kids play), one of whom is my wife. I am a lucky man, indeed! Those numbers have jumped a little for KotS and we'll be at 7 without the kids.
I have tried several different DM tricks and gadgets in the past, abandoning all for simple paper in the complexity that is 3.5 (I don't mean this in a bad way - we run a very technical game when it comes to the rules, and there's lots of 'em).
I'm not going to go into a review as others more eloquent than I have done that, and I am not very critical but love most games and the chance they afford to spend time with friends and have fun, memorable times together.
Scaling: I'm just going to calculate XP and monetary rewards as if the party had 5 and add extra monsters and treasure so the rewards stay the same for 7.
Location: We put up a gazebo every spring to try and enjoy as much of the good weather that New England allows, so we game outside until the bugs drive us in. Old-fashioned citronella torches help a bit with that (and add to the ambience I think).
Ambience: I have Renradio playing on Live365 on a PC or laptop. I don't control the mood of the music and I find it very relaxing (plus I'm a Ren Geek.) Very often, however, the music does fit the mood nicely.
Beverages: Beer, on occasion, depending on how technically involved I think the session will be. Sam Adams Heffeweizen, thank you. Chaucer's Honey Mead if it's going to be mostly role-playing and I am of a mood. More often than not it's just Mountain Dew or Vanilla Coke (these are fairly long session, after all, and I'm not as young as once I was!)
Battle Maps: I have a set of tact-tiles (graciously given to me by one of my favorite players) and use these exclusively, although I keep my beloved vinyl mats "just in case" (I can't bear to part with them and sometimes do miss the feel of wet erase on vinyl.)
Pre-Printed Maps: I'm going to lay a piece of Plexiglas (very thin; the kind you might find in a poster frame) over the map so I can draw on it and also to flatten out the creases and folds (minis and hills and valleys don't mix well when playing outside - one breeze and everyone on the map becomes expert tumblers.)
Player kits: We purchased inexpensive soft-side binders for each player, in which is a highlight sheet of the players' quick-play rules, a zippered pouch (holding a pencil, a set of dice, their miniature), their character sheet in clear page holders, some marking tokens (more on that in a bit), a few sheets of scrap paper, a CCG card holder sheet (for item cards) and the foam sheet from the tokens (hidden in a back flap). This all gets clipped to a clip-board.
Item Cards: I think I may use the Game Mastery cards for magic items. I used them in the past but got bogged down in my own OCD of having a card for every piece of treasure or item of masterwork quality or better. Dat's a lotta cards! For 4E I'm just going to use them for magical items. I put the cards in clear sleeves and insert a small piece of paper with the abilities of the item, once discovered. No fuss re-usable cards that way.
Miniatures: We use them; we love them. I have a huge amount of the D&D pre-painted miniatures, not to mention my friend's collections (which I only pull from ad hoc at the table if they don;t like the fact that a goblin is playing the part of a kobold - otherwise I'd be giving them a laundry list of the upcoming encounters.
Adventures: I only ever run pre-made modules. Never had a problem and we always have fun. Think of me what you will.
Initiative Tracking: I fluctuate between index cards (on which I can track conditions, hit points and all manner of timed events) and a magnetic dry-erase board (I love the idea of the Game Mastery board, (I just didn't want to devote a bunch of space to graphics and logos) so bought my own board and ordered their replacement token pack-their solution is cheaper, by the way.
Tokens: One of the things that I am always working on is ways to track conditions, etc. In 4E that becomes even more important for the players to be aware of (dangling participle - apologies). I have several of the Alea Tools magnets and love the concept. In reality, they attract each other bit (they are magnets after all) and several conditions make for one tall miniature. I had toyed with the idea of adding a thin rubber O-ring around each magnet so they wouldn't actually touch, but that seemed tedious and almost guaranteed a re-ringing after storage. I wanted a flatter solution for at least marked effects and bloodied, which would appear to be the 2 most common battlefield effects. We went to our local AC Moore and I was looking at felt (both the soft and the stiff) when my wife spotted a sheet of art foam (very thin and available in a wide variety of colors.) Grand! Two colors for each PC (one for their marking effects and one in case they are marked - this caused me some confusion as I was looking at buying one color for every possible monster, until I remembered you can only be marked by one enemy at a time; if kobold 1 marks the fighter and uses a blue token; and bugbear 5 marks that same fighter later, I just shift the blue token from the kobold to the bugbear). I bought extra colors so I could come up with a way to represent other effects (in case a PC can have more than 1 ongoing effect at a time, for instance). Cut into 1" squares and with the effect written on with a silver Sharpie and I have nice, flat markers to go under minis, with a rubbery surface so I can even use the Alea tools on top of them without adding significant height or sliding as they might do with paper markers.
Characters: One of each Pre-gen and 1 doubled up as we have 7 players. I'm going to take this nice and slow, since it's a new rules set and I want to interject as much role-playing as possible, so even with our long sessions, the core books (pre-paid through my FLGS, thank you very much, shameless plug for Battleground Games & Hobbies on the Abington/ Weymouth line, MA - "Derek rocks!" http://www.battlegroundgames.com/) will probably be out before we finish. I'm going to let each player re-design their character as they wish when that happens. A bit jarring from a continuity point of view but I want everybody to be invested as possible, and for some players that will never happen with a pre-gen.
Tools put away: My Critical Hit and Fumble decks from Game Mastery: I love 'em, but they don't belong in my 4E game. Oh well, I'll probably still run 3.5 games and Pathfinder, hmmm, you look interesting as well. Now I just need to get that pesky job out of the way.
"DM for hire! You name the system and I'll run it!"
I hope at least a little of this proves helpful for someone. Keep gaming, keep having fun, support your FLGS, and never cheat yourself or anyone else; you can't do one without the other.
Z
