DMing with a White Board

[Mark]

How many prefer to DM with a white board?

 

[Oompa]

A white board is very handy but.. i can't take one with me every time i go D&D..

So i grabbed some very big, flexible paper sheets with squares on them (already printed), laminated them and sa sa.. i have my own flexible whiteboard

 

[Uruush]

I like white boards sometimes to keep information that doesn't change in the forefront of my and the players' thoughts (NPC and place names, etc.)

I don't like using it for things that change frequently like initiative. Same goes for all those magnetic name tag things where you have to move and slide the names around. The best solution I've found is simply folded over 3x5 cards that you can quickly change the order of.

Another problem with whiteboards is you have to have a place to prop them up or they otherwise lie flat on the table where most people can't see them well.

 

[Dyson Logos]

I find it very useful when running games that have complex initiative systems. Beyond that I prefer to not run with one.

 

[TwinBahamut]

Most of my experience with D&D has been playing at a college gaming club where we always played in empty classrooms. White boards (and occasionally chalkboards) were always available and always useful. Almost everything we needed to track in the game was put up on the white boards, from initiative to the entire battle map.

I wish I could find a good substitute now that I have less access to wall-mounted white boards when running D&D...

 

[nedjer]

I use an A4 graphics tablet to write on screens and save stuff. It's very handy for quick maps. Bit expensive if I didn't have it anyway. The only Bluetooth device I've ever managed to pair easily.

 

[Bumbles]

I prefer clean-shaven. Dice getting caught in it is a problem.

 

[resistor]

I game with a Paizo FlipMat, which is dry-erasable. It's great for keeping track of initiative, drawing overland maps, etc.

 

[the Jester]

I prefer to use a battlemat or similar gridded surface that rolls up for easy portability.

That said, if I have a whiteboard available but not a mat, I'd rather use the whiteboard than not have any sort of visualization tool handy.

 

[Hejdun]

As a player, I bought one of those little white boards (about the size of a sheet of paper, the kind that students put on their dorm room door), and it's been very helpful. I mostly use it to keep track of initiative, but I also keep track of hit points, healing surges, action points, magic item dailies, status effects, etc. It sure beats using a pencil and erasing every time you need to change something, and it's way easier to erase than my Chessex megamat. It's also very portable. I bought it in the off chance that it'd be helpful, and I'm glad I did.