touc
No rule is inviolate
It's been 18 months since our last campaign started, and now it's time to begin anew with a pirate campaign. Thought I'd share my pre-game setup, before it gets "gamerized." Always curious how others setup, but it's come a long way since it was me + some high school buddies crammed around a tiny, rickety card table with no minis and no props (which was total fun, and I'll shout that to the masses that while props are nice, it's just as much awesome fun to be crammed at that card table so long as you're crammed together with good buddies and a healthy respect for deodorant.)
Player Side: we've got a ship I laboriously glued together (sans rigging), color coded and labeled condition rings, initiative cards (with sleeves that I could put atop my DM screen, but I have the players track initiative to speed up combat), a bowl of 1600s style gold and silver coins (thinking of having folks take one when they earn "heroic inspiration" aka "vice" in our campagin), and a picture of Laurana standing over the body of Sturm to inspire folks.
My Side of Things: custom DM screen with 4 inserts on my side (the player side has your D&D 2024 actions until they get used to those again as we switched systems for the last campaign; my side has stuff I can't memorize, page references, and quick stuff I need like names or a swift pirate insult that isn't always the same one I just used); adventure with custom notes under it on the left, scribble paper in the middle, trusty PHB to the right for ease, lots of dice (I ordered custom sea-faring dice with stuff like ships and skulls inside, but they hadn't arrived), wet markers for battle maps, secondary table for the extra books, primary campaign notebook (locations, house rules, reputation rules, etc.), and a secondary yellow notebook (quick reference for NPC traits, lingering injuries, tropical weather tables), a map on the back wall of the region, a dry erase board behind me for fun stuff like a quote or highest critical hit, a bookshelf behind me for quick reference and miniatures, and Raistlin looking over the game room.
And the DM's view overlooking the fruits of his labor...
Player Side: we've got a ship I laboriously glued together (sans rigging), color coded and labeled condition rings, initiative cards (with sleeves that I could put atop my DM screen, but I have the players track initiative to speed up combat), a bowl of 1600s style gold and silver coins (thinking of having folks take one when they earn "heroic inspiration" aka "vice" in our campagin), and a picture of Laurana standing over the body of Sturm to inspire folks.
My Side of Things: custom DM screen with 4 inserts on my side (the player side has your D&D 2024 actions until they get used to those again as we switched systems for the last campaign; my side has stuff I can't memorize, page references, and quick stuff I need like names or a swift pirate insult that isn't always the same one I just used); adventure with custom notes under it on the left, scribble paper in the middle, trusty PHB to the right for ease, lots of dice (I ordered custom sea-faring dice with stuff like ships and skulls inside, but they hadn't arrived), wet markers for battle maps, secondary table for the extra books, primary campaign notebook (locations, house rules, reputation rules, etc.), and a secondary yellow notebook (quick reference for NPC traits, lingering injuries, tropical weather tables), a map on the back wall of the region, a dry erase board behind me for fun stuff like a quote or highest critical hit, a bookshelf behind me for quick reference and miniatures, and Raistlin looking over the game room.
And the DM's view overlooking the fruits of his labor...
