The Ultimate DM Screen and carry all

[Silverblade The Ench]

chat over ont he Piazza got me thinking about DM screens...
I LOVE the 4th ed screen for 2 reasons:

1) they finally made one low enough, so you can work/see over it! Jeesh, no use having very tall ones, they get in the way too much. The DM can't see the board.

2) it is made of thick card, about damn time. thus it won't get damaged so easy
Dunno about you all but DM screens always ended up needing taped up, lol.

So anyway, I decided to try and design my own "ultimate" DM screen and carry all.

this is the idea:

it unfolds like a painting/papering table. central section and 2 halves
it's deep enough to carry some stuff, maybe a PHB, notes, character sheets, pencils or whatever.
it's got it's own built in dice roller, so you never have to worry about losing dice, or loaning 'em to gits who lose 'em...
adjustable inserts of text for whatever system you want to use. Does mean you will have to print up tables, etc, but that's no biggie.

when it's finished I may put up blueprints (freebies) for it on me site for any folks wanting to build their own

this is what I've cooked up so far
[sblock="SIlverblade's Ultimate Gm Screen"]

[/sblock]

work in progress as said.
I'd use magnets and thin clear sheet to sandwich text pages in, easy to swap that way

not sure on most economic/easy way to make the dice roller and keep it strong enough, idea being you flip it 180 degrees, dice fall bottom of tubes (2 halved tubes for percentile)
a large collar (fixed to housing) enclosing a flanged rim (fixed to dice tubes) is probably strongest, but without a machine shop etc hard to make that.
simple rivet's kind of weak and leaves rivet/washer proud on other side which is ugly.
Hm?
may hunt ebay for rollers and such

building it in a CAD program (Rhino) so it's accurate.

 

[cattoy]

Interesting approach to the die roller, I'm not sure I'd ever use such a design - not terribly useful if you need to roll two d6s or d8s or so on...

God help you if you try to use it for Scion...

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

Cheers, folks!
lol true enough when it comes to multiple dice rolls...

well, bit more work
decided to ditch the dice roller, put in little shelves for dice, stationary or munchies
other fold out has a partition so you can keep pencils, paper etc in it.
all sized to fit the 4th ed core books

can put up plans for it if folk want.
[sblock="Ultimate Dm Screen etc"]

that's a 3D render, in case folk don't get that

based it on 5 mm thick perspex, folk would have to dovetail/glue etc of course if they want ot build it.

advantage of the perspex is, the main part is of course, see through, so DM, or player if they use it, can see through as much or as little as they want
just print out whatever tables you need, sellotape them inside in whatever way you want

need to work out how what kind of closure device to use to fasten it, and handles
[/sblock]

 

[Haxor295]

please do!!! this is fantastic!!!

 

[Wolf1066]

At the moment, my "combination GM screen and hold-all" consists of "my open laptop sitting beside my open briefcase". Between them they hold nearly everything (also have a laptop bag filled with additional source books) as well as block the players' view of what I've got open in front of me.

Your design looks way better, though.

I'm tending to the idea that my ideal gaming set-up would be a chair/computer/laptop/gaming table combination - not in the least portable but it would be way cool - especially in a dedicated gaming room decorated in an appropriate style for the genre. (In my case, probably looking like someone's personal "bat-cave" with weapon racks, screens showing various changing scenes, computers, hatches and warning signs etc...)

 

[pukunui]

That looks pretty awesome!

I LOVE the 4th ed screen for 2 reasons:

1) they finally made one low enough, so you can work/see over it! Jeesh, no use having very tall ones, they get in the way too much. The DM can't see the board.

2) it is made of thick card, about damn time. thus it won't get damaged so easy
Dunno about you all but DM screens always ended up needing taped up, lol.

They did one like that for Star Wars Saga Edition before D&D 4e even came out ... just sayin' is all.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

ta folks!

Pukuni
well, I only bought the star wars main book, for my cousin who's a SW fanatic hehe

anyway, more work!

made a 1mm gap around all the drawer bottom/sides, that should keep 'em loose and allow some leeway in bulding. Plastic does get a bit tight over time with dust n' stuff, since this will be hand built gotta allow for non-machine precision etc.

added a "dice tower" to roll 'em down inside as requested by a fella on the WOTC forums. note circular hole ot pop dice in, big enough to take a true Zocchi d100!
little dish flips down at bottom as a pan for all the dice to roll into.

made side panels/wings a bit deeper (5 cm depth)

now, should I make the main panel big enough to take an A4 pad though?
would then need lengthened by +3cm, at moment it will fit any 3rd/4th ed core book with about 2 cm depth left for sticking a sheet of paper with tables etc as a DM screen on inside, plus character sheets, paper and so forth.
may make it deeper as well, to 5 Cm total depth as per the wings/side.

Plans: should I add dovetailing to the plans for strong assembly, or leave that to whoever makes it to figure out for themselves?
with industrial super glue/epoxy it should be storng enough I THINK without dovetails, but...dovetails = much stronger but are lot trickier to cut out.

been a hell of a long time since I did such crafting, so this is all plan/theoretical!

preview pics

full sized here
http://www.silverblades-suitcase.com/rhino/2010/dmscreen4.jpg
http://www.silverblades-suitcase.com/rhino/2010/dmscreen6.jpg

 

[Wolf1066]

Dude, if the finished product winds up looking half as good as the renderings of your design, it's gonna be a winner.

And when they display it in the shops they should have it set out exactly as your rendering - with mini, dice, book, pencil - it shows it off brilliantly.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

A couple of ideas (it's awesome by the way).

1. I like the idea of utilizing the side panels for drawers, but I note that there would be issues during play of using those drawers. What if they pulled out to the far side (sideways drawers) instead of forward facing as you have them?

2. I'd love to see this somehow crisscrossed with metal. (In a wide grid maybe?) Reason being the use of magnets. Our group uses magnets for initiative and we just move em around when people delay or whatever. That would be something great to have a see through feature with. Get a magnet with pc names on both sides and the dm can move em around and the players can still see em. Perhaps it would be like a thin card with magnets on the two sides about the same size as the metal lines on the screen?

3. I think with metal borders, magnets could also be used for clipping on the papers you would need.

4. For dice...if you want to still have a "dice roller" why not include multiple colored dice, perhaps along with a "key". I.E. include 5d6's...all of different colors. The key says which ones to count (like 1 green, 2 red, 3 blue etc). You need to roll 2d6? Roll em all and add green and red, ignoring the rest.

5. The dice roller you have with the ramps is cool, but seems like wasted space the way it is. I think it'd be worth refining and keeping though.

 

[pukunui]

Pukuni
well, I only bought the star wars main book, for my cousin who's a SW fanatic hehe

No worries. Just wanted to point out that the 4e one wasn't the first. In fact, WotC did a landscape GM screen for D&D 3.5 as well, but it was still made of thin card rather than boardgame material. AFAIK, the SWSE GM screen is the first landscape + heavy boardgame cardstock one. They proved popular enough that WotC continued with the design for the 4e screens as well. It was definitely a good idea on their part.

Regarding the dice roller: does it need to take up the whole left wing? Could it be a bit more vertical? I'm just thinking of that "ultimate dm screen" thing that's shaped like a castle wall with two big towers in the middle that can act as dice rollers. They're not very big horizontally, but they're quite tall. I don't know what exactly is inside them, though.