Tricks to make your RPG experience better!

[Sebastrd]

If you use a battlemat, get the WASHABLE Crayola markers. Between the two sets you get 16 colors for less than $10, and they come off ridiculously easy with a wet paper towel.

 

[Verys Arkon]

Here is a tip I got from one of my players (thanks Bill!) for speeding up mapping.

Photocopy or print out an extra copy of your dungeon map, and then cut out the individual rooms. As the party explores, hand them the piece for the room they just found. Use a loose-leaf sticky backed photo album page to hold all the pieces in their proper place. You can get them from most photo developing places or camera shops, like Blacks.

This speeds up mapping without ruining the sense of exploration like handing out the whole map and hoping they don't metagame it.

Verys

 

[Wraith Form]

Plastic rings from pop bottles? That's great!

I found elastic hair ties

at a local Wal-Mart. These are smaller than normal hair-ties, they're about 1/4 to 1/2 inch diameter. They easily slip over the heads, arms or weapons of minis, and can be stretched on those irksome weird minis. Plus, the advantage over soda-bottle rings is that they're soft and won't damage paint jobs (for those who actually paint their minis).

The ones I found came in convenient bloodied red, fighter's mark yellow, warlock's curse purple, ranger's hunter's quarry blue, and other colors. When we slip them over the minis' heads, we say that they've been lei'ed.

 

[Jib]

Some fantastic ideas! I know we have more! Let's keep sharing!

 

[Andugus]

There have been some fabulous ideas for tabletop improvements. Some of these issues go away through the use of computer aid software. I have not gamed in person during last five years, excepting conventions. I use Fantasy Grounds II by Smiteworks and I have never looked back.

One of the best things about it is the level of roleplaying is so much better. When people have to type their actions or what they are saying they tend to get into character more than in person. There are fewer issues of meta-gaming as well.

Getting back on target, things I do to make a session go well is to have a small database of unexpected image tokens ready. Things like a generic tavern map, a list of names appropriate to the region, recycled npcs. A few tweaks on an old npc like a new name and shifting around equipment and abilities saves me the most time.

 

[Jib]

I love the dollar store (or whatever it is called in your hometown)! I can pick up a bag of rubber insects for a buck! Craft items like beads or glass tokens can make great treasure props! Once in awhile you can buy a bag of toy soldiers that have small pieces of terrain that can be used. Small cars and other modern toys can be used in Shadowrun or other hitech games. Plastic dinosaurs work great for D&D!

 

[Jib]

Fed Ex Kinkos can provide some great services to enhance you games! No only can you copy maps but many have over sized copiers where you can enlarge maps to mini size play! And don't for get the lamination services! You can cover all your maps with a fine plastic to let them stand up against spills and wear!

 

[Janx]

Here's a thought thats maybe a little radical (for this thread). Don't use a battlemat or miniatures. Be more freeform. It 'looks' cooler in your head. And it doesn't bog things down in I take a five-foot step excetera.
if that's to extreme just take some change or something to represent whose in melee, and how many enemies there are etc.
If your concerned about spell area etc. just have the character roll a spell-craft check or something to see how many opponents he can hit, without hitting his allies. Or just make a ruling.

I disagree. I've played it both ways. I've found that a battlemat for combat scenes speeds up game play. Especially in late night, when players pay less attention when it's not their turn. Doing it the "in your head way", means each player tends to ask questions about positioning and for clarification during their turn. It's faster to look at the mat, move your guy, and roll your attacks.

It does slow down game play when the GM draws out the ENTIRE dungeon (either ahead of time, or as you move). I played with a GM who did that once. He literally made us move per combat rules through the entire dungeon. That sucked. I only played the first session, and never came back.

Switch to battlemat mode right before initiative is rolled. Stop using it when the bad guys are dead.

Other tricks I've used:
hand-outs. Anytime the PCs are given some paper, give the players some paper. It's tangible, and easy to do. There's a number of fonts in MS Word that look like hand-writing (close enough). Switch them up if you want to have some variety (I don't bother).

I almost always try to give the players a map to the dungeon. It speeds up play, as they generally point to where they want to go next. The map is always a re-created copy, leaving out secrets, and being less precise. I usually hand-draw it, so it looks more like something the NPC created as an actual map.

As a player, I keep all the maps and hand-outs I'm given for my PC. That can be a fun tool as a GM. In one campaign, I made up a "newspaper" of about 2-4 pages, with a variety of articles. Incorporating political rumors, "world" trivia about races, let me feed the players clues about what was going on in the world. You can use this to feed them stuff that they may not pay close attention to, but they'll have it to go back over when they really need it.

During combat, act with some urgency. Talk a bit faster, try to hurry players up. Make them delay or skip their turn (full defense) if they take too long. This will speed up combat, and instill a sense of urgency. I do use a houserule that the GM will not try to screw a PC on attack of opportunity (meaning the PC will use the safest path for their movement points), thus you spend less time micro-managing the counting of squares.

 

[Pbartender]

Here's a simple one: if you're using a battle mat, just write the initiative order on it. Whenever I DM I usually have the players handle taking the initiative order down, and it's easily visible to everyone along the side of the wet-erase mat.

Of course, this assumes you're playing a system where the turn order is consistent for each round.

One better than that...

I take a bunch of index cards and fold them in half, so they can stand up like a tent. On each one, I write the name of the character and player on one side, and on the other side I write the character/player name plus some vital stats -- Init, AC, Saves, passive skills, etc. I'll do the same for the monsters they encounter.

During combat, I just hang them in initiative order across the top of my DM's screen like clothes on a laundry line, with the stat side toward me. Everybody can see who goes when, the basics of the PCs are right in front of my nose, and if the initiative order changes I can just slide the cards around.

 

[Noumenon]

During combat, I just hang them in initiative order across the top of my DM's screen like clothes on a laundry line, with the stat side toward me. Everybody can see who goes when, the basics of the PCs are right in front of my nose, and if the initiative order changes I can just slide the cards around.

Hey, that's a good one, Pbartender! I always thought it was a great tip to write the players and monsters on index cards, and use those to keep track of initiative order. But what sometimes happens is I pull out the monster card to check its AC, and I skip part of the order.

I also have an "end of round" index card with the numbers 1 through 20 and a paper clip that I slide from number to number. If you cast blink in round 3, I write next to round 7 "blink ends," if you get poisoned I write in round 13 "bartender Fort 13." I can keep track of twenty-round combats that way, including the bugbears that are supposed to arrive on round 10.

I am a DM who draws the whole map in advance on a big battlemat, and I'm in good company; Beginning of the End from The Alexandrian does it too. He writes about the advantages:

(1) The drawing of an encounter map is never a "give-away" that something interesting is about to happen.

(2) The position of a PC miniature on the battlemap is understood to be absolutely precise and binding 99% of the time, virtually eliminating all metagame arguments about who was standing where when the fireball trap went off.

The Alexandrian is also the place where I got the idea of rolling for initiative after combat, when things are low-key, instead of at the beginning of combat, when it kills the excitement.

Right now the thing I am most excited about is the Fiery Dragon Counter Collection I bought. All of a sudden instead of aquarium stones or Magic art that almost matches, I've got exactly the token for every encounter. Cool art for just about every monster in the MM and summoned monster. I can print out ten skeletons if I want instead of mix-and-matching minis.

I started out printing them on paper and sticking them to pennies, then I started printing them on 3x5 index cards, which were heavy enough all on their own. Then I started printing them in two rows and folding them in half so I have stand-up monster tokens a little shorter than a mini. If anyone wants the Word document I paste them into, I'll mail it to you. There are some free counters here that you could use to try it out.

The trick I am most committed to that I don't expect anybody else to try out is putting everything on an index card. Everything! You put the monster's AC, its attacks, its resistances, its spell-like abilities, its round-by-round tactics. The downside is it takes a lot of time to figure everything out. The upside is, all that stuff is figured out!

I'm sure not capable of remembering and calculating how much AC a 6th-level cleric gets from shield of faith on the fly, or all the different bonuses death knell gives. Maybe a normal DM wings it, or figures out which spell to cast first and then looks it up in the PHB at the table. That seems momentum-killing to me. With all the tactical information on the monster's initiative card, you can play him as efficiently as the PCs are playing their characters. That means faster combat and more of your brain space left for description and improvisation.

Here's an example card for a 6th-level cleric out of a module. The stats are on the front, the spells are on the back. Things I looked up that I never could have figured out in real time:
* The module just tells me he has a spell-storing dagger with bestow curse. It's up to me to figure out what save that is (Will) and what the DC is.
* He has a lot of spells I've never cast before, like wind wall and death knell.
* He has Combat Casting in the feat block. I put that +4 next to his Concentration skill because that's where I look when it's time for a Concentration check.
* He's disguised as a drow. I put a reminder to myself to pretend he's making spell resistance rolls next to each of his saves. I'd be sure to forget in the heat of combat (probably never would have thought of it either).

Now a lot of people are thinking I'm crazy for wasting that much prep time on pure crunch. I know it doesn't really make sense to trying to handle all the insane complexity of D&D 3.5 -- it would take a computer. But to me, it's really worth it! Two reasons:
* Monsters in 3.5 are built like PCs, with all the levels and feats. I didn't played that many PCs before I started DMing -- only two. So playing monsters in their true complexity is like building eight or ten new characters a week! It's fun.
* Monsters who really use all their abilities and master them are interesting and unique -- just like PCs. I don't want to be a lazy GM and run an entire campaign off one Orc statblock with different fluff, when I could be running something like a Salt Mephit who's got an entirely unique set of attacks and spells. Even if I have to do almost as much homework on those spells as a wizard needs to memorize them himself.