Category Archives: Advice/Tools

Building a simple, portable RPG projector setup

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Update 8/24/2010: I’ve improved the design to make the projector floor-mounted with an adjustable angle.  Details are in this post.

At long last, I have built a working, portable projector setup for playing D&D using MapTools to run the game.

First, let’s see the finished rig in all its glory:

Maybe it’s not the most beautiful rig in the world, but by golly it works!

I’ll say right here that I’m a little surprised that I ended up going with a single-pole rig anchored with a sandbag.  I originally expected to build a big cube rig out of aluminum (like Sean Pecor’s), then thought I’d build a wooden tripod, but I settled on this design after receiving lots of great feedback here on the blog and on EN World.  It feels quite stable, too – heavy wood, heavy pipes and a heavy sandbag all combine to result in a rig that makes me feel comfortable that my projector is in no danger of falling (well, except for the coat hangers that are in place until the real mount arrives, that is).  I plan to carry the laptop, projector, cords/mouse and sandbag in an old roll-aboard suitcase and the rest of the rig in one piece in my other hand whenever I take this on the road.

Would you like to build something similar?  Here’s how to do it.

Parts

  • 1 heavy board at least 2 feet long.  Mine was a four-foot long 10 by 2 (actually 9.5″ by 1.5″) that I found in the scrap bin of Home Depot for 51 cents.  I believe it’s pressure-treated – it’s quite dense.  Cost: 51 cents.
  • 2 floor flanges for 1″ galvanized pipe. Cost: $6.38 each, $12.76 total
  • A three-foot length of 1″ diameter galvanized pipe (black), threaded at both ends (technically called a nipple). Cost: $11.37
  • A 90 degree elbow for 1″ galvanized pipe. Cost: $2.36
  • A two-inch long nipple for 1″ diameter galvanized pipe. Cost: $1.22
  • Eight wood screws, 1″ in length. Cost: I had these in my toolbox, but we’ll call it 25 cents.
  • Two curtain rod mounts plus four more wood screws for mounting them. Cost: I had these laying around, but I imagine you would spend about $1 each on them if you had to buy them plus another 25 cents for the screws, I guess.  Feel free to substitute something similar for the projector to rest on.
  • A 60-pound  bag of tube sand. Cost: $3.99
  • Two pieces of 30″ by 20″ white foam board from Michael’s (I would have preferred a single bigger piece, but this is what they had). Cost: $1.50 each, $3.00 total.
  • Some duct tape. Cost: I’ll assume you have this on hand already.
  • A projector mount. I got mine via Amazon from a company called Projector Ceiling Mounts Direct. Cost: $26.40 (with shipping)
  • A projector.  I went with the ViewSonic PJD5152 and purchased it from Buy.com via Amazon. Cost: $463.99 (free shipping)
  • An extension cord and probably a splitter / surge protector. Cost: Already on hand.
  • A laptop – but I’ll assume you have that already.

Total cost:

  • Projector: $463.99
  • Rig: $64.11
  • Projector and rig together: $528.10

Before the projector mount had arrived I was too excited to wait, so I substituted some coat hangers for testing purposes.  Those, too, were lying around – no cost. 🙂 (You can see that version in some of the pictures.)

Also, I ended up using 1″ galvanized pipe, but I was planning on getting 3/4″ galvanized pipe.  Home Depot was out of 3/4″ flanges, though, so I went with 1″. I’m guessing either one will work fine.

Tools

  • A table saw (or some other way of cutting the board – you could also probably get it pre-cut at the hardware store)
  • A drill with a screwdriver bit (you could technically get by with a regular screwdriver, but the drill makes it go faster

Assembly instructions

This version ended up being dead simple to put together, much easier than my tripod – and better, too.  You could knock this together in less than an hour if you had all of the parts ready to go.

  • Cut a 12″ length and a 7″ length from your long board using a table saw. The 12″ length will be the base of your rig and the 7″ piece will be the top plate that the mount connects to.
  • Screw one of the flanges to the middle of the 12″ board using four of the wood screws and your drill or screwdriver.
  • Screw the other flange to the middle of the 7″ board using the other four wood screws and your drill or screwdriver.
  • Manually screw the 36″ pipe into the flange on the 12″ board.
  • Manually screw the 90 degree elbow onto the top of the 36″ pipe.
  • Manually screw the 2″ nipple onto the other end of the 90 degree elbow.
  • Take the 7″ board with the other flange and screw that board/flange assembly onto the other end of the 2″ nipple.  Tighten as necessary to get it pointed at the angle you want (I went with vertical).
  • Put the rig on your gaming table.
  • Empty out about half of the sand from your sandbag and twist tie / tie / duct tape up the opened end.
  • Wrap the sandbag around the base of the rig, sitting on the base board.  Put more of the weight toward the edge of the table (opposite of where the projector will be).
  • Assemble the mount per its instructions.  One piece will be attached to the far side of the 7″ board and the other piece will be attached to the projector itself.
  • Tighten the projector onto the mount as best you can. If your mount is like mine, it will want to move.
  • Figure out the exact angle you want the projector to be held at, and hold the curtain rod holders underneath either front corner of the projector at the proper place to support it.  Mark the places for the screw holes in the curtain rod brackets with a pencil.
  • Take the projector assembly off the base part of the mount, remove the top board, and screw the curtain rod holders to the board in the appropriate spot.  Reassemble – now your projector should stay where you want it.  Feel free to bend the curtain rod holders a little bit as needed.
  • Put the foam boards on the table beneath and in front of the projector.

At this point, your rig is completely set up.  All that’s left now is to hook up the cables, make any necessary adjustments (either to the projector’s position on the mount, to the keystone of the image, to the lens focus/zoom, etc.) and start running your game!

Running the game

  • Create your maps / monsters / etc. in MapTool
  • Start MapTool on your laptop and load up the appropriate campaign
  • Start a server in MapTool
  • Open a second instance of MapTool
  • In that second instance, connect to the first one as a client (it will be in the LAN tab on the connection menu)
  • Hook the laptop to the projector
  • Set your display to the Extend Desktop option (setting the resolutions on each monitor appropriately).  The laptop should the primary (left) monitor, with the projector being the secondary (right) monitor.
  • Drag the second instance of MapTool onto the projector (drag it off to the right)
  • In the second instance, hit Ctrl+Alt+Enter to put it in fullscreen mode
  • Adjust the zoom level on both versions so that your squares are 1″ on a side.  The simplest way to do this is to just adjust it on the main MapTool instance and then use Ctrl+F to force the second instance to the same view as the main instance.
  • Run the game as you normally would online!

That’s all there is to it!  I haven’t gotten to run a real game with this yet, but it will at the very least get some use at TactiCon here in Denver over Labor Day weekend.  I’m excited to try it out!

Online campaign session 4: Through the caverns

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Ah, I love being a dungeon master!  My online group, consisting of five players whom I’ve never met in person, got together this evening for the fourth session of our ongoing campaign.  The first session was a standalone Living Forgotten Realms game, and the next three have been from the War of the Burning Sky.

Tonight’s session was the first I’ve ever run that was entirely homebrewed.  Yes, we’re still in the War of the Burning Sky campaign saga, but I decided to completely change the story of the party’s escape from Gate Pass.  Rather than dealing with politics and masquerading as city guards, I gave the party the option of going through the city sewers and into some natural caverns.  Happily, they took that option.

In our last session (two weeks ago – we took last week off), we finished with the party fighting through a crypt filled with undead dwarves.  It was a tough battle, but they made it through.  They also found a whole bunch of treasure in the crypt, evidently things that the ancient dwarves were buried with.  This included a mysterious blue cube that the party spent quite a bit of time experimenting with.  It seems mostly harmless so far…

From there, they delved into the caves.  This is a skill challenge, although I’m not running it by simply asking for a skill check, marking success or failure, etc.  Some parts of it have involved navigation – figuring the right path among many, or navigating through a maze of twisty little passages, all alike (the minotaur in the party is, appropriately, great at that).  There have also been some physical challenges – getting down a steep slope, or crossing a narrow bridge.

I built the challenge so that failure could lead to battles.  In the case of the bridge, five out of the six characters in the party (including an NPC, Torrent) made it across safely.  The sixth, our swordmage, decided to just walk on across while holding onto a rope, but not tying it around herself.  Naturally, she failed badly on her acrobatics check and wound up down in the pit, where she was promptly attacked by some crauds in a surprise round.  Some of the crauds rolled first in the initiative order, so they got a second wave of attacks which left the poor swordmage unconscious at the bottom of a pit full of water and lobster-creatures.

It was then up to the rest of the party to rescue the swordmage.  The fighter jumped on down (falling and hurting himself, but landing on a bad guy and hurting it, too) and started swinging his craghammer.  The druid decided to climb rather than jump down.  The others mostly stayed at the rim of the pit and attacked from range.  This ended up being a surprisingly nasty battle, despite the fact that it was technically below the party’s level and despite the fact that I held back a little bit in not using one craud’s encounter power before it was killed.  Go figure.

With the swordmage now at full hit points but no surges and the fighter down to his last surge, the group pressed on and took a wrong turn, ending up in a den of cave fishers.  I’ve been looking forward to running this encounter ever since I saw the cave fishers in Monster Manual 3, and I have to say that it was a lot of fun.  I love the way the anglers grab onto a character and pull them into the air while their young climb down to start eating the PC.  And of course once the angler is dead or the PC manages to extract themselves, they have to deal with the fall from the ceiling.  Good times!

I also tried to bring more of the characters’ back stories into the game this time.  The minotaur druid, who has no memory of his past, is starting to get hints above some savagery within himself.  He role-played the situation well, and I’ve ended up deciding to introduce an artifact into the game.  I’m open to ideas: What should a totem of Melora that’s tied to a minotaur druid be like?

I had the party finish tonight’s session in the village where our fighter had grown up – technically, in the ruins of the village, which had been pillaged by orcs.  It felt like a good place to wrap up the session, with the party next having to either figure out a way through the rockfall that has blocked the ruined village in, or heading back into the caves to finish navigating their way out.

I have some pretty good ideas about where the adventure is going from here – likely back onto the adventure path – but I really enjoyed writing my own skill challenge and encounters, and I think they played well.  The flexibility to do what I want is fantastic, and I’m not totally comfortable at winging things when I’m working from published material.  I just need to get over that!

Maybe 800 by 600 is enough

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With my planned projector setup for RPG mapping, it looks like I’ve gotten some good news and some bad news about the projector that I bought.  The good news is that my buddy who works with projectors was able to help me out with my projector last night at the bowling alley, and it looks like the resolution will be just fine.

A quick aside: Toting a laptop, projector, cables and an extension cord into a bowling alley will get you some funny looks.  Accidentally shining the projected image onto the lanes (distracting the other bowlers) will get you yelled at.

Anyway, my friend was able to show me how to adjust the height of the projector and the zoom of the lens to get the image focused from a good height in such a way that the quality of the image was on par with what I was looking for.  It’s still a little pixellated, but not bad at all.  A higher resolution projector wouldn’t make any difference.

The bad news is that if I want a better image quality, I’ll have to use something other than MapTool.  Now, I love MapTool.  I’m not really interested in using anything else, so that means that I’m willing to accept so-so graphics.  The graphics for the maps themselves are fine – it’s the tokens for the monsters that don’t look great.  I’m probably okay with that in the end, but I will at some point experiment with other graphics options.

I’ve also gotten lots of good feedback from commenters on the blog and people on EN World about my tripod setup and other options.  My bowling pal likes the idea of a tripod, with one leg right under the projector and the other two legs some distance back, resulting in a squat isoceles triangle of legs rather than the equilateral triangle I have now.  However, my next approach will be as follows:

  • Get a 12 inch square piece of pretty heavy wood (maybe 3/4″ thick)
  • Mount a pipe flange onto that piece of wood with screws
  • Screw a length of pipe (maybe 24 inches long) into that flange
  • Put a 90 degree elbow on the top of that pipe
  • Screw a short pipe (maybe 4 inches) onto the elbow, sticking out parallel to the table
  • Screw another flange on another piece of wood onto the end of that short pipe
  • Put a projector mount (perpendicular to the table) on the other side of the piece of wood
  • Put the projector on that mount, aiming downward (and maybe slightly outward, with keystone correction)

This, too, should be pretty inexpensive.  I’ve ordered a projector mount for about $27, and I’m guessing that the pipes, flanges, wood and elbow shouldn’t be more than another $25 or so.  I’ll need to get some good clamps to hold the bottom piece of wood to the table, and maybe some kind of weight to put on that wood as well, but I expect the mounting system all-in to cost less than $75.

Next stop: The hardware store!

Projector setup needs better resolution

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The good news is that my projector arrived today early enough to give me time to play around with it before I have to leave for a two-day business trip to New York.

The bad news is that I think I need a higher-resolution projector.  Take a look at this close-up of the projected map (click to enlarge):

That’s just too pixellated for my taste. I’ve put some physical tokens next to the digital ones for the sake of comparison.

Having gotten the projector into my hands, I’ve learned a few useful lessons.

  • 800 by 600 resolution flat-out isn’t enough
  • 2500 lumens is plenty to use in normal lighting (yay!)
  • MapTool is going to be fantastic for this purpose (though if I want to jump the projected screen to what I can see on the DM screen, I’d better make sure the scale is the same)
  • The tripod setup isn’t that bad, but I want to pursue the single-pole approach

The main reason for that last point is not so much that the tripod is a little unsteady (though it is) or that the legs get in the players’ way (though they do).  It’s that having the lens right above the middle of the table means that the image will be off to one side, just because of the way projectors work.  The much cleaner solution will be to have the projector mounted more or less directly in front of the DM’s seat, thus projecting nicely out onto the table.

Next steps:

  • Play around a little bit more with this projector to see if I’m missing a way to work around the resolution problem (any suggestions?)
  • After that, return the projector to Buy.com and take the plunge on a higher-res version (sigh)
  • Start working on a single-pole rig that can be clamped to the table in front of the DM or that can sit in a mount at the DM’s feet.

Tripod for RPG mapping projector: First prototype

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While I wait for the projector to arrive so that I can begin putting digital maps on my game table, I decided build a prototype of my tripod idea.  Here it is in all its glory:

I don’t plan for this to be the actual version that I use, of course – this is more of a proof-of concept.  And of course it looks a little bit silly with no projector, but I put out a Chessex mat, some tokens, some dice and some character sheets so that I could get a feel of what it would be like to play with it.

First, I’ll tell you what I did.  I started with two eight-foot long pieces of cheap pine (1/2 inch by an inch and a half) that I bought for 77 cent apiece from Home Depot.  I cut each of these in half with a miter saw, ending up with four pieces of wood, each 48 inches long.

I then took a big piece of scrap plywood that I had laying around (it was about 30 inches square to start with and 1/2 inch thick), cut it in half and then cut one of those halves in half again an a table saw, leaving me with a 15 inch square.  I then cut this into a 15 inch equilateral triangle (yay geometry!) on the table saw and drilled a hole in the middle using a hole saw.

Next, I drilled pilot holes for mounting the hinges on the underside of the middle of each side of the triangle as well as at the top of each leg.  I also drilled pilot holes roughly eight inches down each leg for the screw eyes.  I screwed the hinges onto the triangle and the legs, and I screwed the screw eyes into each leg.  I then threaded a piece of kitchen twine through the three screw eyes and tied it to close the loop.

When I set this version up, it was too tall (as I knew it would be), so I shortened the legs to 39 inches each using the miter saw, which left the platform 36 inches above the table top (I’ll probably shorten it to 30 inches in the end, but I can always cut it shorter – I can’t make the legs longer). I also tightened up the twine a little bit from my original pass.  What you see in the photo above is the result of this work.

What’s the verdict?  Well, I’ll admit that I’m having serious doubts about this approach.

  • The hinges have a lot of play in them, which means that the platform can be a little wobbly even if the legs are securely stuck to the ground.
  • The legs, as I feared, are a little awkward for the players to reach around.  They WILL be bumped.
  • While the twine keeps the legs from pulling father apart (and yes, I was planning on using something sturdier than cotton twine for the final version – probably leather string), it doesn’t keep them from being bumped closer together.  That could still cause a collapse if a leg gets shoved inward.

I’m considering a few different options from here.  First, I will play with this prototype a little bit more to see if it might be worthwhile.

  • I’ll try wrapping some duct tape around the hinges to give them less play.
  • I’ll try using some kind of rigid brace between the legs, either wood or metal.  I’m thinking of something like a really long hook and eye, like you might see latching a cabinet or screen door closed, but the longest I’ve found so far is only six inches, which doesn’t stretch far enough.
  • I’ll put some bigger feet on the bottom of the legs (probably four inch squares of plywood), which might give me the chance to clamp them to the table.  I also plan on putting some rubber on the bottom of these feet.

However, I’m also open to the possibility of completely abandoning the tripod idea (which is why I just build a quick and dirty and cheap prototype first).  Some folks on EN World have pointed out that I don’t have to have the lens of the projector mounted over the center of the table, since the projection angle doesn’t spread equally downward and upward from the center of the projector – it spreads mostly upward.  This opens up possibilities such as a single pole with the projector mounted to the top of it, perhaps clamping the pole to the table.  My wife also suggested just using a metal sawhorse and mounting the projector to the side of it, which might totally work.

Thoughts?

Projector setup: Maybe a tripod?

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As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve decided to take the plunge to buy a projector for use in projecting my RPG maps onto the game table from my laptop.  I was planning to use Sean Pecor’s design for the rig to hold the projector above the table, but then I thought about a word that my bowling buddy (who works with projectors and other video equipment for a living) used when I described the setup to him:

Tripod.

Could it really be that simple?  Could I really just build a tripod to suspend the projector above the game table, rather than building a massive cube?

Well, given that a tripod would be cheap, simple and highly portable, I think it’s at least worth a shot.

I began by doing some sketching of what a tripod for this setup might look like, then swung by the hardware store on my lunch break.  I picked up two eight-foot long pine boards (1.5 inches wide, 3/4″ thick), some small hinges and some screw eyes.  I already have some scrap plywood at home.  The general idea is that there will be some type of triangular platform at the top with a hole in it that the projector will point downward through (along with something to hold the projector in place).  Attached to each side of the triangle will be a hinge with a wooden leg attached.  Each leg will have a screw eye on it (not too far down from the platform), and some leather rope will connect the three screw eyes together to hold the tripod up properly.  There will be some adjustable feet on the bottom of the legs, preferably rubber-tipped.  The whole thing will sit on some type of battle mat (I like Sean’s idea of a dry-erase surface).

What am I missing?  Will the legs get in the players’ way?  Will it be too unsteady?  What is the drawback to the cheap, light, portable tripod approach?  I plan to build a quick and dirty version to test it out.  If it works, I’ll build a nice one.

Projector purchased!

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Lord help me, I’ve taken the plunge: I’m building a projector setup for my in-person D&D gaming.  Inspired by Ian at the local store and by Sean Pecor online, I figured that if I’m going to be true to my Online Dungeon Master self while still playing in-person, it only makes sense to bring technology to the table and use my computer to run in-person games, too.

I did a lot of research, culminating with a conversation I had at my bowling league tonight with a guy who works with video setups for a living.  He confirmed that the sort of things I was looking at were indeed the right tools for the job.  I did a bunch of searching on Projector Central and ultimately settled on the ViewSonic PJD5152.  The features that I like about this projector are:

  • Short throw.  This means that the projector doesn’t have to be very far away from the tabletop in order to project a clear image (which means my rig doesn’t have to be crazy-tall).
  • 2,500 lumens.  That’s pretty bright for a short throw projector, which (I hope) means that I will be able to use it even in a setting where there are normal lights on.
  • 5.5  pounds.  That’s pretty lightweight, which I care about since I plan to take this rig with me when I’m DMing at a store or a convention (hello there, TactiCon!).
  • $464 from Buy.com (via Amazon.com).  It’s still a big purchase, but compared to most of the other options out there, it’s a good deal.
  • 30 day return policy.  If it turns out that this won’t work properly, I can get my money back.

The features that I’m a little more nervous about:

  • 800 by 600 resolution (SVGA).  That’s not super-high.  Now, I’m figuring that it will be fine for my purposes (my projector expert friend agreed), but the other DMs I’ve seen with similar rigs have had 1024 by 768 resolution.  Getting that would have meant a big step up in price.  On the other hand, my bowling buddy said that if I’m going to be using the VGA output on my laptop to connect to the projector, higher resolution wouldn’t do me any good.
  • 2,500 lumens.  While it’s pretty high for a short-throw projector, my bowling buddy was saying that I would want 4,000 to 6,000 for good image quality in normal light.  I couldn’t even find a short-throw projector with 4,000 lumens (3,000 to 3,500 were available for beaucoup bucks).  Sean Pecor seemed happy with his 2,000 lumens, so I’m optimistic, but still a little concerned.
  • The price.  Yeah, it’s a good deal by projector standards, but holy cow that’s a lot of money!

The projector should arrive sometime early next week, at which point I will most likely be in New York on business (that figures).  I plan to try it out without building a rig first, just holding it over a table.  Once I feel confident that this thing is going to work, I’ll begin construction of the rig to hold the thing.  I like Sean’s setup, and I plan to build mine largely based on his.

So, am I nuts?  Any advice for me as I (perhaps foolishly) forge ahead into the realms of becoming a projector-wielding DM?

Two-hit minions (and another gaming hiatus)

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One-Week Hiatus (from gaming, not blogging)

After three Fridays in a row of running my online D&D game, it looks like we’re finally going to have to take a week off.  My wife and I have a date Friday (yes, I have a life outside of D&D!) and two of the five players have scheduling conflicts or potential scheduling conflicts, so we’re going to take the week off.  This is probably a good thing since I’ll be on a business trip to New York next Monday through Wednesday and probably won’t have a ton of time to get ready during the trip (although I’ll admit that several hours on a plane with the laptop does make for a lot of D&D planning time if I wish).  I’m pretty much set for the next session already, so getting a little ahead would be a good thing.

TactiCon Prep

Dark Skull - The Black Knight of Arabel

I’m also going to start getting ready for the Living Forgotten Realms game that I’ll be running at TactiCon over Labor Day weekend.  I’ve been through the adventure once as a player, and I’ve just finished reading through the published version this evening.  The DM who ran it was pretty creative with rearranging things on the fly; I might take some of his modifications into the game when I run it.

One thing that the DM who ran this adventure did that I liked was making minions a little tougher.  Minions in D&D 4e are enemies that only take one hit to kill, no matter how little damage they take.  That’s fine – it gives the wizard in the party a gang to blow up.  But honestly, minions end up feeling a little bit pointless.  I’ve been making a lot of my minions two-hit minions instead, and I think it makes them more fun.  The rules I use are as follows:

Two-hit minions

  • Minions begin with two hit points
  • Whenever a minion takes damage, that damage is reduced to 1 hit point
  • This first hit bloodies the minion (so any PC abilities that kick in on bloodying an enemy kick in)
  • Damaging a bloodied minion drops it
  • Dealing a critical hit to an unbloodied minion drops it
  • Dealing damage to an unbloodied minion of a type that the minion is vulnerable to drops it
  • Rule of cool – anything that should wipe out a typical enemy drops a minion even if it’s not bloodied (massive damage, etc.)
  • And if the PC does something that would wipe out an unbloodied minion but the minion is already bloodied, feel free to have the attack drop the bloodied minion and then bloody an adjacent unbloodied minion (or drop another adjacent bloodied minion)

These aren’t hard and fast rules, but I think they make minions more interesting.  Now that Magic Missile is an auto-hit (my players have already started calling it “Magic Hittle”), regular minions just seem boring.  Sure, the wizard has to use his standard action to drop one rather than doing something awesome someplace else, but it still feels boring.  I am against boring!

MapTool Macro Updates

I’ve continued to tweak my MapTool macros on the Downlaods page.  First, I’ve discovered that WordPress supports a fixed-width font that lets me show you the proper indenting for the macros.  This makes IF blocks and WHILE loops much easier to follow.  Second, I’ve added new Basic properties and new code to PC macros to handle Brutal weapons.

A weapon with Brutal X means that you re-roll any dice that are X or lower.  So, a Brutal 1 weapon means you re-roll any 1s for damage, Brutal 2 means you re-roll 1s and 2s, and so on.  I first programmed this very manually for the dwarven fighter in my campaign who was using a Brutal 2 Craghammer.  Then I realized from searching online that a d10 weapon with Brutal 2 is exactly the same as a d8+2 weapon.  With d10 Brutal 2, you have an equal chance of getting a 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 or 10.  And with a d8 + 2, you have exactly the same chance of getting exactly the same numbers.  Sweet!

My code now contains the following lines:

[h: DamageDie=Wpn1Dmg-Wpn1Brutal]
[h: NumDice=1]
[h: DamageRoll=roll(NumDice,DamageDie)+NumDice*Wpn1Brutal]

So, if your weapon doesn’t have the Brutal property, Wpn1Brutal will be zero, and the damage roll will be one weapon die plus zero.  However, if it’s Brutal 1, the damage roll will be a roll of a die that’s one number smaller than the regular damage die, and then one point will be added to the roll.  Note that for Brutal 1 this means that you’ll be rolling a d9 or a d7 or something like that.  This is obviously impossible in real life, but MapTool doesn’t care!  Feel free to roll a d23 in MapTool if you like.

Summing up

I’ll be okay without my online game for a week, but I’m really hoping that the in-person game that I play in will start up again soon (the DM has not been feeling well for a while).  I’ll throw myself into future prep work, which, I must admit, has led me to keep on dreaming about the projector setup that I talked about last time.  What’s wrong with me?  🙂

I’m curious: Do any of you out there use house rules for minions, or are they all one hit all the time?

MapTool – updated macros and using it for in-person games

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It’s been a while since I’ve done a post about the nitty gritty of using MapTool, so I thought that would be a good topic.  I’ve been using MapTool for my online War of the Burning Sky campaign (we’re three sessions into the game so far), and it’s worked like a charm.  The only glitches that have come up have been minor errors on my part (putting the wrong power on a PC, forgetting to update an armor class, etc.).  MapTool continues to be an awesome program.

I’ve updated everything on my MapTool Macros page on the Downloads section of this site to reflect the properties I’m using today.  There are package files available to download for a PC and for a monster, as well as sample tokens for a PC and a monster with all of those macros included.  You’ll still find the single target and multi-target attacks, along with damage, healing, initiative (I’m actually using MapTool’s initiative window now), visibility toggling for monsters, and a macro I wrote for our shaman PC to summon and dismiss his spirit companion.

Of additional interest to me right now is a visit I made to the friendly local game store, Enchanted Grounds, to see a wonder in action: A local GM (Ian) who uses a laptop and projector to put the map and monsters on the game table.  With this setup, the players still use minis for their characters and move them around on the table, but the GM prepares the map in advance along with the monsters and creates a projected image for everyone to move around on.  If I had a setup like that, I wouldn’t need to worry about printing out my maps with PosteRazor – I could just take the electronic version with me and have the ability to change it on the fly.  Given my love of MapTool for my online games, this would be great!

In order to run a setup like this, I would need to do several things.

The hardware

If I go the projector route, I need to build a projector setup.  This, of course, is the biggest obstacle to this approach.  Building a setup with a projector and game surface is expensive and difficult.  However, it’s been done before.  I like the approach laid out by Sean Pecor on his web site.  Check out the image of his setup:

I like!  It cost him just under $800 to get this together, and most of that (about $550) was the cost of the projector itself.  I could swing this if I REALLY wanted to, but unless I had a regular home game, I don’t think it would be worth it.  Still, if I go this route I will probably use this design.

For what it’s worth, Ian’s setup (the one at the local store) is a great deal more involved than this.  It consists of a free-standing wooden stand that has a table for the DM’s laptop/papers/dice, which then extends far upwards (probably about 8 feet off the ground) to an upside-down mounted projector that shoots forward onto a mirror and from there onto the table.  There isn’t a fixed surface – Ian just uses a large piece of white foamboard that he puts on the game table.  It’s neat, but Sean’s setup looks way more portable (a big win, in my opinion – especially if I want to use this for LFR or convention games).

It pretty much goes without saying that another necessary piece of hardware is the laptop to run the game.  I have a Dell laptop that I got in May 2010, so I’m in fine shape there.

The software

Ian spent some time showing me the software he uses for his game.  First, he builds maps in Dundjinni.  From what I’ve seen, Dundjinni is a fine mapping program, but I’ve settled on MapTool and I don’t see myself changing.  Apparently Dundjinni creates maps that are sized for A4 paper, and if you want a bigger area than that you’re making multiple maps.

Ian then exports the Dundjinni files as JPEGs and sticks them together in Photoshop.  He also resizes them to 60% of their native size, which evidently makes them the right size for his setup to project them at a one-inch square scale.

The software that I was REALLY interested in turned out to be a homemade program that Ian had written in Visual Basic.  This program lets him load up a map and send whatever part of it he likes to the table.  It also lets him pop monsters onto the map, show attack rolls, etc.  He showed me a lot of its features and I realized something:

MapTool does all of that already.  It’s also free, and I know how to use it.

Now, the one software piece that I didn’t understand at all going in was how Ian managed to project one image onto the table (one that only shows what he wants players to see) while still seeing the full image on his laptop (with all of the hidden monsters, traps, stats, etc.).  It turns out that he has set up his laptop in “Extend mode” with a projector.

This essentially means that he is using two monitors.  The one on the “left” is his normal laptop screen with everything that the DM should see.  The one on the “right” is the projector.  His homebrew program just sends whatever he wants to the monitor on the “right” (that is, the projector) while keeping the full image on the “left” (his laptop screen).  It’s ingenious in its simplicity.

Laptops vary, but there are two basic ways I’ve seen to set the Extend Mode up:

  • On Ian’s laptop, which is an HP machine running Windows Vista, he right clicks on the desktop, goes to Display, and chooses the two-monitor option from a drop-down menu and then the Extend mode from a list of options that pops up.
  • On my laptop, which is a Dell machine running Windows 7, I go to Control Panel – Appearance and Personalization, and then under Display choose Connect to a Projector and select the Extend option that pops up.

Now, I haven’t actually tried this with my laptop yet (I don’t have a projector, you see), but I think it should work.

The best part is that I think I’ve figured out how to do it in MapTool.  I don’t have Ian’s homebrew program to send images to the projector side of the extended screen.  However, I think the following steps will work:

  • Open up MapTool on the main monitor and load up the campaign that I want to run.
  • Start a server on this instance of the MapTool program.
  • Open a second instance of MapTool.
  • In the second instance, connect to the server that’s running from the first instance (which should be available in the LAN tab of the server connection box).  This second instance is now connected to the game as a player, not a DM, so only the player content will be visible.
  • Move the second instance onto the projected monitor (the one off to the right).
  • In that second instance, hit Ctrl-Alt-Enter to put it into fullscreen mode (or go to View – Fullscreen mode).
  • Run the game as you would online on the main instance.  Everything you reveal with fog of war, unhiding monsters, etc. will show up on the table, but nothing else will.

I’ve got to say that I’m really excited to try this idea out, and I may just hook my laptop up to a regular computer monitor and treat that monitor as the “projector,” just to see if this works!

Has anyone else tried using MapTool with a projector to run a game as I’ve described?  What about using other software?  Do you have any tips on where to get a good deal on a projector?  And am I totally nuts for thinking about doing this?  Discuss!

War of the Burning Sky Session 2

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All right, now this is more like it!  I got together with my online group last night for our second session in the War of the Burning Sky campaign (our third overall session as a group).  The first WotBS session didn’t go all that well in part because we had to wrap up early when one player got called into work but mainly because I was underprepared and didn’t feel ready to wing it when needed.

This time, I was ready.  With this session, I started intentionally deviating from the campaign as laid out in the published module, and I’m glad I did.  There are some spoilers for the campaign ahead, just so you’re warned.

I started the party off in session 1 as scripted, meeting their contact, Torrest, in a closed-down inn at New Year’s Eve in the town of Gate Pass as the world was on the brink of war.  I ran the bounty hunter ambush battle more or less as scripted, though I ran it badly.  The players did well to think quickly and try to lure the lead bounty hunter to the Resistance – a cool idea.

I then ran some of the mini-quests as written as the party made its way from the inn to the bank tower to meet their next contact.  The party helped heal a burned family, caught a panicked woman who was jumping from a burning building, and shared in the panic in the crowd as a huge winged figure swooped overhead in the night.  That’s where we ended things last time.

Next, I ran the much-maligned “Animal Crossing” encounter, in which a rich man begs the party to help him find his Kiki, who, it turns out, is his pet dire weasel (see photo to the left).  I had Torrent clearly be uninterested in helping, and I would have awarded XP for simply the group deciding that this was a waste of time, but the soft-hearted warlock in the party helped persuade the others that this poor man was in need of their help.  So, the weasel hunt was on, and for me at least it was a ton of fun.  They tracked the weasel through the streets, into a closed temple, out a side door, down an alley and into a locked sewer grate.  The druid in the party used a fabulous Nature check to calm Kiki down, at which point she climbed out and snuggled into his arms for safety (I essentially role-played Kiki as one of my cats).  I showed the party the picture I had made for Kiki, and the druid was sorely tempted to keep her (she IS pretty adorable, if a bit dire), but the group ultimately returned the cute little dire weasel to her rightful owner.  They then spent a surprising amount of time trying to get out the box of treasure that they spotted alongside Kiki in the sewer grate, ultimately blasting the crap out of the lock on the sewer grate with a bunch of magic.

Fun aside: At one point the gnome in the party tried to squeeze through the sewer grate, which was an untrained Acrobatics check.  The dwarf fighter assisted by shoving him through with a great Athletics check.  Unfortunately, the gnome’s Acrobatics roll was a natural 1, so I ruled that he got his knee caught on the grate, the fighter’s shove cause him to bang up that leg, dealing him 1d6 damage. Ah, the dangers of assisting!

At this point I made my first major deviation from the published story.  As published, the party encounters a character in the bank who appears to be their contact, Rivereye, but who is really a good-aligned spy from a nearby eladrin country.  The spy has secretly subdued the real Rivereye and taken a potion to disguise himself as Rivereye.  He has taken the case of secret information that Rivereye was supposed to be giving to Torrent (that is, the MacGuffin) and sent it with some of his eladrin allies to another part of town because the real Rivereye has convinced the spy that the case is rigged to blow up if it’s opened without the proper pass phrase.  The encounter is scheduled to go like this:

  • The party arrives and meets the fake Rivereye
  • The fake Rivereye doesn’t realize who Torrent is and slips up in his charade
  • When Torrent catches him in the slip-up, the spy flees with his wisp solon partner
  • The party then has a long series of encounters helping the Resistance and tracking down the case, possibly becoming allies with the eladrin along the way

This struck me as overly complicated and, more importantly, no fun.  I don’t like the “meet a bad guy and keep him from fleeing” encounter, especially since it seemed like it would be easy for him to get away.  So I completely revamped it.

In MY version (available here as a PDF), the fake Rivereye is a doppelganger counter-spy from the evil empire that Rivereye has been spying on.  The doppelganger and his gang of half-orc goons have been tailing Rivereye in the hopes that he’ll lead them to his contacts in the Resistance.  As in the published version, the fake Rivereye tries to pass himself off as the real one and ultimately slips up.  However, in this version he doesn’t HAVE the MacGuffin – it’s locked in a bank vault and he needs Torrent to get it out.  When he fails in that, he and his goons attack.  He ultimately tried to flee at the end of the battle, but I had him use a potion of teleportation to try to get away – which, when combined with the Burning Sky teleportation issues, fried him to a crisp.  Add in the lightning trap that I had jumping around the battlefield, and it was a more fun encounter (at least for me).

I considered running the Flaganus Mortis encounter after this one, but I ultimately decided not to bother as it felt too random.  I had the party go to a safe house (which I made into the Dagger’s Rest Inn from their first session, transplanted from Waterdeep) and rest for the evening.  In the morning, they started their plans to escape the city.  I gave them the option of trying to work with a city council member as written in the published module, but that seemed boring to me, so I presented them with another option: Escape via the sewers.  Happily for me, they went with the sewers

I skipped most of the rest of Act Two, Act Three and Act Four as written, but I took the Dead Rising encounter from Act Two and said that in order to get from the sewers into the natural cave system that would take them out of the city, the party would have to fight through an ancient crypt of undead.  I ran this one exactly as written (except with an exit out the back of the crypt, and the fact that the entrance came from the sewer), and it was pretty darn brutal – but the players made it in the end.  I did soften the death explosion of the Dwarven Boneshard Skeletons to be 1d6+4 damage rather than 3d6+4 – they were crazy-powerful enough without dealing insane damage on death.

We called it a night as this point, as the party got ready to delve into the natural cavern system (which is not part of the published adventure at all).  I’m very happy with the changes I made to the adventure, and I personally am having much more fun than I did in the first WotBS session (mainly because I feel like I know what’s going on now and am free to make changes as I see fit).  I’ve already put together what I think is an interesting trek through the natural caverns, after which I will likely pick up some of the published threads of the adventure (probably using Act Five more or less as written and then moving on to the second published adventure).

What do you think of the changes I’ve made so far?  Was running the weasel hunt worthwhile?  Do you have any suggestions for a trek through some caverns in an effort to escape the city?  I have some ideas of my own, but I’m always looking for more input!