TactiCon Day 1 (Thursday evening)

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As promised, I am blogging about TactiCon.  The convention began Thursday evening, with your intrepid reporter learning a lot about how conventions work.

First, when the brochure says that the Exhibitor Hours begin at 3:00 and registration begins at 5:00, that does NOT mean that the exhibition hall for people to shop in opens at 3:00.  It means that people who are involved in running the convention can start getting set up at 3:00, but there’s nothing for players to do until 5:00.  Oops.

Second, it’s important to sign up for particular events in advance if there’s something in particular you want to play.  I had pre-paid for my badge, and it was waiting for me, which was great.  However, I hadn’t registered for any individual games, and the two low-level Living Forgotten Realms games this evening were already full.  I bought a generic ticket and was told that I might be able to get into a game anyway.

I left the hotel and came home to take my wife to dinner before heading back to the convention, getting there just before the 7:00 PM start time of the evening’s RPG sessions.  There were a total of five players with generic tickets who wanted to play low-level LFR, and the organizer persuaded a guy to run an adventure he had never even read before.  What a trouper!

The game was interesting, to say the least.  We played CORM 2-1 For Crown and Kingdom.  It’s actually a pretty cool module, and for running it completely on the fly I think the DM, Leo, did a nice job.  He ran the skill challenges in the manner I hate, though: “Okay, this is a complexity 1 skill challenge, requiring 4 successes before 3 failures.  You can use Perception, Nature, History…” Ugh.  No role playing, just roll the dice.  But since he had no chance to look over it beforehand, I won’t fault him too much for that. He also let the game get bogged down in some rules discussions – I feel confident that I won’t let that happen at my tables.  If there’s disagreement about a rule I’ll go with what seems most reasonable and move the game onward to the fun parts.

My favorite part of the evening was talking with a pair of other people at the table.  There was an older guy who had never played 4th edition before but who had excitedly rolled up an eladrin wizard and was ready to go.  He brought his wife along, and she had never played an RPG before and really had no interest in playing, either.  Still, she was willing to let me talk to her about the game, trying to give her a basic overview of what she would see and what everyone was doing.  She paid polite attention to the game, and we chatted about music afterward.  She even thanked me.  I don’t think I created a new gamer, but I at least had a positive interaction with someone who clearly was not a fan of role playing games.  Baby steps.

I think I’ll bring my projector setup and leave it in the trunk of my car tomorrow, just in case they need someone to run another ad hoc game.  I mostly plan to play, but I’d be lying if I denied wanting to show off my sweet setup to as many people as possible!  I do want to get at least one more LFR game in as a player, just so I can get my half-elf paladin, Rhogar, up to third level so that he can finally equip the two seventh-level items that he’s carrying around!  Ten XP shy…

Blogging TactiCon

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August is GenCon month in the RPG world.  I’m jealous, of course – I live in Colorado and was not able to make it to Indianapolis for the convention. (Side note: The company I work for does have a big presence in Indy, and I’m thinking about seeing if I can get them to send me out there for a business trip just before GenCon next year – free plane ticket for gaming!)

That doesn’t mean I have to be out of luck entirely – Labor Day weekend in Denver means TactiCon!  Now, I’ll admit that I don’t really know exactly what TactiCon is all about yet (the brochure is here).  I’ve never been to a gaming convention of any sort before.  But hey, it’s a 20 minute drive from my house so I might as well make the most of it.

I’m signed up to run two Living Forgotten Realms games for D&D 4th Edition on Saturday using my fancy-schmancy new projector setup.  Now that I know it works, I’m really excited to use it at the convention.

I’m also planning to do some shopping at the Con.  I don’t currently own any minis, and while the projector setup means that I don’t ever plan to own any monster minis, I would like to have minis for my own player characters, my wife’s player character and some generic player characters to keep on hand in case I run a game where they players lack minis of their own.  I’m assuming that a convention is a good place to get minis, right?  I don’t mind paying a little bit of a premium to get high quality – preferably metal instead of plastic.  My shopping list includes:

  • A cloaked figure with a comically oversized sword to represent Kern, my Githzerai avenger
  • An armored character with a normal sword to represent Rhogar, the character I play in LFR games
  • A dragonborn mace-wielder in chain mail to represent my wife’s runepriest, Zaaria (or really any dragonborn character – Barbara loves dragonborn)
  • A few other minis to fill out a random party – something wizard-like, something archer-like, something cleric-like

Naturally, I want to play some games, too.  I haven’t played LFR in a while, so if I could get into a couple of games to get Rhogar up to third level, that would be cool.  I love board gaming, too, and it looks like there are a ton of games scheduled.  Honestly, aside from D&D, I mostly want to explore games that I’ve never played before.  I want to check out new board games and play at least one session of an unfamiliar RPG.  I’ve heard good things about Savage Worlds, so I might try that.

What recommendations do you have for me, a con virgin?  It’s not GenCon, so it won’t be totally overwhelming, but what should I try to see and do?  I’ve taken two days off work, so I’m going to make the most of it!

The projector setup is a success!

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It’s late.  I have to go to work in the morning.  I don’t care, though – I’m excited, and I need to write about it!

This evening I put my projector setup into action for the first time.  I ran a Living Forgotten Realms session at the local store, Enchanted Grounds.  I had seven players turn up for a session of CORM 1-1 The Black Knight of Arabel.  I had played this module in the first LFR game I had ever experienced as a player, so I was pretty comfortable running it as a DM.

I arrived at the store about 40 minutes before the game’s scheduled start time so that I would have plenty of time to find a good table, set up the rig, adjust the projector’s focus and so on.  All of that went totally smoothly.  By the time 6:00 rolled around, I was ready to go.

This would be the first time that I was using MapTool for the monsters and the map but not for the player tokens – the players brought their own minis for that.  I had realized when putting the adventure together that, if I wanted to keep track of initiative within MapTool, I would need to have something to at least represent each player for that purpose.  So, I created a set of seven generic PC tokens with their own set of properties.  The image for each token was a number (1 through 7) which I assigned based on the players’ seating arrangement around the table.  The name of each token is the character name.  Their properties include the player’s name, their race and class, their defenses, their initiative modifier (for tiebreaking) and their passive Insight and Perception scores.  It was great for helping me remember everyone’s name, character name, and character type.  The defenses didn’t come up much, nor did the passive insight or perception, but it was nice to have in case I needed it.

The adventure began with a little back story of how the party came to be traveling to the town of Arabel – charged by the king in the capital city to investigate rumored Netherese activity involving shadow creatures and reports of a black knight.  They began by helping a man repair his wagon, when they were set upon by shadow creatures.

The first battle was quite easy for the party, even though I made the minions into two-hit minions.  They dispatched the shadow creatures with little fanfare, helped the wagon driver repair his vehicle, and set off after the dark rider they had spotten on a distant ridge.

At this point I turned off the projector as the party entered a skill challenge to track down the rider.  This was a well-written skill challenge, and the players role-played it well, too.  They ultimately came upon the rider in his camp and started disagreeing about whether to attack or talk.  I allowed a little talk from those who wanted to do so, but the “attack” camp grew restless, so I called for initiative.

The not-so-bright fighter in the party (good role-playing, not a dumb player) decided to charge Dark Skull, narrowly avoiding some traps.  Other players tried to convince Dark Skull to drop his weapon, and he said that he didn’t want to hurt anyone, but he wasn’t willing to drop his guard with the fighter standing next to him.  So, the parlaying character decided to bull rush the fighter out of the way.  Great plan – except that in her quest to get to the fighter, she ran over a pit trap!  Oops.

Dark Skull teleported into the shadows, and the cooler heads in the party were eventually able to start a dialogue that led to an alliance with the falsely-accused knight (the skull was just a mask). They decided to go back to Arabel to find out who was really behind the dark goings-on. Since we were going into role-playing, I turned the projector back off.

Since we were doing fine on time, I decided to  run a little bit of the Arabel skill challenge.  The party repaired a broken obelisk in the town square, then went to the tavern where the innocent “black knight’s” father worked.  The father had cursed his son, leading to his shadow powers, and so the party questioned the father.  They asked about his family, and the father didn’t mention any adult son but told them that his wife and infant son were at his house some distance away (I made this up on the spot).  The PCs decided to go to that house to question the wife.  They found the house to be dark and broke in – no one was home, but the door to the basement was locked.  They picked the lock – and found an empty basement.  Clearly the father had lied.

The group returned to the tavern to confront the father about the lie, and found that he had left, heading toward the town square.  Some streetwise checks confirmed that people had seen him go that way, with some young lovers (also made up on the spot) in the square pointing toward the theater as being the father’s destination.

Upon entering the theater, the party saw a bunch of cultists of Shar looking at the stage, where the father was making a speech and getting ready to sacrifice a baby.  Again, some of the party wanted to talk, but others charged into action – the battle was on!

This is an interestingly-designed encounter, with the players having the option of either convincing the crowd to disperse, in which case they fight the leader and some shadow creatures, or not convincing the crowd to disperse, in which case they fight the leader and the crowd.  Since the party had mowed down everything in their path, I decided to have them fight BOTH the crowd and the shadow creatures!  Happily, the shadow creatures rolled low for initiative, so their entrance from behind the party made for a nice little surprise.

Even with the two-front battle, the players were able to win the day.  They mowed down cultists with no trouble, and the shadow creatures simply didn’t deal enough damage to be a threat.  The most interesting part of the battle was in round four, where I had the leader give up on fighting off the party and start trying to sacrifice the baby.  He picked up the baby and got ready to slaughter it, so the players tried hard to stop him.  One of the physically weaker characters in the party leapt down from the balcony and bull rushed the leader to make him drop the baby.  Unfortunately, this left the baby next to the party wizard’s flaming sphere!

One of the fighters, who was prone at the base of the stage, made a DC 20 athletics check to pull herself up onto the stage from prone and charge over to bull rush the baby out of harm’s way, diving to the ground again to do so.  The cult leader naturally picked the baby back up again, getting ready for the slaughter, so the party wizard hit him with an attack that caused him to lose the ability to take opportunity actions.  There’s a little-known rule that says if you can’t take opportunity actions, you lose any grabs you were making.  The baby gets dropped again (fortunately, I ruled that it was wearing a tiny little Amulet of Feather Fall as part of the ritual), and ultimately the cult leader was wiped out.

The session was loads of fun, and the technology ran without a hitch.  The only minor issue is that even the 2,500 lumens aren’t quite bright enough in some cases – the altar on the stage was tough to see (black on brown).  The solution there is probably for me to think a little more about contrast when I put the maps together.

I’ll tweak a couple of things for the convention on Saturday, but for the most part I am ecstatic about this rig.  It’s loads of fun to run, and it makes the game go very smoothly.  Thank you to my players for coming out to give this a whirl – especially to Andy, who told me that he reads my blog.  That’s the first time I’ve ever met one of my readers without having known them in person first.  It was a pleasure gaming with you, Andy, and with everyone else, too!

P.S. If anyone wants the MapTool campaign file that I used for this game (with my updated tweaks added), it can be downloaded here.

Online campaign session 6: Meet Gary Sidequest

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My online party gathered Friday evening for out sixth session as a group.  One of the players was unable to attend, and since the party was about to finish the first adventure of the War of the Burning Sky campaign and move into the second, I thought it was important to have everyone there.  I called an audible and ran a side quest.

The party had finished the previous session by battling a gnoll and some hyenas in a tough battle outside some ruins.  They began this session by looking for an extended rest (it was night time at this point) and decided to delve into the ruins to get out of the snow.  I had decided that the published adventure missed an opportunity here by not fleshing out the ruins at all, so I created a two-room dungeon down there.

The first small room was the gnoll’s hideout with a pallet and some rotting meat.  The door between this room and the rest of the ruins was barricaded with broken wood and stones, and a warning was scratched into the door: “Grave robbers beware: It’s not worth it!”  The party bedded down there for the night, then woke up and robbed a grave.

On the far side of the door, they found lots of dead bodies and a suspicious looking pit.  All was well until one of the party members got too close to the edge of the pit and it attacked.  Yes, this was a trap, and when it went off the dead bodies got up (zombies, naturally) and started fighting.

I’ve attached the PDF of this homebrew encounter here, but the general idea is that we have three big zombies and six two-hit minion zombies, all of which had some push and/or slide abilities to try to get the players back to the stairs or into the pit.  The pit attacks anyone who lands in it or ends their turn adjacent to it, damaging them, grabbing them and pulling them deeper into the pit.  The zombies and pit are animated by a dark tome that is in the coffin in the northern chamber – reading it is dangerous, destroying it is safer.  The encounter was fun (for me at least) and led to some cool role playing upon discovering the tome.

After this encounter, I had the party be greeted by Gary Sidequest, a dragonborn who invited them to solve the mystery of the organized kobolds.  This is one of the Living Forgotten Realms adventures that I’ll be running at TactiCon – specifically TYMA2-1 Old Enemies Unite.  I skipped the skill challenge and went straight for combat.  The first combat with organized kobolds was pretty threatening – who knew that kobolds could be scary when they fight smart?  The second combat, in a chamber of traps, was just boring in my opinion.  I’m not sure how I’m going to jazz it up for the convention, but I’ll come up with something.

There’s still one more encounter in the LFR module, and I figure that we might as well run through it when we regroup, but after that we’ll be heading into the Fire Forest of Innenotdar – the second adventure in the War of the Burning Sky.  We’re taking this weekend off, since I’ll be at TactiCon using my new projector setup.  I’ve also signed up to run an LFR game tomorrow evening at my local store, just so I can try out the projector before I go to the convention.  Wish me luck!

D&D Encounters – I finally get to try it!

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The timing of my introduction to Dungeons and Dragons was almost perfect.  I started playing the game early in 2010, just a couple of weeks before Wizards of the Coast began the D&D Encounters program.  And what do you know, the friendly local game store, Enchanted Grounds, is not only running Encounters, but they’re located within walking distance of my house!  How perfect is that?

Well, it’s ALMOST perfect.  Unfortunately, Encounters is run on Wednesday evenings, which is when my wife and I have our bowling league.  We love our teammates there, so I couldn’t abandon them to go play D&D.  Tonight, however, we’re between leagues – the summer bowling league just ended and the fall league doesn’t start until next week.  Time to check out Encounters!

It was good that I showed up this evening, because there were only three other players when we started the game (one more showed up a little later, before the action got too heavy).  I thought that I would be playing a pre-generated character, but I was told that players are allowed to create their own characters now.  I had brought along my character folder that held both my half-elf paladin from my Living Forgotten Realms games as well as my githzerai avenger, Kern, from my home game with my friends.  Kern the Avenger seemed like the right choice.  He is only Level 2 and the characters at the table were Level 3, so I added the appropriate amount of hit points, adjusted the healing surge value and picked a Level 3 encounter power to bring him up a level.  Off we go!

Kern, the Githzerai Avenger

The summary of the encounter from Kern’s perspective is that Kern completely ruled.  I don’t know if this battle just particularly played to his strengths or if my dice were just hot or what, but Kern made it through the whole battle without taking a single point of damage while unloading massive pain on the snakes and lizard creatures that we battled (the rest of the party took care of the fey panther that showed up in the third round).  It helped, of course, that Kern would not be playing in Encounters again, so he used his daily and his action point without any thought for the future.  Still, his Oath of Enmity was always working, and rolling two d20s on every attack made it so that he never missed.

The encounter itself was fun enough, though not what I expected from Dark Sun.  It was in a mystically lush environment, which I’m sure will be explained in future weeks (Dark Sun is usually a harsh desert environment).  The enemies had some cool abilities, and I frankly wish the DM had been a little more vicious with them.  One lizard grabbed our Seeker and started dragging him away and chomping on him, but he stopped dragging before he got too far from the rest of the party.  The Seeker was never even that badly threatened, though we were scared for him at the beginning of the battle.

The people at the table were great folks to game with – very friendly and welcoming.  I felt a little bad that Kern seemed to have an oversized impact on the battle, but this was partly about luck and the other players didn’t mind.  The DM had built some cool 3D environments for the encounter – some bushes with bad guys underneath them and a tall tree with the panther in it.  Nifty stuff!

Overall, I don’t feel like I’m missing much from not being able to play Encounters.  I prefer more continuity in my games, and one encounter just feels too disjointed.  I applaud the idea, though – it’s great that WotC has this program that will allow players to just drop in every now and then for no more than two hours (my session took an hour and 20 minutes) – no ongoing commitment, no need to even roll up a character if you don’t want to.  It’s a cool program, but I’m not the target audience. I can continue bowling without feeling like I’m missing too much.

Building a better portable projector rig

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I originally put most of this information in an earlier post that described a similar mount that sat on my table.  This information is pretty much the same, except that it’s floor-mounted and the angle of the projector is much more adjustable in the updated version.

At long last, I have built a working, portable projector setup for playing D&D using MapTool 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.  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 five-foot length of 1″ diameter galvanized pipe (black), threaded at both ends (technically called a nipple). Cost: $16.12
  • 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 carriage bolts, 3/8″ diameter, 8″ in length.  Cost: $1.49 each, $2.98 total.
  • Two fender washers and two hex nuts for the carriage bolts.  Cost: 13 cents apiece, 52 cents total.
  • 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: $70.11
  • Projector and rig together: $534.10

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.
  • Screw the part of the projector mount that would ordinarily go into your ceiling onto the opposite side of the 7″ board from the flange.  I put mine high up on the far side, with the mounting screws just barely coming through the board, right next to the top of the flange.
  • Drill two 3/8″ diameter holes through the 7″ board, about 2.5″ down from the center of the projector mount and about 1″ in from each edge of the board (this is approximate, not exact).
  • Manually screw the five-foot pipe into the flange on the 12″ board.
  • Manually screw the 90 degree elbow onto the top of the five-foot 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).
  • Push the carriage bolts through the back of the 7″ board so that they extend forward about 5″ from the front of the board.
  • Push a washer onto each carriage bolt, then screw a nut onto each bolt to keep the carriage bolt from being able to be pushed back through the board.
  • Wrap some duct tape around the tip of each carriage bolt.
  • Put the rig on the floor next to where you will sit, resting against the edge of the 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 away from the edge of the table (opposite of where the projector will be).
  • Assemble the rest of the mount per its instructions.  You already have one piece 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 adjust the nuts on the carriage bolts to hold the projector at that angle.
  • 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 angle, 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!
  • Extra tip: If the image resolution of your 1″ monsters isn’t great on the table, you can temporarily make a token Colossal so that the players can clearly see the artwork, then shrink it back to size (I use macros for this).

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!

Balanced-power parties are ideal

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This post was inspired by my response to Robert J. Schwalb’s blog post about the Killer DM within.  A quick aside: I found Robert’s blog via a link on Sarah Darkmagic – a fellow RPG Blogger Network member whose blog I regularly follow.  I love the way RPG Bloggers leads me to so many interesting items online.

Some dungeon masters / game masters hate power gamers.  These are the players who try to find every possible advantage from any available material when putting their character together.  If there’s an overpowered angle to take on a character, they’ll find and use it.  This is sometimes referred to as “character optimization” or “CharOp”.  Those who don’t approve might call it “being a munchkin” or “twinking”.  This is the character who can easily kill monsters well above their own their level without breaking a sweat.

Robert talks about the Killer DM having the potential to emerge when the DM is frustrated with the players and the way they’re playing the game.  I think DMs in general are not fans of power gamers who min-max to the hilt.

Having thought this issue through, I’ve concluded that the problem isn’t exactly power gamers per se – you can always ramp up the difficulty to make it a challenge for them.  The problem is when you have characters of vastly different power levels in the same party.

If everyone in the party is super-powerful for their level, then the DM’s job isn’t too hard – you use higher-level encounters, give monsters extra abilities that will make them more challenging, and so on.  The problem is when one or two players are super-powerful but the others are of a normal power level.  In that situation, ramping up the difficulty to challenge the power gamers will make the monsters just plain deadly to the rest of the party.

The same problem can occur in reverse if you have a party of mostly average-power characters and one or two characters who have terrible stats for combat (the weak but charismatic fighter, for instance).  Those under-powered characters are not going to be able to fight interesting battles alongside their more powerful brethren and will be reduced to either standing in the back or getting themselves slaughtered.

In my opinion, the key to a fun gaming environment is to have a party of similarly-powered characters.  They don’t have to be all the same power level, but they should be close.  In that situation, the DM can create encounters that challenge everyone but that everyone can contribute to.  That’s what we want as dungeon masters.

I’m happy to say that my online campaign feels like the party is pretty well balanced from a power perspective.  When it comes to combat, everyone can contribute.  If we ever got to the point that one character was simply outshining all of the others, I would talk to that player about ways to bring the character in line, because otherwise combats will be too easy or too deadly for some part of the party.  A balanced-power party is a happy party.

Improvised cave trolls and double skill challenges

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Yesterday evening my online group got together for our fifth session of our game in the War of the Burning Sky campaign.  It was another fun session, though it began with some doubt – only one of the five players dialed in at the scheduled start time.  That was not so bad, actually – she runs an online game using other software, and she’s interested in learning more about MapTool (which reminds me – I need to send her the campaign file!).  A second player soon joined, and a third player came online about 15 minutes after the scheduled start.  Since everyone wanted to game, we decided to make do with what we had.

DM Lesson: Playing with less than a full party

When in doubt, fight!  In this case, only three of the five party members were online, so we decided to say that the two absent party members would stay in the ruined village where the party had rested while the other three kept exploring the caves in order to find their way out.  I threw them into an encounter with some deathjump spiders that I had prepared in case of a wrong turn in the cave navigation skill challenge (or in case they decided to unwisely rest in the caves).  For the no-healer mini-party, this turned into a tough encounter.  Our shaman player showed up partway through the battle, and when things started looking dire I allowed him to rush in as reinforcements.

As the party finished the battle and was deciding what to do next, the fifth and final player logged on – good timing!  (We’ll cut him some slack – he’s in London and had set his alarm to wake up him for the 1:00 AM local start time, but the alarm failed to go off.) I had him roleplay the stuff he was doing in the ruined village, and he soon rejoined the rest of the party in the caves.

I decided that the extended skill challenge to make it through the caves had gone on just about long enough, so when the party made a lousy dungeoneering check to finish finding the way through, I decided to throw them into one more monster lair.  The problem: I didn’t have any more cave encounters prepared.

DM Lesson: Whipping up a battle on the fly

One of my players suggested trying the random encounter generator at Asmor.com, but I didn’t have the time to tweak these as needed for the setting.  Instead, I tried to think about what make sense for another cave encounter.  I had already used cave fishers, crauds (in a pit of water) and spiders.  If the final battle would be near the cave exit, why not a troll?  I looked in the DDI Adventure Tools Monster Builder for a troll and decided that the level 7 Cave Troll would be just fine for a party of five second-level characters.  And he was!  I love the ability he has to grab one character and then use that character as a weapon to swing into another.  Too cool!  It was a fairly easy encounter, but still exciting – just what the doctor ordered.

DM Lesson: Running simultaneous skill challenges

Next up, the party crossed into the territory of a small-time dwarven king who insisted that they split into two groups to simultaneously solve two problems.  I had the characters sort themselves as they saw fit, and then I picked one group to begin.  I let each player in that group try something, and then as they started making progress I moved to the other group for a bit.  I tried to keep everything very snappy, and I liked the couple of times that I had a character tell me what they were about to do – perhaps something risky – and I then cut away to the other group before resolving the skill check.  This went far better than I expected, even though one of the challenges ended in failure.

DM Lesson: Reality checking monster attacks

The final encounter of the evening was a roadside ambush by hyenas under the direction of a gnoll controller.  It was quite vicious – the hyenas had a Pack Attack ability that had them deal extra damage to characters that had at least two other bad guys next to them.  This meant that they would try to gang up on one character at a time.  Our Wizard/Swordmage hybrid found herself on the wrong end of three of these attacks, all of which hit her high armor class – dropping her below her negative bloodied value.  Yes, that’s “dead-dead.”

As we began to mourn (and panic a little), the swordmage’s player realized that the attack bonus from these hyenas seemed really high (+12).  And that was true – it was a mistake on my part.  The gnoll was attacking at +12, but the hyenas were only level 2 enemies attacking at +7.  I had screwed up in MapTool when I copied a macro from the gnoll to the hyenas.  We rolled back time just a little and saw that two of the hyena attacks would have missed. (It’s worth noting here that I reveal the math behind the monster attacks to the players – I like them to see that I’m not fudging anything.)

There were some hyena attacks from earlier in the battle that probably would have been misses as well had the numbers been right, but I decided that trying to go back farther than the previous turn made no sense.  I just added some extra XP to the battle to account for the extra difficulty and called it a day.  Happily, this extra experience was enough to push the party to level 3 at the end of the session!

Final thoughts

Even though some players were running late for this most recent session, it’s remarkable that a band of six strangers on the Internet have managed to get together for five of the past six weeks, with one substitute one week and one week that we took off due to multiple scheduling conflicts.  No one has flaked.  No one has dropped out.  We’re still going strong.  I love my group!

Are you in the RPG closet?

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Here’s a question for the role-playing game community: Do you hide your hobby from your non-gamer friends / colleagues?

Friends who play games – well, obviously they know that you play D&D or Pathfinder or whatever might be your RPG of choice since you probably play alongside them.  Close family members (those who live with you) will almost certainly know as well.  But what about friends or family members whom you don’t see regularly?  What about colleagues at school or at work?

I work for a large financial services company, and I’m a well-respected, somewhat senior person.  I manage a team of nine employees.  Personally, I’ve never discussed my RPG hobby with any of my colleagues.  It’s entirely possible that some of them play RPGs, though I doubt it.  Would it ruin my career to talk about it?  Probably not, though I’m sure it might affect some of their opinions of me.  I already get gentle ribbing about the fact that I’m in a bowling league, and no non-bowler has the mistaken impression that bowling involves devil worship (well, at least I don’t think so).

I try to be a very open, honest person, which makes me feel a little bad about myself for not talking to colleagues about my gaming.  I’m not that close to these people – I’m not friends with them on Facebook, for instance.  But I would definitely feel weird knowing that they thought of me as a guy who plays D&D, let alone a guy who blogs about it.

What’s your experience?  Do your co-workers know you enjoy role-playing games, particularly if you work in an industry that might look unfavorably on such a hobby? Is it wrong to essentially hide your hobby from casual acquaintances like these?

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!