How does Veeky Forums do when it plays any RPG? I don't mean tabletop wargames like 40k, Infinity or Malifaux, but games like DnD (of any flavour), GURPS, Savage Lands, or the like.
A dry-erase mat with tokens and dice? Mini's with a 2-D tile board? Card stock buildings? Intimidatingly expensive 3-D boards like pic related?
Or maybe Veeky Forums goes old school with marching order and no board at all.
What does your playgroup do, Veeky Forums?
What do you expect from a DM when it comes to this sort of thing?
Or maybe something like this is more familiar?
Or perhaps this?
I do dry-erase, because I play in a uni common room.
At old home games in high school we used my friend's dungeon tiles though.
I used to rock the dry erase. Had a DM that had a 4x8 table he made that used clear vinyl and dry erase for really big games.
I've mostly run pickup games out of a backpack. Graph paper and totm until I simplified my movement rules and moved to printer paper.
the water bit with the octopus gets me hard
>tfw you will never get to role play on these glorious boards
>tfw stuck with dry erase
I think there are compromises like pic related. This is Ravenfell from Fat Dragon (sorry about the sit quality its from youtube) a card stock village with some extra bits added here and there. Apparently the whole setup is 30 bucks.
Pretty sure this is some of the Dave Graffam stuff.
Personally i fucking love painting miniatures and building terrain, much more than any wargame. So I make shit like this in my spare time, just for fun, and maybe one day it'll get used.
In person I rock the vinyl battlemat and wet erase markers
But online, as for the last year or so, Ive been using roll20
No comparison
We use a scrap of paper or we use Rolld20.
Never used rolld20. What's it like? Any good for play that isn't online?
its great; if youre playing offline, the GM runs the show and then youll need a large screen or projector setup, but thats about it
Ive been using it for a year or so, and I cant imagine gaming without it now.
i make my own minis for my group, it started out small now i have a pretty big collection of heros and monster encounters
im pretty proud of them
That's really neat. What do you use for the bases? Anything particular?
my old warhammer bases, i have actually almost run out so im not sure what to do
The best part of DnD for me, along the storytelling, is crafting my own boards and miniatures for the games.
Recently I've used Halloween LED Tea Lights to craft handmade campfires, and upgraded a magma elemental figurine by sticking a LED base up his butthole.
Very pleased with the results.
You can always buy more.
The Pathfinder bases are pretty neat too. They already have pincers to hold paper up.
Use cardboard. Cut what you need, then paste on the walls to the sides. Black primer them, then pain the floors on.
Voila, you got 2.5D modular tileboards.
I actually have a set of those tiles that I 3D printed, and they look nice. For practical reasons you may just want a dry erase mat and pogs. For RPGs you won't see yourself reusing the exact same figures over and over, and with the price of a lot of them, it will be untenable. They certainly don't make minis for everything you could want either. Compare that minis for wargames which you can use once every week when you drop by the store.
That sounds pretty good. I used to use my lappy hooked up to my tv similarly. Id show maps, photos of important characters or items, even play music from time to time.
But i do like the tactility of minis and a physical board.
Hows the resolution and cost? Is comparable to just buying in terms of labour and materials?
The resolution is entirely dependent on time. With good calibration and perhaps something like acetone vapour or a slurry the visual bit will be pretty close to perfect. It just takes time, and effort if you want to paint them (Equivalent to the labor for buying the official unpainted ones), but mostly time.
The cost is really good, especially compared to the official price of Dwarven Forge tiles (Seriously, the price is what makes me say that it is impractical, pic related for unpainted ones. Painted tiles go for much more.). The 3D printed ones on the other hand vary depending on what plastic you use, but you can make the largest parts for easily less than a dollar a piece. The cost is actually very reasonable, you are barely going to spend more on plastic than you would if you just got a chessex dry erase mat.
>tfw tuck with games online
Kickstart yourself. Since there's a lot of stuff available that's cheaper than yorus, you'll have to do something fantastic.
Or just make them hex shaped, and half hexes so you can make rectangular hallways.
Veeky Forums what is your opinion
Battlemat w/wet erase
Pathfinder minis - NPC's and monsters
Dungeon tiles of various editions
Office presentation boards (those big tablet things you stand up on an easel) - use the 1" grid ones -- I did the entire Castle Scarwall from Crimson Throne on one of these.
RPG GM experience: Mechwarrior 2nd edition, Battletech a Time of War.
What I used
-Paper Standies as Characters and Opfors.
I let players chose their characters, and for their 'mechs, I give them line-art that they can color in using photoshop, markers, or whatever. I reduce it to token size, print it out, they have their dudes. In my early days fresh out of highschool I did sprite edits of fighting game characters for character tokens, or used tokens from a Steve Jackson bundle of cardboard chits that I scanned so I could print as many as I wanted.
(Unless you're going to reuse a select few things, players are going to die and put the price of the mini in a hole after the first or second session, and unless railroading there's the gamble that you're wasting money painting minis you'll not end up using. Learned through experience.)
Maps: Tactical scale - Battletech paper maps
Planned Foot Combat: Printed Dundjinni maps or drawn on hex grid paper
Unplanned Foot combat: Chessex wet-erase board and appropriate markers.
Ancient pic related. Before wargaming, I ran it like an RPG campaign with a couple friends. Have never really taken pictures of my RPG sessions since then.
It'd be cool.
I veer away from 3D terrain though. Portability issues. Papercraft works if you keep it at home somewhere safe, but you'd have to be sure to stick to tokens and other light materials. Pewter minis could ruin them. That, or be sure to use hard cardstock or something of that nature.
I'd want to do stuff that I know was going to get used for sure though. If it's for D&D, dungeon tiles and walls would probably be handy.
Also, can't fully remember if I was ever able to use it, but I picked up the Modern D20 maps-book as an impulse purchase at my LGS. It would have been more useful to me as a PDF, though.