At our last session, my D&D 4e party ended up in a town after jumping through a whirling blue portal to escape certain death.  They had some time to poke around, buy some gear, that kind of stuff. During their shopping spree, the group noticed that some people began looking.. sick.  Ashen skin, all that stuff.

Soon after, the party heard a scream coming from outside. When they rushed to investigate, they found that one of the townsfolk had began to mutate..growing in size. He chucked a water trough at the group and combat began. I sprinkled around the map 8 other townsfolk. I told the party that they looked sick as well and may begin to mutate at any moment. My idea was to have the large creature attack the party while the townsfolk would become zombie`ish minions. The group is level 4 and I gave the minions an AC of 13. Nothing hard to fight. But just an annoyance.

Then the cleric of the group asked me a question..

Is there a way we can stop them from turning?

How interesting..  I suppose I hadn’t thought of that. My plan was to have 1 creature turn each round.  Time to utilize The Rule of Fun!

Sure can! Here’s how it`ll work. Each round, one of the townsfolk will turn and begin to attack you. If you reach them and make a successful Heal check, you`ll be able to prevent them from turning.”

Then the cleric asked

Is there a way I can tell which order they`ll turn in?

Oo! This was getting good.  I responded by stating she could roll Perception to scan the battlefield and visually check the status of the nearby townsfolk. I set a rather high DC for it as the map was somewhat large and there were a few outlying townsfolk that may be hard to see.

She all but rolled a natural 20.

So the battle became 4 party members against the Cursechanged Beggar and the cleric running from one end of the map to the other..several times over. If I kept proper track, only one was lost when she was unable to reach it in time.. and another died when a fellow party member mercy killed a townsfolk who hadn’t changed yet..but was about to.

To finish the encounter, the cleric ran back from saving her last citizen and promptly Crit`ed the main baddie, dropping him to the dirt.

When the session was over for the evening, everyone commented on how they enjoyed the extra element that was added to the encounter instead of  it just being an exchange of weapon blows. In fact, I’ve reworked the next few encounters now to add some extra challenges/obstacles to the fight!

I remember playing in my first face to face D&D session. The book was still fresh in my hands and had that new book aroma. I Xerox’ed (Yes.. I was born in Rochester, NY) umpteen copies of the character sheet and sharpened a few pencils before sitting down at my table to roll a character. I ended up taking a blank char sheet and labeling which pages in the PHB I’d use to fill out specific sections. It worked rather well, and after a few times of doing it, I became somewhat speedy at filling them out. Erasure marks? Plenty. But in the end I’d copy it over to a clean sheet and make it look all purdy.

That was only two years ago.

I finally ponied up and bought a year’s subscription to D&D Insider.  In my opinion, the compendium alone is worth it. I dig the character builder but I’m on the fence about its effect on new players (and even veterans).

Its hard to put in to words but its as if the character builder takes away from the general experience of D&D. Does that make sense? If its purpose is to get players up and running in no time with a character ready to go, then yes, job well done.

Perhaps its my educational background. When I was going for my BA in History, I remember sifting through rolls and rolls of microfilm in the campus library, paging through endless books to find info. In fact, it felt unnatural for me to switch to PDFs (when available) but I really couldn’t pass up the ease of using Crtl+F to find what I needed…though I was almost just as fast using the index/TOC of a printed version of the book.

Or it can be equated to my nursing dosage calculation test that I took earlier in the Spring. We weren’t allowed to use calculators on the test but in a true clinical setting, we’d have one and infact, not using one could be considered dangerous.  The character builder keeps your characters D&D legal. Not using it could lead to errors.

Is it worth getting a grasp of the basics first?

Its great to see this wonderful program getting so many updates after being feared dead just a few months ago. Yesterday, Rizban released RC6 of Gametable 2.0. Here is the change log from the official Gametable website.

This release addresses several annoying issues as well as a few more major ones. Over all, this release makes Gametable a bit more stable and easier to use. This release has been made possible by Lotharious, who has contributed greatly to finding and fixing problems with the code base.

• [Fix] Continued changes to pogs and underlays to further improve the system.
• [Fix] Fixed issue with players disconnecting and still showing connected.
• [Fix] Chat system lag and potential for program crash fixed. All chat features from earlier versions work.
• [Fix] Rotation issues at various map zooms have been fixed.
• [Fix] Issue with save files still saving with wrong extension fixed.
• [Change] Pogs now sorted alphabetically in the pog library without regards to capitalization.
• [New] A menu option has been added to lock or unlock all pogs and underlays on the map.
• [Change] Rearrangement of files and packages within the Gametable project to bring them more in list with an MVC architectural pattern.

I posted instructions earlier on how to update Gametable and was notified by Rizban that there is a MUCH easier way..and I completely agree.  Its quite simple really.

1. Back up the gametable. jar file you currently use. I renamed mine gametable.jar_rc5
2. Take the new gametable.jar file from the RC6 package you just downloaded.
3. Drop it in the working folder for gametable you use where the gametable.jar_rc5 file is.
4. Run gametable.
5. Blam. You’ve got RC6 with all your maps/pogs/underlays intact.

And now, a game. 10 experience points to the first person to tell me which 4e D&D book this transcribed map came from.

As previously mentioned, I have the opportunity to play in an online 4e D&D group that meets weekly. I’ve chosen to play a Gnomish Bard as I was attracted to the Vicious Mockery at-will power they have. Here’s the flavor text from it.

You unleash a string of insults at your foe, weaving them with bardic magic to send the creature into a blind rage.

I can totally get in to that… and in fact, I plan to.

Our first session is tonight and I’ve compiled a list of insults that my character, Finrick, plans to hurl at the enemy. Here’s how I hope it`ll go:

Finrick points at the kobold and cackles, “”Thou mother is like spoiled milk – fat and chunky!”

Does anyone else have fun stories of bardic shenanigans?

First, please understand that I love DM`ing my 4e group. I have a blast doing it and look forward to our monthly sessions. But I’ve been experiencing the increasing urge to get out from behind the screen and doing some playing instead.

With my unique gaming time restrictions of only being able to play online, I did some research and registered for an account over at The Tangled Web which are forums dedicated to online pen and paper gaming.  They have a section where you can post some info about yourself, stating that you’re looking for an online group to play with. DMs can also post their need for players and browse around and pick up and gamers looking for a group.

I didn’t have much faith that anyone would consider me for their group. My time constraints were very heavy in my opinion with my only being available Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights starting at 9pm Eastern. Nonetheless, I was shocked when I received an email from an interested DM whos campaign was played Thursday nights starting at 9pm. Booyah!

We had a practice session last week. People are either new to 4th edition or new to the program we’re using, MapTools. We ran a couple encounters and called it a night. Finrick, my Gnomish Bard was throwing some great insults with his Vicious Mockery power! It started out like this..

Me: Finrick jumps over the carcas at his feet and begins to insult the Kobold’s mother, stating she’s horrible in bed!
DM: Well.. er.. you can do that if you want..
Me: No..its a power I have. Vicious Mockery. I yell insults and it causes damage!
DM: Oh! Well then! Go right ahead!

Take that zinger Kobold #58!

I`m also excited to experience another DM’s style of play. With my campaign, I strive to give my players the best time they can have on a Saturday night and hopefully I can bring back some interesting ideas to help that happen. Not like story line ideas but more like.. mannerism ideas. Ya dig?

If you haven’t already heard, Gametable has moved yet another step closer to v2.0 by releasing v2.0RC5. There are some notable changes and fixes from the previous version.

From the Gametable website:

• [Fix] Transparent pixels no longer register as part of a pog when hovering/clicking. (Introduced in RC4)
• [Fix] The hit maps for rotated pogs now register correctly for all rotation increments and across all instances of that same image.
• [Fix] Further lag reduction with oversized pogs/underlays (over 4000 x 4000 pixels). Though such large images still produce noticeable lag.
• [Change/Fix] Semiprivate rolls fixed and method of determining public, private, or semiprivate rolls changed to be more intuitive.
• [Change] Significant code changes to hitmaps and hit tests in pog.java and pogtype.java.
• [Change] Some additional minor code documentation and cleanup in files.
• [Change] Minor changes to some pog related coding to improve performance. No obvious changes user side.

Anything that helps reduce lag is a big bonus but for me, the changing/fixing of semiprivate rolls is a rather nice change. But..we’re here to update. Let’s see how to do it while retaining all your dice macros, maps, and images (pogs/underlays).

Step 1.)  open up your CURRENT copy of Gametable – not the new one.
Step 2.)  Go to Dice > Save Macro As.. and save them. Overwrite existing files if you’d like.
Step 3.)  Go to File > Save Map As.. and save. Overwrite if you’d like.
Step 4.)  Go to Map > Edit Private Map and follow Step 3.
Step 5.)  Close Gametable

Okay. So what we’ve done is make sure that stuff is actually saved and that you know the names and paths to the files. Gametable has a build in autosave feature but I would just feel better if I had the files saved myself. After all, you’ve spent a long time drawing up these maps and what not. No need to do them again.

Step 6.)  Download the latest version of Gametable (Opens in a new window)
Step 7.)  Unpack it
Step 8.)  Open just the FOLDERS that contain your current version of Gametable and the new version and place them somewhat side by side on your desktop

Step 9)  From your CURRENT version folder, copy over your Pogs and Underlays directories to the new version. Also copy over your saved maps and dice macro files.
Step 10) Fire up the new copy of Gametable and see if you can import/load your newly copied over stuff.

Its very important to only COPY the materials over and not move. If you copy something incorrectly, you can revert back to your good copy without losing any of your work.

Encourage your players to upgrade as well. To quote the Gametable Website: “Older Gametable clients will communicate with it as well, but they will not benefit from the code changes and may experience new issues when trying to communicate with RC5. It is highly recommended that all users upgrade to RC5 before attempting to play a game to prevent potential desyncs or crashes of the older clients.”

… 5 bonus points to the first person to identify the map I recreated in the first screenshot here.

My party had a session last weekend and we decided to try out the first incarnation of the D&D Dashboard which utilized A Google Documents Spreadsheet to hold the required data. (More info seen here in this post).

Overall, things went well. The idea itself, of having a display (dashboard) showing the party the HP and other stats of fellow members seemed to speed things up a bit. People could see who was up next in the order, monsters included, and seemed to have their actions ready when it came to their turn.

I’ve seen the same thing happen when playing face-to-face.  Unless you play musical chairs and rearrange yourselves before each encounter, it can be hard to visualize in your nugget who is up next. Actually, I had a DM once that required initiative be rolled before each round.  I may get my cardio workout if we changed seats each time.  This is the digital answer to Initiative Cards..with a little more info shown.

On the negative side, people were able to accidentally resize the columns and rows of the spreadsheet and we had to pause a moment to fix it so it was readable. Well..perhaps it wasn’t an accident and my PCs were just giving me a hard time.  That, and I don’t think all party members were updating it.

To solve the above issue of resizing, there are plans in the works for an html/php version of the dashboard that will have fixed cell dimensions.  I’ve tested out the current build and feel its 98.2% ready to be released to the public. To run it on your own, you`ll need a webserver and a mysql database. I have plans to host a few here at CzarAlex.com if folks are unable to run it on their own but would like an instance to utilize for their sessions.

The WWDDGD: MM2 site has a little blurb to attract you in to the adventure:

Journey Through the Silver Caves – A kobold wyrmpriest has stolen an ancient book of prophecy from the people of Albura, a fortress on the borderlands. The kobold has a dark plan for the book – and only you can stop him in time! An adventure for 5 pregenerated 5th-level characters.

I’d like to re-write that a little bit to be more realistic.

Everlasting Journey Through the Silver Caves of Many Many Monsters! – A kobold wyrmpriest and 48 of his friends have stolen an ancient book of prophecy from the people of Albura, a fortress on the borderlands. The kobold has a dark plan for the book – and maybe you can stop him in under 12 hours! An adventure for 5 pregenerated 5th-level characters who have cleared out their schedules for the next month or more.

I`m still not over my PTSD from WWDDGD for the Player’s Handbook 2. You may recall that the session at my local store turned in to 4 hours for -1- encounter. One of the problems during that session was that there were too many monsters which made combat super (dare I say..Uber?) long. Anyone see where I`m going with this?

If the game day is to showcase the Monster Manual 2, wouldn’t it be safe to assume that the encounters planned with be all full of new baddies for us to slay..which would just draw out the encounters? Are we forever doomed to have even mega-long combat encounters put forth by WotC themselves. Will this unravel space-time as we know it?!

Maybe I`m just placing too much value on WWDDGDs. For me, its fills two needs. 1) that I can get out of the house and play a little face-to-face D&D considering I play online only. 2) it allows me to play a character instead of DM`ing. Don’t get me wrong, I love to DM, but playing a character is fun too!

Regardless, I plan to reserve a slot for the day at my local store and let you folks know the results.

Hours after Arcane Power was released in `dead tree` form, digital pirates began to the task of scanning each individual page and compiling a searchable (as in, ctrl+f) PDF of it. Others cheered on those scanning the book stating that this would show Wizards of the Coast that their efforts to curb piracy by no longer releasing PDFs for purchase was a complete waste of time and efforts.

Even without releasing an official WotC branded PDF, the underground community now has one and any sales that WotC might have gotten from selling PDFs is out the window.

Will we see WotC reinstate PDF sales to at least make SOME money off them even though a pirated scanned release is inevitable?

Fine. This entry serves two purposes. First.. yes. Its a `neener neener` post to show off my setup. But more importantly, now you can see just what is out there to enhance/manage your online gaming sessions. I`ll be talking about two things, the hardware I use and the software I feel is key to the execution of this.

Click for larger image

Booyah! Its sexy. I know Here’s the run-down on the hardware.  First,  the three monitors are in Extended Mode which extends the desktop area while allowing each monitor to retain its own resolution. This is important for my case since I have different sized monitors which require different resolutions.  The two end monitors are 15″ LCDs with a resolution of 1024 x 768 each. The center monitor a 22″ widescreen LCD set to 1600 x 1050.

The 22″ and silver 15″ are plugged in to my video card which has two output ports. This comes standard on newer (and even not so newer) video cards.  I used to have an Nvidia 8600GT which had two outputs on the back (The above pic is from my GTX 260).  A quick search online shows some 6600LE’s that`ll work costing  $30. For the 3rd monitor (the black 15″), its plugged in to the onboard video port coming from the motherboard. I had to go in to the computer’s BIOS settings to enable onboard video. Took a matter of seconds.

As for the software, the main monitor in the middle is dedicated to Gametable. Keeping that program on the largest monitor allows me to see the largest section of map possible. The monitor to the left is dedicated to Anubisware’s Encounter Manager along with the Google Docs spreadsheet we’re using as a player status dashboard. while the remaining monitor is for PDF viewing.. though I may need to add a table soon to the mix to have books laid out since ..well.. I’m sure everyone is aware of the PDF stuff with Wizards.  Anywho.. Mumble runs in the background and doesn’t need to be seen on a monitor.

The option is still on the table for me to utilize a 4th monitor as I have a vacant PCI port that could support another basic video card. But at this point and in this apartment, I have no use for it..or place to put it.

So for those of you that game online like this, what is your setup like?