I’ve sort have gone full circle with tools to keep track of combat. I toyed around with some different programs and found a few I liked. But of late I’ve sort have gone back to keeping track of stuff with paper and pencil. Maybe if I pick up a tablet I’ll try out combat manager programs again, but I’ve found that a laptop on the table sort of adds another divider between myself and the action.

I’ve whipped up a combat sheet and like using that. But I thought I might try using something a little more visual in keeping track of initiative order. So I made up some initiative cards that would also have some info on the PCs and monsters.

I made them to fit on an index card for some added bulk. I ended up placing self-laminating sheets over my cards. That way I could use a dry erase marker and get a little more mileage out of each individual card. I also included a format so that the card could fold in half. They can be used as stand up tents or be slipped over a DM screen. This might be more useful if you want to allow PCs to keep track of the order (the other side is blank so it can be freely written on).

One big drawback is that they do take up a bit of space on the table. However I like that I have just about all the important stuff right on the cards. I can also split the HP box into sections of 2-3 columns so I can use one card for a few monsters.

The big plus is I can turn cards sideways as I go through the initiative order indicating they’ve had their turn. Players can see where they fall in line with the turn order and know when they are on deck. Plus if I have to shift things around, it is just a matter of switching the card order (for delayed actions and such). I hope folks find them useful for their game.

So every once in a while I like to share some of the blogs I’ve been looking at over the past few months. While not all of them are about 4E, they’ve got something to offer your game.

Points of Light – While some of the writers use some adult language I think isn’t necessary, I’ve enjoyed this blog for several years now. They offer a very 4E-centric blog that keeps up on a lot of the new WotC content. Now that I’ve let my DDI subscription lapse, I’ve been definitely frequenting this blog more. I’ve enjoyed their analysis of new character options that roll out in Dragon.

The Id DM – A relative newcomer to the D&D blogging scene that has gathered a large following pretty quickly. The Id DM offers some really interesting analysis and thoughts on the dynamics of groups and the game in general. I particularly liked his breakdown of the Penny Arcade/PvP D&D podcasts, that provided a solid look at how much time combats take and how that time is spent.

A Character For Every Game – While not a 4E-centric blog, this guy does cover a lot of ground for the fantasy RPG. He offers some interesting articles on RPGs in general but lately I’ve been cruising his blog more for map posts. This guy offers some maps of really neat dungeons that have certainly sparked my DM imagination. Well worth checking out.

I hope folks enjoy the links. Please do give them a gander.

So I stumbled onto Power2ool that seems to be a wonderful program for 4E. Conceptually, you have a giant cork board where you can place and remove note cards. In addition, these notes come in different formats as blank cards, powers, magic items, and monsters. All the virtual note cards can be edited and the entire workspace is saved under your login id.

The program can also be synced with the DDI compendium. So folks with an active account can port over powers and monster stat blocks. Best of all, you can edit them. So a player could keep all their powers, edit their own ability and enhancement modifiers and have it saved. You level up or gain a new magic weapon? No problem as you can go back and individually change the powers needed. No bothering with going back to the character creator again. Not to mention, you can print out all the items in a section. It’s a snap to get all your powers printed out on a sheet of paper.

Want to keep track of everything digitally? No worries, as you can double click a power and it will gray out indicating it was used. I can see players keeping a simple stat block of their defenses and HP with all their powers organized the way they want to for combats. Best of all, they have different ‘cork boards’ for keeping different characters. How about the built in dice roller function? Very nice indeed.

For DMs I see this as a great tool. They can split up their entire work area under different encounters. Just a single click and they could get all the monster stats, with a few more virtual note cards to add any tactics, descriptions, rewards, or other notes. Move on to the next room and just open up another section of your workspace. Did I mention you can print all this stuff out?

Don’t have a DDI subscription? You can still create custom power cards (or copy down the ones from a book). Want to make up a monster on the fly? Power2ool also has an option to create a level specific generic monster. All the fields will be filled out with the appropriate bonuses to hit, defences, and damage, and every thing can be edited the way you want. For folks that want to create homebrew items and monsters, or get something together for distribution at a con or gaming event, this program is a great resource.

You can browse through a series of video tutorials and demos of its functionality online. It seems very intuitive and pretty easy to manipulate and edit stuff. I have not had a chance to delve too deeply into this, but I think the learning curve for is almost nonexistent. I particularly like the fact that it is server based. No need to have anything loaded on a PC/Mac meaning you could run over to someone’s house and run a game (provided you can jump onto their wifi). Be sure to check this out as it seems to be a great tool for 4E games.

I’ve been meaning for a while to post about one site I enjoyed peeking at occasionally that is linked on my sidebar, Lastlands. I loved how they had a whole section dedicated to fantasy art. Some great inspirational landscapes and characters were indexed there from various artists. Additionally they had some neat downloads. Now the site is split into two, Lastlands being dedicated to a D&D campaign, and the Weem as a 4E Resource site.

One thing I loved was that the guy whipped up some wonderful condition cards which are still available there. I’m not sure how long he will keep them up though. I like them as you can give them to a player and he knows exactly what is happening with his character. When he makes his save, he can just pass the card back to the DM. I used some self adhesive laminating sheets on mine to keep them extra durable.

I’m going to miss all the neat artwork he had indexed as Lastlands. I hope he can keep his other site active for a while. There are some nifty tutorials for making maps in Photoshop and I liked this truncated combat sheet also (great little tool for new players). Be sure to poke around and check his stuff out.

So in my daily ritual of scrolling through various web sites I do frequent the web comic Penny Arcade. Sadly I don’t play console games, so a decent third of the strips I don’t quite get. Staple on being out of the American pop culture loop completely by living in Korea, and there is another chunk of strips I’m clueless on. The rest however are a hoot. So much so that I do enjoy perusing their site regularly.

One of to comic creators, Mike Krahulik, has taken up the mantle of being a DM for his group. From my understanding, he is new to the whole RPG bit and completely inexperienced to being a DM. I think this adds a little more weight to the statement that he runs some absolutely amazing encounters for D&D.

I suspect that his group is well into the upper echelons of the paragon tier, or maybe even higher. Because his latest post describes an epic encounter in the elemental chaos between worlds. His posts there are astounding. You’ve got a wonderful visual representation of the game, and a decent set of mechanics to make the encounter work. So set pieces not only look cool, they are functional as well (as this pic below will show).

He has described some pretty cool encounters and shown how he pulled them off in the past. From a free fall combat against a dragon, to a light and mirror puzzle dungeon crawl, Mike has assembled some amazing encounters. And I cannot stress this enough, everything he does has a game function. It isn’t just a prop. The pieces work with the session they are running.

He has congregated his past posts of different D&D sessions. I highly recommend giving them a look. I’ll notch it up to being a professional artist, but the creativity he expresses in his game makes me envious. I urge folks to take a look at his D&D posts. There are some great inspirational stuff there, and enough details on the mechanics to port into your game. And while your at it take a peek at their comic too. Fun stuff indeed.

As always, I’m fiddling with things to help improve running my game. Lately a bug has bitten me about using a dice tower for those rolls behind the screen. For the uninformed, a dice tower is a simple contraption that is an open ended box filled with a series of angled slats. You drop dice in one end, they fall out the other, tumbling over the various slats in between. Some are very nice like the ones available at geek chic.

As a DM, I’ve grown to love using a dice tower for several reasons.

Limited space – Between my notes, maps, and books, space behind my screen is limited. I like that I can get a good roll out of the dice, and not have them going everywhere. Typically I’ve got a fair amount of combatants in a fight. I’m rolling for 4-6 minions at a single go. It’s nice to not have to track down dice that scatter all over when I roll a handful.

Less dice mishaps – If using an open ended tower, I’d have it roll up against a screen. For mine, I have a small tray the dice roll into. But in either case, you are going to limit the number of dice that roll off the table, or get a cocked result. I hate having to reroll dice, especially on a cocked die that likely missed only to reroll a 20.

Impressions of impartiality and randomness – You dump in the dice and it comes out the other end. Simple. When I’m rolling for 3+ monsters, I might get a flat roll. Especially with D4s that don’t tumble too well. I hate rolling a few dice and get that one die that flips once or twice. Everyone around the table are friends, but I dislike it when I flub a decent throw and end up having a die result that hurts the player. And face it, as a DM you are rolling a lot of dice. I like that I can go through the mechanical process of rolling dice with some uniformity. Using a dice tower aids in that.

The tower also acts as a great cushion between you and the players when rolling. Psychologically players can take their ire out on the dice tower when the DM rolls a series of critical hits. You can get this a bit using a computer program for rolling dice. I’ve always liked having dice on the table though. This leads me into the last point…

It reminds people you’re playing a game – A dice tower is a toy. It helps remind folks not to take things too seriously. It reinforces that things aren’t personal, the DM is just dumping dice through a contraption. I’ve found at times the tower becomes part of the game. Occasionally I’ve gotten players wanting to use it. When they failed a save twice, I don’t find it unusual to have them throwing the next one via the dice tower. Using a dice tower has helped reinforce that we’re all having goofy fun, using something that at times is inordinately convoluted for something as simple as rolling a single D20.

Dice towers are easy to make. I made mine out of foam board, assembled with white glue and toothpicks as dowels for a bit of support. I also have a detachable tray that fits over the entire box for easy storage. You can pick up the stuff at your local hobby craft store.

Over at Board Game Geek you can find a decent set of plans that fits on just one page. If you don’t want to bother printing on cardstock, an easy way to construct this is with cardboard (just print and paste onto the material). You can also bypass cutting slots for the tabs and just fold them instead, securing with a bit of tape. I encourage people to take a stab at making their own dice tower and use it in your game. It’s a fun thing to have at the table.

I’ve been using the DM Battlescreen for a while. This is a nice 4E combat manager whipped up by Dzmitry Khimaroda (aka Phantom Palmer on WotC boards). I’ve used a few others before and likely might do a round up review. But so far this has been my favorite.

One feature I like is that you can prepare a slew of battles independently of running them. You can keep a list of characters and monsters in a repository, and draw from that pool in the future. So if you choose to enter in a full monster stat line, you can access it repeatedly. You can also directly export monsters from WotC’s monster builder and online character generator. I’ve been pretty lazy and just entering the HP and defenses of monsters, but being able to continually have access to the same monster entries is pretty nice. So once the work is done, you can whip up a combat encounter in a snap.

You can group creatures by initiative, another nice feature. I also like that I can take a large group of similar monsters and split them into 2-3 initiative groups if needed. I can also put monsters in a pool to take them out later. Pretty handy if I want to introduce monsters in waves. Another really nice feature is that I can color code monsters. You automatically have a number associated with creatures, but having an additional color code helps tons in identifying which monster on the tabletop matches those in the program.

You have a lot of flexibility to heal, and add conditions to monsters. I also like that you can easily delay a combatant and jump it right back into the fray with a click. As you tab through the combat, any conditions that are in effect will pop up for the current combatant. I also like the format that you can see the order of combat, so if someone wants to know when another acts, you can pass that information along. Additionally the entire system can run diceless, and the program can handle a variety of rolls and modifiers.

As with all these types of programs, there is a little bit of a learning curve. For the most part I find things pretty intuitive. If a combatant attacks an opponent, you click on the opponent and apply (or heal) the damage. It is a little clunky if you have a monster that is slain and pops back up, but the program can handle it with a little fiddling.

Overall though I’ve really liked this program. It is fairly robust and has some nice features. It is a bit clunky adding monsters into the program from the monster builder, but that is mostly the chore of running WotC’s program and saving creatures individually. I’m still a bit old school though, as I primarily want just to keep track of HP and defenses using the program, keeping the abilities and powers handy on a printed sheet. However, the functionality of DM Battlescreen is pretty robust, I likely have to think about utilizing the program to its fullest.

If you’ve used this program, or have another personal favorite, feel free to chime in with your thoughts.