Lately I’ve been checking out a few blogs and sites with some nifty 4E stuff. I thought I’d pass along some of their links and hope people take a bit of time to check them out.

First off is Ready an Action which offers a downloadable encounter just about every week. It provides a general map, stats on creatures, tactics for running the encounter, and even offers a battle map if needed. I really dig the idea of providing a single encounter that DMs can use. I’m sure in a few months you’ll have a nice library at your fingertips.

Many of these encounters can also be found indexed at another site over at Sarah Darkmagic’s blog. She has put together the tools for a wonderful searchable index of published and submitted adventures. NewbieDM had floated the idea of hosting 4E delves and found out about Sarah’s site. I hope folks that want to put out their own free content keep this site in mind. I think it would be great to have one site be the resource for 4E adventures and delves on the net, and this site is shaping up to be it.

Stuffer Shack is another 4E-centric blog that has recently popped up. While it has a few general blog posts on RP topics, it also wants to serve as a resource for DMs. The mantra of the site is for people to freely pilfer adventures and ideas at the site. I expect over the next few months to host a lot of DM resources, and currently it offers a pretty good set of links to some handy stuff all ready out on the net.

Hope folks find these sites a good resource, be sure to check them out.

I love using power cards. I’ve found that with my group, especially new players, it’s so much easier to use rather than flipping through their character sheet.

In the past I made up cards at Dragon’s Lair using their power card creator. I liked it as I could save the cards as a PDF. Just about all the field information on the cards had drop down menus. If needed I could also reload the page and still have all the card information. They had a lot of white space on the cards so it wouldn’t completely drain the printer ink cartridge. I just print them out and sandwich them between self laminating sheets. Bam! You’ve got a set of cards that can take a little abuse and are functional at the table.

However, I kept a lot of the information on the cards pretty general. One thing I wanted to avoid was having the cards too tailored to each player, as that would mean I had to reprint them out when they leveled up and got additional feats and ability bumps. WotC character creator is a great tool, and I also like that cards are provided. But this also gets to be a pain as I need to print out a new character sheet each time they level up.

Hunting around I had stumbled on some nice power and item cards by JFJohnny5 at Dragon Avenue. They were in PDF format that could have text entered in the fields. They had a variety of layouts from a playing card to an index card. It was a bit of a chore filling in the information. Yet I could also leave some fields blank for my players to fill in with character specific info (if needed).

Having just slips of paper at the table were a little flimsy though. I also wanted to have some type of color coding besides using a color printer. Self laminating sheets were okay, but it was sort of a pain to make 1 or 2 additional cards (just easier slapping a standard full sheet on an entire printed page). So I was in a bit of a pickle.

I ended up getting a few packs of card protectors. Out of the variety of colors available, I settled on green, red, and black (for at will, encounter, and dailies) and picked up a yellow set for magic items. The cards I printed were just small enough to have the color backing of the card protectors poke through the transparent face. It’s not a big chore to print up a new card (plus I can just print them out in black and white), as I can write/type in the info and just slap them into a new card protector.

So far my group has been loving these. As your typical pack is about 50 protectors each, one set of each color type should be enough for just about any group. Pretty handy means to quickly differentiate between power types and still have a variety of power cards at the table for your group to throw around.

So when I jumped into 4E, all my players were new to the game. One had dabbled a bit in a 3.5 game but his experience with D&D was limited. I will be the first to admit that 4E combats can get a little overwhelming. The game takes a very tactical turn with structured melees. My group loves it. It has a lot of interesting decisions and maneuvering. We all have tons of fun.

So on the D&D boards, some people have been asking for low tech solutions to running their game. In particular one guy was adamant about not having a laptop at the table. I can totally understand. Sometimes I find having a laptop a little distracting, and being a frequent recipient of Murphy’s Law, I’m always worried about some last minute technical glitch that will hinder my game.

A while back I found a pretty good one page initiative tracker sheet (for the life of my I can’t find the link, so if someone can track it down gimme a shout out and I’ll link to this post). I liked it had all the pertinent defenses. It also had several spaces for recharging powers, if the target was marked, and a way to keep track of different combat conditions.

However, some things I didn’t like. I wanted a full box space to keep track of a creatures HP. I also wanted sufficient space to write in a monster/character name. So I modified mine a bit. I also kept an additional field to keep all the marked and combat conditions separate. So I whipped up my own version for keeping track of stuff.

So far it’s worked pretty well for me. I enter party information in the first few lines and then photocopy them. I then would have a few encounters prepped by adding monster on the other lines. Sometimes I’d squeeze a few encounters worth if I could, but usually had a separate sheet for each fight.

I’ve sort of moved to using applications for my 4E fights. I still keep a few sheets handy in case my computer suddenly gets fried. I think this is a definite must have if I also travel to a friend’s place to run a game sans laptop. For running a game with strictly stuff from my backpack, I like using this sheet a lot.

[Edit: Thankfully someone was able to find a link to the PDF I was looking for. Thanks!}

I posted a short while back on me using a whiteboard for my D&D sessions. I generally have the players sketch out a general map on a sheet of paper. When things need miniatures being moved around I then switch to a battlemap. For the most part I like using one, but at times I’ve been having a few problems.

One thing that I’ve stumbled on a few times is dissipating the tension during the beginning of an encounter. When my players kick in the door, I gleefully describe what they see, get the group reaching for dice, all to have that excitement slowly drop down a few pegs while I map out the room. Having everything mapped out before hand on a large white board would be clumsy, as I have to cover up sections and hope nothing gets rubbed off as we are shuffling papers around.

I’m a fan of using dry-erase boards though. I like the freedom of sketching things down directly on the map. Using tiles seem doable, but pretty costly and I just don’t have time to make my own tiles. You also need to have a lot of little bits to dump on the tiles for features and terrain. I could use pre-printed maps too, but I find the page size limiting and again cost creeps in a bit with printing/ink cartridge use.

To get around this, I copied the grid sections out of the DMG and laminated them (using self adhesive sheets). I ended up cutting a few sheets into smaller sections as corridors.

So far this has been a great workaround for me over using tiles, or writing stuff out on a larger board. I can draw a few details if needed, erase and repeat having a reusable surface. Another big bonus is I can also write on the back any section notes or tags I give to the rooms. I can pre-draw an entire dungeon and just plop down the next section in a flash.

Cheap and functional. I’ve liked using these so far. I never managed to pick up past dungeon tile sets. I understand that WotC is releasing a lot of the older sets in a new package deal for 2010. I might pick those up, but for now I think these sheets fit the bill nicely.

I’m all about using physical markers or tokens to keep track of effects in 4E. There is a lot of small things to keep track in combat, with status effects, bonuses to hit or AC, and stuff being bloodied all being thrown around from turn to turn. I have a love of miniatures (or at least some type of marker) for 4E too. So having stuff to physically hold in your hand helps a lot. It’s so much easier to keep track of stuff having something on the board over keeping a list of status effects on paper.

If you look around, a ton of people have their own little tokens or things they use as condition markers. From using stickers on minis, to special bases, to even using used soda bottle rings, just about everyone uses a variety of items for tokens. I’ve used a lot of small colored markers also, but I started leaning towards using something with a written description.

I opted to create a small sheet of conditional markers. After printing them out, I pasted it on thin cardboard (do make em a little beefy), cut them apart, and secured them a little further with some tape. I also have a few tokens to mark off areas of effect. Some powers have zones that are sustained throughout an encounter, so I wanted a few markers for those situations also. So far they are pretty functional and work okay.

However, I’m still wanting something a little more durable and thicker. I’ve recently picked up a neat product that looks like it will fit my needs nicely. I’m waiting to run a session with my group to get their feedback before posting my thoughts. Until then, here is a link to my cutout conditional tokens as a pdf. Hope folks enjoy them.

WotC has just put up a short film looking at a few DMs. It covers a pretty broad spectrum of DMs and the types of games they run. I have to admit in the third part does tout 4E a lot which might make folks think it’s more an advertisement for the new edition (though I agree with a lot of the positive comments made about 4E). Still it is an interesting snapshot of the D&D community.

I like how it gives a glimpse on the variety of ways people prepare and run their games. From using home brew rules to lots of self-made conditional markers, I liked seeing how folks adapted their game to their own group. A really big portion is dedicated to how people actually got together to meet up and run their games. I’d really wished they managed to get some folks together that ran an online campaign. There are some tools out there to do so, and interviewing a group that had a remote campaign going would have been an interesting profile.

Still, I liked this. I think it realistically captures a lot of folks that play D&D. I like how it gives a quick view with how different a lot of DMs run their games and the little tricks they use. Be sure to check it out.

WotC has a new community spotlight interview up. It’s on one of my favorite blogs particularly for its focus on new DMs and 4E, newbiedm.com. He’s done a lot I think for the community. He started up a new DM group on the WotC community boards. I also think he has a great blog.

In particular he tackles a lot of things someone new to DMing would likely encounter. He also has a ton of useful tutorials and guides including for some practical tips on running your game, from creating custom battle maps, to making your own miniature tokens. I also think as his group has matured and leveled up, he’s gone beyond the heroic tier and begun to tackle some issues a DM may face in the paragon/epic tier. Just great stuff on his site.

Yeah, I’ve been gushing a lot lately on other blogs. I should be posting more stuff here. But kudos to newbieDM.com in getting some hobby recognition for your blog. You’ve got a great site that offers a lot to the D&D community. And if you haven’t checked his site out yet, give it a look!