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Snarfmite
2011-04-04, 10:06 PM
I'd like to hear what other people use as terrain on their battlemaps. Our group uses Legos for minis and uses the long, thin pieces to denote where walls and other terrain is. This starts to fall apart when we want to make a battle with multiple levels. For instance, if I want a battle taking place on city walls, the ground around the walls, and a tower, it's hard to convey all the height distances (I'd build terrain pieces out of more Legos, but it's time consuming and difficult to tell where the squares are). Any suggestions?

What have people found is the best method to keep track of initiative and status effects? I want to have markers that I can put on or around minis to say their status effects (and a short description of what those effects do) so that it's easier to remember. Does anyone have any suggestions for this?

valadil
2011-04-04, 10:57 PM
We draw on our battle mats. Wet erase markers.

I have a few methods for height. If I have a lot of time to prep, I double up lines to indicate height. A picture explains it better. Here's a gate outside town.

Sorry for the rough sketch, I can't find a picture I took the last time I did this method.
http://files.sagotsky.com/contour_height_map.jpg


Each line drawn indicates 10' of height. There's a short building in the middle. 20' walls. The walls have a 10' high tower on each corner. This method was actually inspired by A Link to the Past. I think it communicates heights pretty well, but prep time is high and there's no obvious way to go inside or under something.

So my next method is to use Construx. They weren't as popular as Legos, but I liked 'em better when I was 8. They translate pretty well to DnD, but don't fit a grid perfectly.

http://files.sagotsky.com/construx_dnd.jpg

You'll notice that each 2x4 panel corresponds to a 5' length of grid. I blame the width of the edges. We were able to handwave that problem away without issue.

Construx look nicer than the map IMO and they're a little faster to assemble, but I still wouldn't want to improvise a battle around them. If you don't already own a set you'll have to turn to eBay. And they take up storage space. Still, they're my favorite piece of 3d terrain.

I do initiative on index cards. Each player gets a card. Since I do 4e I give each NPC role a card as well. I sort them by initiative. Pop the top card off the stack and put it in back. This method is nice because I can set the stack aside and it holds its state. No need to remember whose turn we're on. If someone delays I just set their card down in front of me. I'd never go back to maintaining a paper list of names.

For status effects I just let my players track them. I write monster effects by their HP. It doesn't communicate the battle very well, but it's quick. The other method I've seen is to take the rings off of soda caps and place those around minis. Each color corresponds to a different effect. We do use colored paper clips as marks, but those rarely come up in my group.

Toofey
2011-04-05, 12:30 AM
I use a newsprint pad and crayons, if I'm doing something where height is important I may suppliment this with books for high ground etc...

Fhaolan
2011-04-05, 12:52 AM
Depends. Most of the time we just deal with a piece of perspex over printed out grids. However, many moons ago I had a friend who had an actual sandtable. Haven't seen him in decades, but it was cool at the time.

I know a lot of people who have invested in hex-terrain for various wargames. We tend to not use them for RPGs because the effort in setting it all up usually isn't worth it. Not when a 'battle' only lasts 2-3 rounds on average anyway.

Toofey
2011-04-05, 01:48 AM
Yeah, anything much better than roughly drawn gets to be not worth it pretty quick.

Zeb The Troll
2011-04-05, 02:49 AM
Two moderately effective methods I've seen for keeping track of what status effect is on whom (in 3rd and 4th editions) are 1) poker chips, but it requires that you get more than the standard three colors that come in the cheap pack, and 2) ponytail holders. You laugh, but grab one of those bundles that has like 8 different colors and 20 or so of each color for $2 at the grocery store and you've got plenty of options. We never use each color even, and we have a party of seven (hunter's quarry, marked by the warden, marked by the paladin, bloody, grants temp hit points when hit this round, and "whatever this bad guy does" because they usually don't inflict more than one or two status effects).

dsmiles
2011-04-05, 04:52 AM
I use a dry erase board and colored markers for terrain. For height, I'll write in a little +5, +10, etc (or -5, -10, etc).

For status effects, I agree with Zeb, poker chips are the way to go (you can write on them, and wipe it off later using dry erase markers). We just write the characters' names on the board and write their initiative number next to (or under) it, same goes for monsters.

Tyndmyr
2011-04-05, 06:43 AM
We use lego people(with the stands found in the blister packs from any of the limited sets) as well. Our maps are made out of snap together wet-erase tiles with grids printed on. This allows us to slide the map and just continue drawing on the next tile if the battle shifts. I'm afraid these are no longer made, though I've often considered creating a variant of them.

If you're interested in lego mats, the standard baseplates work pretty well, and you can have predone pillars attached to other plates to quickly put up other levels. A standard 2x2 nub area represents a five foot space, usually, and thus, you can use the flat 2x2 pieces to create a checkerboard style map which makes judging distance extremely easy.

Init just gets written on the board for us. Status effects are tracked by the player, typically, though since we play 3.5, it's less of an issue.

dsmiles
2011-04-05, 06:45 AM
I neglected to mention that my dry erase board has a 1" x 1" grid scored into it's surface. After a while of use, the lines get nice and dark.

Dsurion
2011-04-05, 04:30 PM
I've always wanted to try Legos, but like any Lego user, I find cleanup after attempting to find all of the pieces to be more of a pain than it's worth to use them. I still love the idea, and I'll probably try it one day.

For now, though, we use the battlemat and minis from the D&D 3.5 Basic Game box. In the instance that height became and issue, we simply used a piece of string to note where the walls were, though I imagine it would be pretty hard to use the same square at a different height (like under a bridge, y'know, for trolls).

Actually, by strange mishap, we have two of that exact same box set, so we've got plenty of Kobolds if we ever run into them. And plenty of battle space!

Keeping order of initiative in my group isn't a matter of using colored objects or cards to pass around. If you don't remember when your turn is, you don't get one. Never had to institute it, actually; people just lived up to the threat and remembered their turns.

Can't say anything about status effects, though. That problem doesn't come up all that often.

valadil
2011-04-05, 06:26 PM
Keeping order of initiative in my group isn't a matter of using colored objects or cards to pass around.

I may not have explained the cards well. They don't get passed out. They get sorted. The GM holds the whole stack. When a player's turn starts, he reads out the name on the top card. At the end of the turn he puts the card in the back of the stack and reads the next one.

Doing it by memory can work, but if there's a lot of delayed actions or other turn shuffling, it can get confusing.

Dsurion
2011-04-05, 08:39 PM
I may not have explained the cards well. They don't get passed out. They get sorted. The GM holds the whole stack. When a player's turn starts, he reads out the name on the top card. At the end of the turn he puts the card in the back of the stack and reads the next one.

Doing it by memory can work, but if there's a lot of delayed actions or other turn shuffling, it can get confusing.Ah, sorry, I wasn't trying to be hostile to anyone. I wasn't really responding to anyone in particular either, just that I've seen the idea tossed around a lot on the boards. I'd rather just make everyone remember their own turns without having to add another element to the game that the GM has to keep track of.

dsmiles
2011-04-05, 08:44 PM
We usually appoint a player to keep track of all the initiatives. Of course, with the dry erase board, said player just writes them down, so...

Kerrin
2011-04-06, 10:59 AM
For elevation differences I tend to write +/- numbers on the mat next to the line or terrain feature to which it applies.

If someone is flying, then we stand their mini atop a d6 to indicate that they are not on the ground/floor.

Claudius Maximus
2011-04-06, 12:17 PM
For elevation we usually stack lego pieces under the mini, with each layer representing 5 feet. This doesn't work well with huge distances but for that we use other methods like writing the numbers down.

Legos rule for battlespace construction, and we've made all kinds of zany lego giant crabs and stuff when we needed to. We do use regular minis though.