Mapping with the Kids, Watercolor for the win.

Hi Everybody, its been a while since i last posted, almost a month. What can i say life is busy. When your trying to make money anyway you can, spend time with your kids, and everything else that is life its hard to find time put some thoughts on paper.

I started to run P1 - King of the Trollhaunt Warrens with my group of players, its my first 4e pre-made adventure. I really liked the map that came with it but was a little upset there were no maps for the rest of the encounters.

Now the maps i use for the table has varied over the last year and a half. From D&D Map Tiles, to 1" grid paper using markers. I went through the entire book and created every single encounter using makers.

We ran the first night heading into the troll haunt, and the players had trouble seeing where they could go and where they couldn't because everything was still white spaced. I didn't know what i was going to do.

A few days later brought my 3 year old into the d&d room so she could paint some watercolor's, i even gave her one of my large 1" grid sheets. I love spending time with my kids and find being a dad the biggest role playing experience of my life. i noticed the colors she was using and though, jesh that looks just like it does in this book.

So i put away my happy face i was painted and busted out a few of my maps and started painting.

The result was solid. Not only did the maps look great but i also got to spend time with my kid while working on it.

I know recently there has been lots of talk about people building massive encounter using tiles, and even the 3d tile sets. But really who has the money. I spent $12 on paper for 50 sheets (50 encounters) and i spent $1 on the watercolor paint set that is still going strong. All encounters can be pre-built and once dry i just fold it up and write the encounter code on the back.

I've now increase my own personal enjoyment from the map by spending time with my little girl. The players enjoyed the map and feel it adds a lot of flavor to the game that cannot be added with store bought items.

Well for other DM Dad's out there, i say why not give it a shot. Hey go even further and design the encounter with your kids and see what your players think about it.

Well until next time, keep your dice on the table

Week End Review - May 1st

Another week down the drain, and all i have to show for it is seven newly built servers, and some d&d news. This week was a weird week for me, for one there was constant fights and bickering with my wife over the H1N1 flu, see one of my buddy's a player to our d&d game just got back from a trip from Mexico. needless to say were not playing d&d at my place this week, were playing at his...
...i have to shower when i get back...(lets not talk about this any further)

Anyway to add to the weirdness this week, anyone who had a blog about d&d blogged about the free adventure giveaway from WotC, it was all over the internet news (well d&d related anyway).

check it out here

My biggest pet peeve of the week is the complaints about how there is no role playing in 4th edition. Newbie for DM poses the question, however i think my post sums it up. NewbieDM however does have a great tip that i may just have to steal for my next craft article. He show you can create your own tokens using a printer, glue, and some washers. thought i think i will use TokenTools

Speaking of mapping, Michael Shorten has a good article over at the examiner on maps and mapping tools for free, Stargazer blogs about how to create old-school maps in GIMP the downside is you need a forum account to download the needed files. Also Jonathan from The Core Mechanic lists six RPG map making solutions that pretty much cover everything you need.

There was a fair amount of DM tips this week that i found extremely useful. over at Slyflourish he has a collection of tweets, and one i really like is

"Good use for minions: Aid Another (PHB pg 287). Standard action: basic atk vs AC10; on hit, +2 to allies next attack vs. this target. #dnd"

The RPG Athenaeum talks about creating knowledge sheets, listing what players automatically know. i really like this idea, and think i will be using the journal function in the DDI:CC program.

Also dungeonmaster.com has a pretty sweet skill challenge example, i like it a lot

stick around, next week i will be posting an encounter around Monday.