Okay, me and my friends are new to Dark Heresy. But, than again, we wouldnt be if I would just hurry up and finish up my campaign. (The ideas just keep flowing out)
I just wanted to know what you guys prefer to do as to represent whats going on during combat. As in, who is where, and what obstacles are in the area.
Do you prefer using your imagination, using GW scenery, a dry erase board, or what?
I like the idea of the erase board, but I just want to know what you guys like to use.
I use Excel, actually, as demonstrated by Egalor here:
I prepapere maps for planned combats that are purposed to be exiciting (and thereby not that straight forward), printed on regular sheets of paper.
If "combats happens", I tend to simply describe thing and start smeering something on paper if needed/requested
Hex/Square mat with over head projector markers.
I found a little treasure for mapping RPG fights at of all places CostCo several months back. More or less your garden variety dry erase board that was intended to be hung on a wall, this little beauty has the rare advantage of light grey dots all across the writing surface in a 1" square grid pattern. You can write all over it like those expensive vinyl maps for a certain fantasy RPG, but it is bigger and stiff! Makes measuring range and combat movement a breeze (I usually use a 1" = 1m scale). The other obvious perk of this is if you are using GW mineatures for your game (and for a game like this you really should, makes things so much cooler and easier to explain) the standard base is 1". If memory serves correctly it was under $20 US and came with a few little magnet thingies... Oh, did I mention the surface is magnetic too?
As for the minis: I cheerfully use 28mm mineatures for my DH game, most of which are current or out-of-print WH40K models. They graphically get the point across very quickly and avoid annoying discussions with players coming down off a sugar and caffiene high.... "No, the goblin with the crossbow is actually a Space Marine, and the drow assassin is actually an astropath, really!". Much better for me is "Ok, so the Cadian Guardsman with a lasgun is a Cadian Guardsman with a lasgun."
If you happen to own a copy of Necromunda by GW then you also have a fun option for fights that occur in hive cities by simply combining the card-and-plastic terrain in interesting ways.
Since one of my players is an ex-PDF trooper from an ork-infested frontier world I am mulling about nefarious plans for setting up a special game using a terrain table more typical for WH40K games where the acolytes will get to tussle with some big, angry greenskins at some point in the future. The main difficulty here is bribing someone with an ork army to sit about for an extended period of time while letting us use their battleforce.
I remember reading somewhere a line that has stuck with me through my GMing career. "The imagination is the greatest graphics engine." I prefer it old school, where all you need to play are the rule book, pencil, paper, and dice (character sheets prefered.) I've only drawn up a battle scene once and that was solely because of the amount of enemies involved and the importance of the battle. Say for that one case (In which the players only ended up using 1/4 of anyway) I keep to leaving scenes solely in the mind. In that way, the players fill in their ideal details of the scene. All I need do is describe the important parts. This also leaves room for improvising features that I didn't think of or are convenient to used fate points.
I create or get a floor plan of the combat which I put up on the room's LCD TV. I load it in Paint.NET so I can scrawl lines and arrows on it.
However most of the time I just describe the action and have a "screensaver" of suitable scifi-fantasy art going across the LCD TV. DeviantArt is great for that.
I prefer to use my gaming groups imaginations and willingness to create an interesting actionscene for most situations.
But sometimes I want to have a battle where clever movement is a big part of the challenge for the players, then I like some floorplans and figures. Since I really really like modelling, I have custombuilt models for the player characters and some of the more notorious opponents in my campaign. I used a lot of differnt bits and pieces, but the human Mordheim plastics (sold as Empire Free Company nowadays http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat1300288&prodId=prod20048 ) and the new imperial guard plastics are a good core for building many models suitable for inquisitor.
For gaming board I use a 1x1.5 m piece of clear plastic "tablecloth cover" that costed me roughly $3. On one side I've used a permanent marker and a long ruler to make small dots in a 1" grid. On the other side I draw floorplans etc using whiteboard markers, black for walls, blue for moveable objects such as doors and funriture, red for particular hazards, green for radioactive ooze, purple for weird warpeffects etc etc.. This ends up a somewhat unruly version of the board that ZillaPrime referred to above. It does need a big flat table to work properly (preferably in a flat light colour, unless you bring a white tablecloth as well), but it is foldable so fits with my regular GMing papers. I often vary the scale of the plans I draw, taking care to indicate clearly on the board what distance 1" represent. This is to supply my players with changing challenges. I find that with 1" = 1m pistols are always the best weapon, and this quickly becomes boring.
Once I took the cardboard floorplans from an old spacehulk game and had the players follow and protect a surveying servitor that moved at 3 meters a turn along a preplanned (but to the characters unknown) route. I started with just a room, a short corridor and an intersection. As the characters moved forward into the complex I placed the connecting boardpieces that they could see, together with the opposing figures in the room (or spacehulk blips if they were out of sight). Proper use of auspex and similar scanning equipment could show blips in yet to be explored areas of the map. This turned out great fun.
Milova said:
I remember reading somewhere a line that has stuck with me through my GMing career. "The imagination is the greatest graphics engine." I prefer it old school, where all you need to play are the rule book, pencil, paper, and dice (character sheets prefered.) I've only drawn up a battle scene once and that was solely because of the amount of enemies involved and the importance of the battle. Say for that one case (In which the players only ended up using 1/4 of anyway) I keep to leaving scenes solely in the mind. In that way, the players fill in their ideal details of the scene. All I need do is describe the important parts. This also leaves room for improvising features that I didn't think of or are convenient to used fate points.
I whole-heartedly concur...
Cameron said:
Okay, me and my friends are new to Dark Heresy. But, than again, we wouldnt be if I would just hurry up and finish up my campaign. (The ideas just keep flowing out)
I just wanted to know what you guys prefer to do as to represent whats going on during combat. As in, who is where, and what obstacles are in the area.
Do you prefer using your imagination, using GW scenery, a dry erase board, or what?
I like the idea of the erase board, but I just want to know what you guys like to use.
I'm fortunate to have a large collection of miniatures (mostly unpainted, but I have quite a few painted nicely) and quite a few scenery pieces. When possible, I like to use a full color 3-D board with miniatures and a tape measure. Not for RolePlaying necessarily, mind you, but for combat.
I'm not putting down the "Imagination" squad, so don't get me wrong. I think that's fine, it's just not what my group likes. I'm lucky to have 20 years worth of collected minis and not everyone does. Not everybody has the time, patience or money, so you do what get's you by. Nothing wrong with a DryErase board, I just wouldn't pick it over minis. The extra setup time and the aggravation with my clutzy player who has broken several of them is still worth the effort.
I mention that because usually some dimwit starts flaming me for "lack of imagination" and claims some perverse idea that nothing is preferrable and superior to Minis. Most of the time they're either jealous they don't have the minis or have simply never played an RPG on a cool table with painted minis and scenery. Yet, they'll use handouts and other props... But I say play the way you and your group enjoy the game most. There's no right way.
There's nothing wrong with "Imagination" (other than it doesn't work too well with a bunch of 16 year olds who are used to playing WOW). We simply find props and handouts and the miniatures add to the immersion. I still have to describe what's going on....Minis are only really useful for combat. Hey, I'm 40 years old. I can't be expected to remember where 6 players are and what they're doing plus NPC's without some visual representations!
Milova said:
I remember reading somewhere a line that has stuck with me through my GMing career. "The imagination is the greatest graphics engine." I prefer it old school, where all you need to play are the rule book, pencil, paper, and dice (character sheets prefered.) I've only drawn up a battle scene once and that was solely because of the amount of enemies involved and the importance of the battle. Say for that one case (In which the players only ended up using 1/4 of anyway) I keep to leaving scenes solely in the mind. In that way, the players fill in their ideal details of the scene. All I need do is describe the important parts. This also leaves room for improvising features that I didn't think of or are convenient to used fate points.
I'd love to have a group that I could do that with! My group isn't stupid, but they're all 16 and their lack of imagination is really frustrating sometimes. I blame World of Warcraft.
Maxim C. Gatling said:
I'd love to have a group that I could do that with! My group isn't stupid, but they're all 16 and their lack of imagination is really frustrating sometimes. I blame World of Warcraft.
Make 'em read a book or three. I understand you enjoy minis, hell I love 'em myself, but that's no excuse to coddle visualization stunted teenagers.
For me it all depends on the complexity of the situation. In combat scenes where knowing the exact position of any given combatant isn't absolutely vital I usually just wing it. But when there are a lot of combatants or location and maneuvering is important, then I'll bust out what ever tokens (Minis when they're available/practical) are necessary to make clear relative position and location.
This past session I used a vulture, a baneblade and 2 macharius tanks to mark where ships were and direction of facing/travel in an extremely close quarters space battle. (Couldn't find my BFG ships and the bigger models were useful given that the ships were all maneuvering practically on top of one another.)
Hmm...just found this rather large image, which may be perfect for a background of a star system....add a few tokens for asteroid fields and planets, space stations and a few ships, and youre ready to go. If your like visual representations, that is. I could imaging placing simply some question marks for unidentified sensor contacts. All pretty non-tactic, just for visualizing. Strictly no "one and a half inc and i´m out of his firing range" stuff.
A4 lined paper with terrain drawn on paper and the location of PC's and NPC's denoted by letters or x's.
Then a lot of description and acting on my part. The map is really so I know whats going on. The PC's should be spending their time (generally 5 seconds to decide an action) worrying about the death cult assassin trying to gut them and not worrying about the exact movements of every character.
