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## Another 4e hate thread

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Lago PARANOIA
  Invincible Overlord
  Posts: 10555
  Joined: Thu Sep 25, 2008 3:00 am

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Post by Lago PARANOIA » Sun Nov 29, 2009 4:48 pm

Gee, I usually just use a plastic tablemap divided into 1' squares with the PCs as various coins and the monsters as little squares with numbers on it. Outlines for walls and shit are done with a white crayon.

> Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
> In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.

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Archmage
  Knight-Baron
  Posts: 757
  Joined: Wed Sep 16, 2009 11:05 pm

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Post by Archmage » Sun Nov 29, 2009 5:08 pm

I'm with Lago. Budget GMing for the win. The most expensive part of my gaming setup is a Chessex mat with 1" squares on one side and 1" hexes on the other. You can draw on it with water-soluble markers and then wipe it down with a moistened paper towel.
I have each of my players bring something to represent their PC. A few people have used minis, but the most popular PC tokens have been rings. Dice and torn up squares of paper with numbers and letters written on them work just fine for monsters.
Definitely agree that there are too many conditional effects. Even with play aids like plastic rings, colored magnets, or loose change (all of which have served as mark indicators or whatever), you still lose track of things from time to time. I use a laptop computer for all my gaming, so I tend to just jot notes about conditions in the notepad document I'm using to track HP and whatnot. I wonder if there's a simple computer program someone's written that would help.

> P.C. Hodgell wrote:That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.

> shadzar wrote:i think the apostrophe is an outdated idea such as is hyphenation.

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Doom
  Duke
  Posts: 1470
  Joined: Mon Nov 10, 2008 7:52 pm
  Location: Baton Rouge

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Post by Doom » Mon Nov 30, 2009 12:39 am

1) I never did this...they balance well enough. The uber set comes with magnetic bases you can stick on the bottom, so you could do it for 50 minis (or whatever it comes with) quickly. But, you can easily stack alot under a mini without any trouble, so I never blew the five minutes sticking the magnetic bases on. Note that it's possible for a figure to have a half dozen or more status effects on it at one time, so you might have trouble fitting all your beads on there.
2) Nope, unless you're using large, large, large, beads. I have 8 folks at my table, and the aleatools things are easily visible from all angles (well, I suppose someone hanging upside down from the ceiling would have a problem). We used to use beads, and would often lose track...excessive frustration with the beads is what made me break down and use the aleatools things.
3) Certainly a good point, but most minis are medium sized. The ones that are large, or larger, are usually just one or two per fight (DnD4.0 just doesn't work well with swarms of large enemies), so a stack of counters on the unused large base space (for things like giants) or beside the large mini (huge carrion crawler, for example).
4) Don't use 'em, so don't know...DnD4.0 has very few things that stay up in the air anyway. I imagine when it comes to that I'll just re-use the flight markers I used for MageKnight.
Actually, the best complaint is the cost, which is pricey. But they're nice and fun to play with...one of these days I'll sit down and see if I can make a game just using the aleatools markers.
Last edited by Doom on Mon Nov 30, 2009 12:39 am, edited 1 time in total.

> Kaelik, to Tzor wrote: And you aren't shot in the face?

> Frank Trollman wrote:A government is also immortal ...On the plus side, once the United Kingdom is no longer united, the United States of America will be the oldest country in the world. USA!

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