Khyber's Harvest, and a bunch of n00bs

[Rumble]

This past Saturday, I was visiting the family homestead with my family in tow, and with some vague plans to run some D&D 4th for a few folks who expressed interest. It ended up being myself as GM, my two kids (8 and 10), a German exchange student, a friend of his, and my younger brother, running through the Khyber's Harvest adventure that was handed out on Free RPG Day.

So I was puzzling over how to arrange my map tiles and which minis to use, when I remembered that my dad has a 40+ inch LCD tv, and it has PC inputs.

So I put together a quick campaign, threw together a couple macros to handle Hit Points, and set up a player instance on the bigscreen, and my GM instance on my laptop. And man, it was the coolest thing ever. The German exchange student, Jan, walked into the room and said, "Oh, no way. No, this is awesome." My brother said, "Holy crap, you achieved the goal we've been talking about since we started gaming!"

We got through three encounters, and a skill challenge, and some varying roleplay, during that evening, and everyone had a blast. I loved it - I don't have a lot of map tiles, nor can I afford to print out dozens of colorful maps, but I can make an encounter map on my computer in no time, and throw together a MapTool campaign in minutes. The players loved the visual display of the map, and with that available to them, even the new guys had very little trouble getting the game or using tactics to their great advantage. And aside from some display glitches that had nothing to do with MapTool and everything to do with my laptop (I hate atikmdag), it worked flawlessly.

So, the lessons learned:

1. MapTool is awesome.
2. D&D is fun for all ages.
3. I want a 50-inch LCD tv. Like, yesterday.

[Azhrei]

3. I want a 50-inch LCD tv. Like, yesterday.

Depending on your overall usage pattern you might find a projector to be a better investment. The LCDs have been a good bargain ever since the ceiling on contrast ratios was broken about a year ago...

[Rumble]

3. I want a 50-inch LCD tv. Like, yesterday.

Depending on your overall usage pattern you might find a projector to be a better investment. The LCDs have been a good bargain ever since the ceiling on contrast ratios was broken about a year ago...

You're so serious all the time, with your tips and your sound advice.

Actually, when my brother and I were talking, we both thought a projector was a better move - reasonably priced, and more portable, too.

[trevor]

That sounds like a lot of fun rumble !

[Jector]

For portability a projector is the way to go. If your place is likely to always be the gaming hub a LCD or DLP would allow play with enough light to see character sheets and such without making the image hard to see. YMMV.