Finally used Maptools for my D&D game

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skester
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Finally used Maptools for my D&D game

Post by skester »

Hey all,

After a few months of playing around with Maptools, making tiles specific for my campaign, and learning how to do stuff, we finally ran a maptools session.

Overall, it went very well.

It was just a small dungeon with pre-generated characters to get everyone used to it. We got about half way through due to all the first time distractions.
BraveOnes.png
BraveOnes.png (167.77 KiB) Viewed 4820 times
The guys really liked the light source and indivual vision. That combined with the fact that I don't have to describe "you open the door to a 20'x30' room with a door in the middle of the east wall".

Even had a great moment where the Cleric was playing around with Macros and the Sorcerer went behind a pillar. Then of course the Sorcerer needed healing so the Cleric was "Where did he go?". Everyone else could see the sorcerer... Trust me, it was funny.

Right now I'm learning macros specific to the campaign I'll be running, I love the states. Those are a really nice touch.
My coding sucks (haven't programmed in 15 years), but I really like that the "Full Attack" macro I built. It takes into account your BAB for number of attacks, and all the adjustments that the guy has on him automatically. Very nice. Can you use two different "While" statements in a macro?

I'd like to thank everyone who's put this together. I'll post a more detailed report when we actually start playing and aren't fooling around so much.

Skester

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trevor
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Re: Finally used Maptools for my D&D game

Post by trevor »

And let's hear it for Dirk the Daring !
Dreaming of a 1.3 release

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skester
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Re: Finally used Maptools for my D&D game

Post by skester »

The player of Mim was kinda dissapointed that Mim wasn't high enough level to cast Form of the Dragon (Pathfinder) yet. No Purple dragons.....

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trevor
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Re: Finally used Maptools for my D&D game

Post by trevor »

Heh that would be funny
Dreaming of a 1.3 release

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skester
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Re: Finally used Maptools for my D&D game

Post by skester »

For my actual Maptools Campaign, which will be played with the Pathfinder Rules (when it comes out) should be interesting. The Mcguffin of the story is that the sun "explodes" and all there is left is a dim husk in the sky (about the brightness of the full moon). Bit of the sun fall to earth, in crystal form. A small shard about the size of a pinky fingernail generates continual light and heat equal to that of a huge, raging bonfire. So you can imagine how much something the size of a boot generates.

In order to save some people, a wizard teleports the party and a number of townsfolk to an old, abandoned dwarf town on the inside rim of a volcano caldera. The caldera holds a lake which is heated by the lava vents below. So it's a relatively warm place as the world outside starts to enter a permanent winter.

Skester

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skester
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Re: Finally used Maptools for my D&D game - 2nd test

Post by skester »

Okay,

Finally after a few weeks of stuff going on, we finally had our second test session for maptools before we actually use it for a full campaign.

1st hour and a half the players spent looking at my macros and modifying them. I'm not a programmer, but several player are, so they immediately starting recoding some of the macros, adding tooltips, html formatting and getting rid of useless crap that I had put in. Then it was a lot of time testing it out.

Finally we started playing the game.
TestDungeon.png
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The players continued on from last session, breaking down a door they weren't able to get to before. They encounted a Barghast and a bone swarm which was a nice battle. Then had to climb over a collapsed passage and then down some stairs into waist deep water which was slimey, very slimey. The ground was covered in slime and on a slight angle. They needed a DC 10 acrobatics check to stay standing and if they got 5 or lower they moved 5' deeper.

Well they spotted a Darkmantle floating down the hall and went after it. The Rogue of course had no trouble, but the water was up to his shoulders. The fighter however could not roll over 4 on his balance and kept slipping and sliding into deeper and deeper water.

That's when he was attacked by the scumwater piranha's.
MeanFish1.png
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By themselves the Piranha's weren't much to deal with, but when combined with the DarkMantle's light dampening ability and the fighter not able to stand, the fish finally tasted some blood and went beserk. But even with bonus str and con (increase the hp from 5 to 7! Whoo Hoo!) they weren't able to hit the plate mail armoured fighter much. But finally they started wearing him down untill he said "Screw trying to stand up, I'm swimming back!" and managed to get out of the darkness of the darkmantle and back to the stairs where the Cleric and Sorcerer were (They refused to go sliding in the water).

The battle took so long that the fish actually came out of beserk and were fatigued. At that point the rogue doing a whole 1d3 damage and the sorcerer managed to fry the fish.

Almost out of healing at this point, the party continued through the slime after the Darkmantle, which by this time had retreated. The slime eventually disapated and they passed a large stone door they couldn't open. In the distance, pilars flanked a ledge rising above the water.

They made their way to the ledge but were beset upon by a slime of some sort that either paralyzed them for a couple of rounds, or staggered them (no damage), and the darkmantle.

Fighting the best they could in the harsh environment, they allerted the Orc Boss down the corridor (who started buffing himself) and then joined the fray. The battle was long and hard, and the rogue went down, but it was a lot of fun.
bloodied.png
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As a DM I really like using maptools. Now I can describe the room easier. "You enter a large room and see a door on the other side. Inside there is a immense pile of bones with a savage dog like creature chewing on one. To your right there is a table covered in ichor and grissle. The dog howls then leaps to attack". I don't have to describe the room's dimensions, where the doors exactly are, take time to draw it out for the PCs. It's just nice.

And when the battle moves (or gets really noisy), I don't have to flip through notes to see what it is that could possibly join the battle. I just look at the map and if they come close to other monsters I visibly see it. And I don't have to look up the monster stats to see if they make their perception check - it's right there on the token stats. There's no stopping the game as I look something up. The Players don't get any warning, there's no metagaming or changing of tactics from me saying "hold on a second, just gotta check something" and they know something is happening they have to worry about.

It's great!

Course I'm using basic macros right now, so there was a lot of "it would be nice if we could do this, or that". One of the big ones was from the cleric wanting to automatically adjust the other PCs Hit Points with his Cure Wounds spells instead of having to tell them then they do it.

But I figured that out today at lunch.

[h: names = getPCNames()]
[h: tokenID = getPC("json")]
[h: fail = input(
"SelectedPlayer|" + names + " | Which Player to Heal| List|Select=0 Value-String"
)]
[h: abort(fail)]
[h:switchToken(json.get(tokenID,SelectedPlayer))]

Added that to the cure light wounds and it has a nice drop down list to heal the other PCs.

This is great! Thanks so much!
Skester

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trevor
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Re: Finally used Maptools for my D&D game

Post by trevor »

That's a mean looking fish !

Thanks for the pics, I love 'em !
Dreaming of a 1.3 release

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Azhrei
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Re: Finally used Maptools for my D&D game - 2nd test

Post by Azhrei »

skester wrote:Added that to the cure light wounds and it has a nice drop down list to heal the other PCs.

This is great! Thanks so much!
Skester
Wow, you may not be a programmer but that a great bit of investigation and coding you did there! As you've no doubt noticed, the macro facility can really help automate your game. It has a few quirks (what language doesn't?) but it's amazing how much can be done with it.

Since you're playing Pathfinder you may want to consider looking at lmarkus' framework. Check out the General -> User Creations -> Campaign Frameworks forum. It's what I use for my game. :)

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skester
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Re: Finally used Maptools for my D&D game - 2nd test

Post by skester »

Azhrei wrote:Wow, you may not be a programmer but that a great bit of investigation and coding you did there! As you've no doubt noticed, the macro facility can really help automate your game. It has a few quirks (what language doesn't?) but it's amazing how much can be done with it.

Since you're playing Pathfinder you may want to consider looking at lmarkus' framework. Check out the General -> User Creations -> Campaign Frameworks forum. It's what I use for my game. :)
That was one of the first things that attracted me to maptools was the macros. And it's pretty funky.

Imarkus' framwork and the wiki have been teaching me a lot about how to do a macro. Even though a lot of my macros aren't elegant I've managed to get quite a few nice ones. Channel Energy for healing, Bard's Inspire courage, of course the attack macros (Full round attack macro does number of attacks based off your BAB). I don't consider them up to the standard of Imarkus, but I'll post them when I've learned more and have "almost finished". Funny how my list keeps growing on that.

As I learn more, I keep going back and cleaning up old code. One of my Players is helping me test, which is nice.

Skester

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