RPTools in a face-to-face 4e Game

[DevoDog]

I bought a new LCD television last week and used in for an in-person 4e game that I ran 2 days ago.

Once I remembered that XP has multiple-monitor support and could run it on one laptop, I was ready to go.

I told my players (I had 6 players instead of my typical 4) that I would go with actual paper maps and tokens if it felt too much like a "video game."

I primarily used MP to keep track of character/monster positions, HP, initiative, and states. I was pretty light in the macros that I had in place (primarily initiative and damage tracking).

The players enjoyed it (althought the halfling was a bit annoyed that his token was smaller than everyone else's). They really liked seeing the Bloodied states come up right away and the Skulls (Dead state) when they defeated an opponent. Using Health Bars also helped out so they could know how severely their teammates were injured (I'm probably going to add another bar to indicate surges remaining).

The other thing I've done is added simple macros for me to "roll" monster attacks/damage via MapTools (I kept hitting my elbow on the edge of the table where my laptop was after I rolled dice).

I'm also going to see if one of the other players can bring a Windows laptop with them and run that as the Player Client.

[trevor]

Cool, glad to hear you had a successful event