[dragonraid] Re: Miniatures

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From: "Matthew K. Crandall" <Matman@...>
Date: Tue, 02 Jun 1998 11:24:03 -0400

GrandSpam@... wrote:

> Ok, another question.  Do you guys use the lead miniatures just for the player
> characters, or for NPC's, monster's et?
> I, personally, would _love_ to use miniatures for everything, but I can see
> how that would take a heap of time and money.  Also, I was looking around Ral-
> Partha's site earlier, and discovered that *gasp!* they didn't have fluster
> beasts!  However, just about everything else is easily found or made from
> other models.

Here's an inexpensive and effective idea for those of you who play in a church
facility or who might otherwise have acess to these things:
    -Whiteboard (the bigger the better)
    -Overhead Projector

I draw or print (using a color printer) combat and town maps on overhead projection
sheets or sometimes using a copier, I copy the maps that come with the adventure (any
printshop/copy place can do this for you).  Then I project these onto the whiteboard
(dry-erase) and draw on Lightraiders and NPC's onto the whiteboard.  The effect ends
up looking kind of like a football play (Okay, the "X"'s are the goblins and the
Circle with your characters 1st initial in it is you).  I also have numerious copies
of varying scales of the battle grids (Just different sizes of the square grids - no
numbers) that I then lay ontop of the map should combat break out so that not olny do
I have a map projected on the screen but the battle grid as well.  Then, as combat
porgresses, I change positions by erasing and redrawing the "X"s and "O"s as well as
place damage beside the icons (Example that "X" [Dark Creature, DragonSlave, etc...]
has a -14 beside it meaning it has taken 14 points of damage - I don't include how
much the "X" has *left* but give some indication based on how I describe it, barely
scratched, bleeding freely, barely standing, etc...).

This lets *all* the players have the same idea of where everyone is and what is
happening and it projects it on a big area which has kind of a cool "heads-up
display/on-screen" feel to it.

Well, that's my two cents,
Matt Crandall