So after my recently recorded interview with Anthony of Slash and Cast fame, it has come to my attention that there are these things called "blogs" and I am in need of one. I've held out mostly because I never really thought I have that much to say, let alone anyone that really wants to listen. I read blogs by people, like famous people or writers, that have all these ideas and people find them interesting or can relate to them. But I often wonder, "Is it because they're famous that people relate to them or is it because what they say really resonates?" Maybe both, and that's probably why I've never gone out on that limb because I am neither famous nor have ideas that resonate in any particular timbre.
If you're still reading this, I won't bore you with any more self-pity. It's all self-aggrandizing propaganda from here on out ;-)
I don't know if I'm going to dedicate this blog to any specific theme, but for today I suppose I'll touch on something from the interview I did with Anthony. For anyone that doesn't subscribe to Slash and Cast, we talked about our Combat Cast group that records a weekly Dungeons and Dragons campaign podcast. We are using a free tool that many are familiar with called Maptools and we've spruced things up with the use of macros to really bring the game to life via the Internet.
All the macros that were created for our game by myself and the DM, Tim, are pretty much based on the information found in this Google document we came across. Tons of information on functions and formatting in there. The one thing, besides all the automated roll functions, is the part where the author first sets up a sample damage macro:
So when I first saw this, it was painfully apparent that it looks very similar to the power cards that the D&D Character Builder creates. The obvious step was to then play around with the HTML and snag all the information from our character sheets and eventually we wind up with this:
This is from one of my rough draft attempts. Tim and I have since modified these to include logic checks for critical hits and misses, as well as accounting for blast and burst attacks to roll multiple attacks with single damage roll for all targets. There are also powers that don't incorporate any rolls and so I added random flavor quotes for the characters to say based on a dice roll. Some of them are serious, while most are just silly and fun:
There are plenty of other items we created. Macros for setting up initiative order, healing and damage macros that set bloodied and death states for both PCs and monsters, ability and skill checks, saving throws, etc. Pretty much anything there is a die roll for at your gaming table, we tried to create a macro equivalent to facilitate our Maptools sessions. Our latest session was the first one with all these upgraded macros in action and I think it sped things up quite a bit during the combat encounter portion. Long pauses are down to a minimum since we don't have to manually type in our rolls and mods, so hopefully listening to our podcast is a bit more enjoyable. The power card macros also offer quick access to details if there is a question about a particular effect, no more flipping through the Player's Handbook or switching over to an iplay4e character sheet window. You can see what our window panels look like below:
We're no doubt not the first to do this, I am almost certain of that, and there is a large community of Maptools users that make some insane campaigns and macros for them. So if you are at all interested in using this tool and all the initially insane number of options available to you, head over to the Maptools site and check out the forums.
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