He's Crafty!

So, I'm supposed to be preparing to launch the third act of my campaign this week, which meand I of course found it necessary to procrastinate and do nothing of the sort this weekend. Rather than prepping for my upcoming session, I launched into a crafting project that I have been itching to undertake for quite some time: I built my own custom GM screen.

During the two and a half years I have been running this game, I have never used a screen. This is partly because I used to run my game from a laptop, which served as a sort of screen in itself, and partly because I run an out-of-print version of the game, making appropriate screens difficult to come across. Well, recently I started looking at custom built screens and finally decided to take the plunge.

Here's what I used:

Materials:

• 3 pieces of foam core scrounged from work (approx 10" x 16" each)
• duct tape
• 12 mylar photo corners
• Elmer's Glue
• 3 binder clips
• Scrap-booking paper with Japanese dragons printed on it

Tools:

• Metal straight edge
• Matte knife
• Cutting mat
• Popsicle stick <-- Perfect for spreading glue
• Junk mail <-- Perfect as a drop cloth when spreading glue

Making the Screen:

1. I laid the foam core down end to end and joined it along the GM- facing side with duct tape.
2. I trimmed the two outside sheets of foam core to 10" x 12" to allow for a better fit on my table
3. I trimmed my scrap-book paper to fit the foam core.
4. I glued the sheets of paper to the foam core backing and used the metal straight edge to burnish it smooth. (I had to do this because the foam core had previously used museum signage on one side.)
5. I measured and marked the desired position for each stat sheet on the GM side of the screen and mounted each sheet with mylar photo corners. This will allow me to easily swap out stat sheets if I play a different system or have need of a special reference at some point.
6. I clipped the three binder clips to the top of the screen, which will allow me to display maps, visual aids or other references for the players.

I am quite pleased with the results of my afternoon's effort. While it may not be as professional looking as a store bought screen, the foam core makes for a much cleaner looking structure than cardboard, and the photo-corner system adds some excellent versatility not available in an off-the-shelf screen.

I am also once again toying with some modifications to my game management technique. There have been quite a few articles floating around lately that discuss ways to run games from index cards, and I just got run over by the bandwagon. During the last adventure I ran, I found myself being forced to choose between flipping back and forth in my notebook if an NPC or monster appeared in more than one encounter, or transcribing the same stat block multiple times. Well, in an effort to solve this particular inefficiency, I created an NPC card template that can be printed on a 4x6 index card and easily moved between encounters when running a game.

So Exhausted, I'll Just Drop My Information Here.

My girlfriend's 8 year-old little brother is staying with us this week during his first trip ever out of Kansas. That kid has so much energy that after just three days, both the GF and I are completely pooped. Going back to work today actually felt a bit like a vacation. So, here's a hodgepodge of fantasy and game-related nuggets.

Last weekend I raided my parents' storage unit and retrieved a great deal of my childhood library. It's hard to describe just how good it felt to put those old books back on my shelf, even the ones I will probably never read again in the absence of children. Having them on my bookshelf is like looking into a window of my reader's past... A documented history of my imagination. I have the first 35 Hardy Boys books in hardcover, which I must have read over the course of a couple years in grade school, because by the time I hit 5th and 6th grade, I had graduated to fantasy series. I recovered my Xanth books by Piers Anthony which gave rise to my first, juvenile world-building project, called "Boink." I got my Shannara novels and my David Eddings books (both the Belgariad and Elenium) all of which informed my current game world. I also retrieved all my paperback Wheel of Time Books. Then, of course, there were the Calvin and Hobbes and Far Side books. I have so much new material to read, but pulling out all the old friends made me itch to do some re-reading. 

When I was a kid, I would occasionally fantasize about having a cluttered wizard's library of my own some day, and recovering those books helped me feel like I am back on track towards that goal.

So, with the above-mentioned little brother in town, tomorrow is going to be a very special game night. My group will be trying out the game, Ticket to Ride, which the owner of our FLGS (Friendly Local Game Store) recommended as easy enough for kids, but still fun for adults. I'm looking forward to trying out a new game and will try to deliver a full report this Friday!

The Architect DM series has a new post up about defining fantasy cultures through their architecture. Bartoneous, the blog's author had strayed from talking about architecture and I'm glad that he has come back around to posting on the subject of his expertise.

Aaand, Campaign Mastery has an interesting series going right now about stocking a DM's mental toolbox. The latest installment is all about encounter planning.