If you have a magnetic game field then you have a couple of options for doing walls for your dungeons.

The easiest is simply to use a dry-erase marker and draw in the features that you need for each area of the dungeon.  This is fairly efficient and not a bad way to go at all.  But if you are in the mood for something that adds a bit of dimension to the game without getting too complicated, then you can try walls.

The easiest way to do it is to get some 1” by ¼” wooden strips.  You can find wood used for trim at any hardware store.  They come in nice thin strips of long lengths that can be easily cut down to any size you need.

Next, glue some thin magnetic tape to one edge of the wood.  That’s it.  Really simple, and really effective.  You can build rooms as quickly or even more quickly than you can draw them.

As always, have fun!

Welcome back to Dungeons and Dragons Corner.

You can find Character Sheets Here.

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Leatherworking has always been a bit of a fascination of mine.  I can’t say that I’m the greatest of the great - in fact I’m pretty much an amateur.  It is something that I do as a hobby when I have time, and then mostly to support my other habits of writing and gaming.

I am huge into making props for my games.  So I decided to take a look at a leatherworking guide.  For relatively cheap I discovered that I could in fact get back into leatherworking and begin to put together some extra fancy maps and things.

I’ve talked in the past about aging and preparing paper, but how cool are actual leather handouts.  Nothing can compare with that.  Not to mention doing a bit of custom leatherwork for dice bags and other odds and ends.  Needless to say I am pretty excited!

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Last time I talked about how to make a large dungeon map on standard 8 ½” x 11″ paper.  You can see that article here.  And personally I think it works pretty good.  Sometimes, however, you know that you’ll be re-using a map a lot, or you just want something sturdier.  Here are a few ideas.

• Print it on Card Stock.  You can get card stock in various off-white colors at pretty much any office supply store.  There are several specialty paper stores as well, but the office supply stores usually sell for less, though the quality of paper won’t be as nice.
• Print it on paper and then glue it to cardboard.  This is particularly useful if you are going to build a 3D dungeon.  Tape or glue (I recommend glue in this case) the map to the cardboard.  Now you have a perfect template for building your 3D dungeon, or you can use it as-is.
• Print it on clear plastic sheets.  Depending on your printer and or copy machine resources you can print (black and white generally) to clear overhead projector sheets.  Again these are available in office supply stores, though they can get expensive fast if you are using large maps.  Why would you do this?  Well, if you happen to have an overhead projector it works nicely for overland maps.  However, a more common use would be to apply them to a magnetic game grid..  Slip the map onto the grid and you get the benefit of the magnets as well as a more interesting map.
• You could also glue the paper onto even more sturdy backing, such as plywood or even sheet metal, however that is probably going to the extreme.

If you have access to a laminator then by all means laminate to your heart’s content.  Alternatively you could apply clear contact paper to the map.  

As always, have fun with your game.

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If you visit any Dungeons and Dragons forum, you’ve probably heard of monster cards and power cards, perhaps even magic item cards.  Today I’d like to introduce the Dungeons and Dragons Encounter Card.

This is a handy little device that keeps me from forgetting a key component of an encounter.  Have you ever forgotten some bit of treasure?  Remember a trap only after the second player should have activated it?  Left out a monster?  Scramble to count out minis for your set up?  The encounter card is designed to help avoid those little slip ups.

The encounter card is very simple.  In fact, the term card is used pretty loosely here since I don’t always bother to print it on a 3×5″ card, often I just print them all on a page and then paperclip it to the monster stat cards for that encounter.

Here is the information I usually put on them.

• A list of the monsters that will be involved.
• The total XP award for the encounter.  (If I know ahead of time how many players will be there I may divide it out to an individual award as well).
• The total treasure award, including items for the encounter.  I always write the GP value of any items in this section.

See, pretty simple.  I then paperclip that card together with the monster cards for the encounter as well as any magic item cards for that encounter.

The beauty of the encounter card is that if the PC’s go off in a totally different direction than expected and I have to ditch the dungeon I prepared I don’t have to worry about upsetting the delicate balance of treasure and XP.  If they are slated to battle 2 orcs, and an ogre, well by golly there will be 2 orcs and an ogre, complete with treasure waiting for them wherever they happen to go.

I’ll get more into how to adjust the story later, but once you try it a time or two, you’ll see just how much flexibility this little tool can add to your campaign.

You can find a list of the Keep on the Shadowfell encounters (spoilers) which has the information that would be included on an encounter card.  I have also included a 3×5″ encounter card (Microsoft Word Format) that you can download and customize.

All downloads are available on the download page.

Thanks, and enjoy the game.

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