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In the next D&D session–which is on Sunday–I’m going to try a couple of new things.
The first thing I’m going to try is a new system of tracking initiative and conditions. I’ve heard about this on other blogs (namely Sly Flourish, Critical Hits, and Newbie DM), and I figured I’d give it a try. What I’ve been using is a big whiteboard with small, dry-erase magnets representing combatants. The problem with this is that it’s big and unwieldy (without an easel, at least), and doesn’t really make condition tracking any easier. So, I went ahead and printed out a bunch of folding cards representing combatants, which I will hang over my DM screen in initiative order. On my side, there’s relevant information such as passive Insight and Perception scores (for the PCs) and defenses and resistances (for the monsters), while on the PCs’ side are portraits representing each combatant. To track conditions, I’ve got smaller folding strips with the condition names on them. When a combatant is saddled with a condition, I grab the strip for that condition and pop it on top of his initiative card. We’ll see how it works in practice, but I’m optimistic.
The second thing I’m doing is trying to make terrain matter more. I really like the idea for terrain powers presented in the DMG2, but I’ve been at a loss as to how to get the PCs to actually use them. Then it hit me: they have cards representing all of their own powers and items and such; why not make cards representing available terrain powers so that they know exactly what effect they’re going to produce. This way, they can make a more informed decision as to whether to use the terrain power or one of their own. I’ll let you know how that goes, too.
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