5/07/2015

Work-in-Progress: HackMaster "GM Battlemat"

Work-in-Progress: HackMaster "GM Battlemat"
With the Origins Game Fair a quick month away I realized I have to get some of my....."stuff" together for this big convention. I've been to both Origins and GenCon a couple of times, but it is Origins that brings me back year after year......

Part of it is the city, but I just have more fun at Origins and it feels to me like the convention really wants me to have fun, where GenCon has always felt like a hand in my wallet.

I've organized events at both conventions and the experience on that end is night & day....

...anyway, I'm assuming I might be GMing HackMaster and I have to be prepared for some bigger battles. My home group had a HUGE battle our last session and I tested a possible solution to make things easier for me as a GM. It worked out only "OK", but a major limitation was my design.....I only had about an hour of prep time and a local printer.

Since I have a month, and access to some professional printing, I've decided to take another stab at this "GM Battlemat" that I'm going to use at Origins. The key idea is to cram a lot of combatants stats in a small space, but more importantly, line a counter up so I can quickly & easily scan down a line to see who goes on any given count.

Now this WIP picture is hideous...and it should be at the stage I'm at.

I know it is ugly!

The ugly purple won't be on the finished aide. I use it for contrast when placing elements in Photoshop.

There is room on the left for some vital combat data and the focus is on the count-up. The count-up tracker has some extra data points for HP count and ToP checks. On the right I'll put some quick look-up info so if you do have to open your books in combat you can go right to the correct page.

This thing is designed to print out on 11" x 17" paper at Fed-Ex/Kinkos and get laminated for under $5.

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