Comments on: Top 9 Dungeon Master Screen Hacks

By: How to Start an RPG Campaign Step 2 – Gather Your Tools « The Homework Never Ends

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 00:34:29 +0000

[...] Resources: Mediocre Tales' custom screen, Campaign Mastery's screen hacks [...]

By: Mazaheri Law

Mazaheri Law — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 04:03:47 +0000

Thanks for this great piece, bookmarked and rss subscribed…

By: Johnn

Johnn — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:08:39 +0000

@Robert: I downloaded GIMP recently and your tricked worked well.

@Projector DM: Thanks, I’ll check their tool out again.

By: Projector DM

Projector DM — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:10:36 +0000

Johnn – try RP Map Tool. I found Photoshop to be too cumbersome for display but RP maptool is great. You can do fog of war very easily and generating maps is no more difficult than in photoshop. http://www.rptools.net/

It’s under active development and the dev team is quite responsive.

By: Robert

Robert — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 20:10:41 +0000

Oh man, don’t give up on this awesome method just yet Johnn!

If you do the typical Gygaxian dungeon crawls that are full of secret paths left and right, then you could create a separate black layer covering each secret area. That way you will never accidentally reveal a secret area, and should the players find it you can erase it’s own layer. Of course you then have to blend these “secret” layers in to match the color of the surrounding area, e.g. everything not a room or a hallway on the dungeon map needs to be black, else the players will see something secret is there when you obviously erase to the borders of another black box.

By: Johnn

Johnn — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 23:45:54 +0000

@Robert. Cool. I tried that trick, but I tended to over-erase, revealing parts I didn’t want to.

By: Robert

Robert — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 18:39:41 +0000

Sorry for the double post, but I just thought I should mention that the free program Paint.NET can do the same thing I mentioned, for those of you who don’t feel like dumping close to $1000 on a piece of software just to effectively do Fog of War for D&D games…

Not to mention that Paint.NET is MUCH smaller and MUCH faster

You can get it here:
http://www.getpaint.net/index.html

By: Robert

Robert — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 16:39:02 +0000

@Johnn – I just use photoshop. I have a black layer over the map, and as they move and get LOS I erase the black layer. Of course I also have the map open in paint on my laptop to make sure I don’t accidentally show them a hidden path…

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 13:21:29 +0000

One additional tip: a lot of people cover their home-made screens with self-adhesive contact plastic. A better choice, available from most hardware stores, is clear or tinted clear benchtop covering – it’s just as self-adhesive and the plastic is much thicker and more resiliant. It also resists folding and bending much more securely.

By: Johnn

Johnn — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 10:51:11 +0000

@Mike – you gotta love Post-Its. They should release edible ones.

@Robert – what software do you use to display maps for the group?

@Sam – Agreed on the controversy. We should do a panel on this topic someday. groan. Sorry, I’ll try to screen my puns better from now on.

@Don – 4 panels? Nice. That beats my Citizen Games 3 panel customisable screen. :)

@Jacob – cool idea!