My Improved DM Setup

 I've been prepping for the return of the Nappendixia Campaign after a few months on hiatus.  In the interim I've taken some time to sharpen up my DM setup.  I find that in order to sustain my ability to run a long-standing campaign, it needs to feel as low stress and fun as possible.  I have found that having a well-refined and well-practiced DM setup really helps games feel like they flow and are fun for me to run.  I thought I'd give a little behind the scenes and show what I think is an ideal setup for running AD&D online.  I really like using a document cam mainly for showing dice rolls live and to show party marching order.  I have come to really enjoy rolling live dice on cam in games, it's so much faster than rolling with an online die roller, and more organic.  I like to try to create that "at the table" feel despite playing over Discord.  I pull up the cam image on Discord and enlarge the screen size, then click to the General channel which is where the players roll online dice, and we post pics and memes etc.  The camera quality is quite good, though some players play over their phones, so the visual component of the cam is lost on them, however I have several players that play on their PCs or laptops, and they appreciate the camera images quite a lot.

Here's a closeup of the document cam and the dice box I roll in and the felt mat I set up minis for marching order.  I use the dice on the felt mat to track turns and light source duration.  I'm left-handed so it's ideal to have that set up on the left side.  I keep a few homemade DM screens handy too.

Here's a wider shot.  On my main workbench I have my laptop and 2 additional screens, I generally keep one screen open with images I may want to share in the Discord chat, the 2 main screens open to Discord.  I keep a clipboard with that session's notes recorded and rulebooks on hand.  Behind me on a separate workbench I keep the campaign map and have a battlemat set up for larger combats or mass combats.

Here's the document cam set up to show mass combats.  I use my 2mm fantasy/ancients collection for mas combat and mostly 25mm models for marching order and 1:1 combat.  I keep the campaign map behind me off to the side making it accessible when I have to track movement across the game map.  I keep it under plexiglass and use small minis to track movement of different factions/monsters/armies on the map.

Here's the setup showing the wire, it's not ideal, but good enough.  With a little practice I've gotten good at adjusting the arm of the document cam to quickly get the combat framed.

So that's my setup, hope it inspires you to refine your setup or think about better ways to place your materials to ensure a fun, well-run game.

Outdoor Survival- Quick Review After a Few Run-Throughs

 Outdoor Survival- Quick Review After a Few Run-Throughs

I set up the Outdoor Survival and read through the rules and played out a few scenarios.  At a first glance, it’s pretty much a random simulation of how to perish in the wilderness.  There aren't a lot of strategy options, at least in the first few scenarios.  It looks great, the map is amazing and the counters and cards are sharp, of course the main allure of this game is it’s  connection to OD&D which makes it highly sought, but still reasonably findable on Ebay, I believe.  The loss of movement due to lowered food/water levels coupled with a randomized movement mechanic makes it so that your chit very quickly finds itself in difficult terrain with no way out before dying of thirst.  There is also a random encounter optional rule that makes resources sap even quicker statistically.  I certainly would give it a few more go-throughs, and it’s definitely worth owning and showing to other OD&D heads, but without tweaking the rules there’s little chance of completing the scenarios, although I have yet to try scenarios 4 and 5.  It was still fun, the turn sequence is super quick and the games play out (to almost always certain death) quickly.  I did have one chit that got super lucky and never got turned around from random movement who was able to survive Scenario 2.  I have also used this map to run a little OD&D and that was definitely fun and made picking this game up well worth it.  

•  By Boldvay