Monster Vault

Wizards of the Coast seems to be on a box set kick lately, as the Essentials tiles, the Starter Kit, Monster Vault, and DM’s Kit are all packaged in boxes.  That’s not a bad thing, as I’m a huge fan of D&D boxed sets.  The Monster Vault boxed set contains the following:

Monster Vault book – a 6×9, 320 page digest containing information on all the monsters in the book.  There are 63 monsters in the book, along with 9 animals.  All of these, of course, contain multiple variants and level ranges for each creature, leading to a wide assortment of enemies to throw at an adventuring party.  Let’s break down the level ranges of the creatures included:  There are 175 Heroic Tier creatures, 117 creatures for the Paragon Tier, and 12 in the Epic, with the highest being of level 27.

The list of included monsters

As you can see, there are  a very small amount of offerings for DM’s running Epic Tier games.  Why this decision was taken, I’m not sure, but I can speculate and assume that they concentrated on the more iconic creatures in the D&D universe.  There are tons of orcs, beholders, giants, titans, and dragons to keep a party busy for a long time.

The Monster Vault book. Watch out for the Owlbear!

Now, much has been said about the revisions that this book has made to solos and they way they play at the table, and yes, they have changed dramatically.  Now, thankfully solos aren’t creatures that will sit there and take a beating from parties that stun and daze them.  They have abilities to shake those conditions off and be as deadly as the equivalent of 5 creatures are really supposed to be.  Good change, and one that many DM’s have been asking for a long time.

The other thing worth noting here is the amount of fluff that the monsters get.  Gone are the DC checks for character knowledge, and gone are also the encounter groups.  Now the DM gets an almost encyclopedic entry of the creature, and I guess it’s up to each of us to determine how much the player characters know about a creature.  There are a lot of story elements to these creatures, and there is plenty of stuff that the players can, and cannot know.  I wish there was a bit of an instruction about how much and what to divulge to players that may ask “what do we know?”, but the DM’s judgment will be the key here.  In a way, it’s something I’ve been asking for in conversations with other players regarding putting some power back in the DM’s hand, instead of there being a mechanical (rules) way to solve a problem, so I see it as a good thing.

This book will replace my Monster Manual.  Sigh… another book that will never see the light of day again.

Another great thing about this book, and one that I hope the Monster Builder (DDI) adopts is the picture of the monster embedded unto the stat block.  In fact, the picture corresponds to the token of the creature included in the Monster Vault.  Did someone say tokens?  Yes I did.

Every stat block has a token image associated with it.

Token Sheets - Did you know that I love tokens?  I have loved tokens since before it was fashionable to love tokens.  I’ve loved double sided, bloody on the opposite side tokens since before it was the kewl thing to suddenly love. But we’re not here to talk about that, we’re here to talk about the included tokens in this box.  And there are a lot!

There are ten sheets of tokens, only labeled with a number on the side so you can choose to have them represent whatever you want.  The tokens are made of cardboard, and coated with a nice gloss that makes them seem very durable.  The sizes range from medium (1″) to huge (3″), and they also include five rings that you can place large creature tokens in to make it a huge sized creature.  it is a neat idea, and allows a greater flexibility of the large tokens.

One thing I found completely unnecessary was the inclusion of black tokens simply labeled “minion”.  I’m not sure, but I gather that there are several DM’s out there who would rather let their party discover that they are fighting minions in a more organic way than having a token spell it out, but that’s just me.  I could have done without that.  Give me environmental elements instead, like maybe fire tokens, or ice ones.

Two pages of tokens.

Now you might be wondering what the best way to store all these tokens is, and I have a solution that I use here at home.  I went on Ebay and purchased coin collector tubes, they are made of plastic, and they are perfect for medium sized tokens.  Check this video out, sorry it’s a little blurry:

But what good are tokens if you don’t have an adventure to run them with?  Well, the Monster Vault includes one, along with a double sided battlemap.

Cairn of the Winter King- The adventure is set in the town of Fallcrest, a location that most 4e players should be familiar with by now.  It involves the party having to stop the threat of endless winter plaguing the land, and it is mostly a dungeon crawl, but it is not a bad or boring one.  In fact, if you are the type of DM that enjoys hamming it up, this adventure may be right up your alley, as it has a few moments of npc interactions that will require that the DM take up several different personalities and voices.  It really seems like a neat adventure in the low to mid heroic tier range, and I plan to run it sooner rather than later.

The accompanying battlemap is no big deal, it has a dungeon on one side, and a village coated in snow on the other.  To me the map looks like a slightly modified reprint of the map that came with the Drizzt and the white dragon miniatures set.

So the question is, should you drop 30 bucks on what is in essence a retconned set of monster manuals and a buttload of  tokens?  My answer is yes.  The tokens and the redone solos are a great addition, but the inclusion of story elements and an adventure seal the deal for me.  I do recommend the Monster Vault, even if you are a DDI subscriber like me.

Dungeon Tiles Master Set:  The City

I’m a little conflicted about how I feel about this set.  One the one hand, I’m really glad we just weren’t sold a bunch of reprints of previous sets, and are getting mostly original artwork; having said that, I think the set is missing a bit of “the city” that the box set claims to be.  I think perhaps I would have liked a bit more rooftop tiles and that sort of thing.  Lets take a look at what’s inside.

As with The Dungeon Master Set, these tiles also come in a box that double as tiles as well.  It is on this box in fact, that we get the only rooftops of the set.

Roofs, each set separated by an alley.

Now look at the edge of the box… why are there dungeon walls there, and columns?  Couldn’t they have drawn out the sides of buildings or something. It would have been odd, given the 2d nature of the tiles, but perhaps something closer to the images on the tiles would have been better.  Those dungeon columns are doing nothing for me.  And I would have gone with a street, rather than an alley in at least one of the boxes.

So rather than describe each tile, I’ll just show you a group picture of both sides…

Sewers and building interiors...

Water, docks, and streets...

So while, yeah, there are cool tiles in this set, and certainly docks and sewers count as city stuff, I still would have liked more rooftops and that sort of thing to create those stealthy and shadowy types of encounters with.  And WOTC, if you are going to give use water tiles, stop being stingy and give us ships already.  And another thing, unfurnished buildings are not my thing.

Give me interesting locales, not empty shells.

So… Is it worth your $19.99?  Only you can decide that.  I find that I will still need to snag a copy of the now out of print “Streets of Shadows” set to fill my needs, but you may not.  I like the set, but I would have liked a bit more.

Dungeon Master’s Kit

Now we get to the product that may interest most readers of this blog, The Dungeon Master’s Kit.  And my verdict?  If you are an experienced DM, this is only worth getting for the included adventure and maps, the updated DM screen (flimsier than the original 4e one), and the tokens.

The DMing book included is mostly reprinted material from other Essentials products, and if you are an experienced 4e DM, there’s little for you here.  If you aren’t, and own the Rules Compendium and the Heroes of… books, you’re likely to see much of the same material.

So lets look at the other stuff that’s included…  First the tokens…  You get three sheets of tokens (one of them is all for PC’s), made of the same nice and glossy material that the Monster Vault ones are made out of.  You also get horse tokens and some pit trap tokens.

DM's Kit tokens.

The Dungeon Master Screen is made of a less sturdy material than the original 4e screen, features the same artwork, and updated info.  I prefer the sturdiness of my original screen to be honest, and some scanning and pasting over my original one may be in order.  This thing looks like a blast of the AC would knock it over.  I don’t like it too much.

Now the adventure, “Reavers of Harkenwold”.  The adventure is split into two 32 page books.  Why that is, I don’t know. Is it cheaper to print two 32 page books than one 64 page one?  Perhaps. I can’t say.  The adventure encompasses levels 2-4, and places the adventurers in the roles of rebels against an oppressive mercenary force that has taken over the land.

It’s worth noting that the majority of the encounter maps are included in the two fold out maps packaged in the box.  A welcome addition and a handy thing for a newbie DM who may be running this for his or her party.  And these maps are pretty reusable too, with nice artwork of farms and house interiors.

One side of the poster maps...

...and the other side.

So yeah, the adventure looks pretty damn good from an experienced DM’s viewpoint.  There seems to be plenty of roleplay, decision making, and non linear fun to make it a wonderfully different experience from other published adventures in the past.

So again, is it worth your hard earned $39.99?  The DM’ing stuff in the book is a bunch of reprinted information.  Too much for my tastes.  So if you don’t need the book, you have to ask yourself if 3 sheets of tokens, an updated DM screen and 64 pages of adventure with a pair of poster maps is worth the money.  Your call.

So now I own every Essentials product except the upcoming Heroes book and the Wilderness tiles.  Do I like the line?  Yes, I do.  I had a chance to run an all Essentials game the other day and it is 4e, no more, no less.  This talk of 4.5 is silly, plain and simple.  One thing that stands out to me though is that the line seems to live in a separate universe from 4e, and the books are written as though nothing else has come before them.  I find that a little weird and sad.  It gives me the impression that WOTC would like to pretend that those early books like the PHB1 and MM1 never happened.  Perhaps I’m wrong, but that’s the impression I get.

I hope this review helps you out in making a decision about what to do with your cash.

You could also write names in the spaces, instead of using tokens, but with readying actions, and delaying, all that erasing could be a nuisance. Tokens are easily slid and placed on the appropriate numbered square and you are good to go. Just make tokens using my tutorial and you are set!

This will only work for Heroic and early Paragon, because rolls above 30 will occur beyond that point in your game, although I guess a modified version of this could be made if needed. I made this primarily for those folks that enjoy a full analog experience at the table, as initiative trackers for laptops are easily available, but some folks don’t enjoy using them.

You can grab the PDF here, print as-is, do not adjust scaling. It is two pages you will tape together.

I wish I would have thought of these tokens earlier in the week, so I would have been able to use them in the game.  Basically, they’re meant to be placed on those squares that are on fire.  They are easy to move around if the fire spreads, or if the skeletons use their power again somewhere else.

Here you go, hope someone finds them useful.  Maybe some ice ones will come in handy, or fog, or spider webs, or… nah, I’ll just stop.

Fire! Fire! Fire!

A token with a +1 bonus may encourage players to play faster.

It can be faster decision making during battles or clever roleplaying.  Whatever.  Quicker action during combat?  You may get a +1 or +2 bonus!  I think it’ll encourage people to play faster, as a bonus usable anywhere at anytime can really make a difference.

The +2 I  plan to hold it until someone does something that really calls for it.  It’s not going to be handed out too often.  As far as the mechanics go, it’ll be like an interrupt, added to any roll in the game they want.  Rolled a 9 on an important saving throw?  “Wait!  I’ve got my bonus token!”   They will not stack though, or carry over from session to session.

Download the +1 tokens and use them in your campaign!

These tokens were made using my tutorial.    Lets see how it goes.  What do you all think?

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Plot hook of the day:  A river next to an elvish settlement has dried up, with no explanation.  Elora, a female elf druid  had started to investigate, but she has since dissapeared.  A teleportation circle has mysteriously appeared close to the river, but nobody dares step unto it.  The elves need your help!  Where did Elora go, and what happened to the river?

A quick dwarf I drew up for this post...

It’s a flash based application that starts you off with a generic “empty” pose, and you go filling it with layers of clothing, eyes, hair, beards, weapons, colors… everything.  They’ve added a bunch of stuff to it, like new weapons, armors, and companions, and it’s perfect for fantasy, sci-fi, modern, and comic book hero character portraits.  The only drawback with the tool is that you have to do a print screen to capture it and print it out.  So you have to import it into a graphics program of some sort.  So why are you reading this?  Go create your character portrait now at :

http://www.ugo.com/channels/comics/heromachine2/heroMachine2.asp

Oh…  they are perfect for use with the tokens from my tutorial! 

—

Bonus plot hook of the day:  A benevolent old dragon’s farts are causing the cattle around town to drop like flies.  He needs a remedy for his gas, found in a plant used by wyverns to build their nests.  “It only grows up there in the nearby mountains” you’re told.  Go find it and stop these nasty dragon farts!

Taking a map from the Wizard’s gallery, and converting it to a 1″ playable map isn’t very difficult, and it looks better than some Dry-Erase markers a on a grid…  although this may not be the best thing for every encounter… maybe just for the big fight at the end of the night or something…  Take a look…

Nice, right? That’s not going to be the map I’ll use in the examples, but it doesn’t matter. If you want to do it along with the tutorial, the map I’ll be using comes from the Wizards gallery for Dungeon Magazine Issue 160.

Now, like the counters and tokens tutorial, I asume you are working with Photoshop for your resizing. You can use GIMP instead of Photoshop, but I do not know how to use it.

Let’s go then. you can click on the pictures to make them bigger.

1. Find, download, and open your map in Photoshop.

2. With the Rectangular Marquee Tool, making sure you make it a fixed aspect ratio, and outline along the lines of one of the squares on the grid. Then go to Window–>Info and make the “info” box appear.

3. You see the W and the H on the lower right of the “info” box? That’s the width and height of that square you selected with the Marquee Tool. It should be a decimal, because if it were a whole number, it would be that in inches. So let’s say it is .431 for width and height. That’s how big that square is. .43 of an inch wide. Almost half an inch. But we want to make that square a full inch.

4. Open your calculator in windows. You are going to divide 1 by the  decimal. So in my case it will be 1 divided by .431

5. The answer is 2.32 so that’s what I’m going to use to resize the map. Go to Image–>Image Size. See the width and height there in pixels? I multiply the width listed there by 2.32, and that’s my new number. 1306. Enter that into the Width box. Make sure you selected the option to maintain proportions, and it’ll enter the height automatically. You could enter either one really,  it doesn’t matter.

6. The map is resized. Go back to the marquee tool and select a square. Look at the info box. The height and the width should be about an inch. Maybe less, like .998 or more, like 1.01. It doesn’t really matter at that point.  Now just save it as a jpg and that’s it!

You can print your scaled map in Microsoft Excel.   Start a new book, and import a picture from file. When you import it, you can print it out, and Excel will automatically tile it accross multiple pages.

You can also download a program called Posterazor and play around with that, it makes posters out of your images.  It’ll print at scale over multiple pages as well.

That’s it, pretty simple really.   Just match up your papers and tape them. Use cardstock for best results, and use it at the table with your tokens or minis.

That’s it! Try it and let me know how it goes!

If you would like to support NewbieDM.com, perhaps you’d consider visiting Amazon.com for your next rpg related purchase. Check out the following products:

Chessex Role Playing Play Mat: Battlemat Double-Sided Reversible Mat for RPGs and Miniature Figure Games (26 in x 23 1/2 in) Squares/Hexes

Dungeon Tiles Master Set – The City: An Essential Dungeons & Dragons Accessory (4th Edition D&D)

The Witchlight Fens – Dungeon Tiles: A 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons Accessory (4th Edition D&D)

Thank You!

I’m going to make my first attempt at making a tutorial here, and try to show you how I make my D&D tokens.  It’s not as simple as cutting out little papers or cardstock, I like to make them durable and permanent.

Presenting…. NewbieDM’s Kick Ass Token Makin’ Tutorial!!!

Okay, this tutorial assumes a few things…

1. That you own a copy of, and have some experience using Photoshop.  If not download Gimp, an open source equivalent.
2. That you also own a copy of the TokenTool software, a free token making utility.
3. That you have 1″ metal washers.  A bag of 8 costs $1.00 at Home Depot.
4. That you own a 1″ hole punch.  They are available at craft stores, or Ek Success PSPNP13 1-Inch Paper Shapers Circle Nesting Punchhere.
5. That you have an Elmer’s Glue Extra Strength Glue Stick.  I bought it at Office Depot.

If you plan to use Gimp, try to follow along.  I don’t know Gimp at all, I’ve never used it.  Also, if you do use Photoshop, keep in mind that I am not an expert on it.  I know just enough to do what I have to do and that’s it.  I may be doing something that you know can be done differently and faster, then by all means do it.

Okay, the tutorial then.

Open Tokentool and drag a picture unto it.  I find pictures on the web, or on pdf’s.  The higher the resolution, the better.  I searched for a hi-res picture of Gandalf on Google.

Make your width and height 256, and select a frame/border for the token.  Once you do that, you can adjust the zoom level and in the upper right corner, you’ll see what the final token looks like.

Open photoshop, and grab the token image on the top right of Tokentool, and drag it unto photshop, where it will open as a .png file called .token.drag.  Then go ahead and create a new CMYK document. From what I understand CMYK will match what color is on the screen to the paper better than RGB.  Right, sounds like Chinese, I know.  Anyways, I print on 8×11 photopaper, so that’s the size I pick, “Letter”.

It is very important that your resolution matches the size of the token height/width you picked in Tokentool.  If you picked 256 then your photoshop resolution has to match.  I usually go with 200, don’t ask me why… As long as the resolution on Tokentool matches the resolution of Photoshop, you’ll be fine.

Once your new document is created, go ahead and drag the .token.drag. file unto it.  You’ll see that it keeps its 1″ size, and I’m assuming you have the ruler visible in photoshop.  If not, go to View>Rulers to make it visible.  Position the token on the document at about 1″ off the top and the left margin, to allow for printing margins.  And now, we will duplicate it, so the token has two sides, as we’ll make the flip side of the token it’s “bloodied” equivalent.  Duplicating it is easy:

Hold down the ALT key, as you grab it with the select tool, and drag it to the side.  You’ll actually create and drag a duplicate.  It’s that simple.  That duplicate will become layer 2 on your document.  Position it where you want it.

So now that you have two versions of Gandalf there, we need to bloody him up.  I flip the tokens at the table when a PC or monster is bloodied.  Here is a full size .png of the blood file.  Save it, and open it in Photoshop.

Okay, so now you’ve got the document with the 2 Gandalf’s, the blood, and the original token.drag. of Gandalf all open.  You can go ahead and close token.drag.  No need to save it either.

Go ahead and grab the blood, and drag it over the second Gandalf over to the main document.  Photoshop will create a new layer, and have it highlighted on the layers box.  The blood should be a little larger than the token, so we have to adjust the size.  (A note on this:  You don’t really need to adjust the size of the blood if you don’t want to, when you punch the token out with the 1″ hole punch it won’t really make a difference.  I resize it in order to keep the blood nicely within the frame I selected in Tokentool.)  Go to EDIT>TRANSFORM>SCALE and there it will let you adjust the blood size.  Hit the select tool and it will ask you to confirm the transformation.

Okay, now the blood seems to be a little too dark, and Gandalf is barely visible.  Let’s make the blood more transparent.  Right click Layer 3, the blood layer, and go to “Blending Options.”  Once that window open up, find the slider that says “Fill Opacity” and drag it to about 60.  That should look better.  See this image below:

See the difference?  Next, let’s go ahead and label Gandalf by name.  With minis, it is hard to keep track of what mini is what, and a fight with 10 enemies can get confusing for a DM trying to keep track of what mini represents what guy on the battle map.  Not with tokens though.  Just add text and numbers, and it’s very simple to run fast paced combat.  Goblin 1, Goblin 2, etc…

Okay, click on the text tool, and write ”Gandalf” over on the left token.  Find a font that’s easy to read, as these tokens are only 1″.  If you want, you can curve the text to match the curve of the token.  When you type, a T with a curve button will be available on the top bar of photoshop.  That allows you to select a curve for your text.  You select the text, click that  “T” button and pick a type of slant or curve.  Position and size the text so it fits over your token.

Then just like we did earlier with Gandalf, grab it with the select tool while holding ALT, and duplicate it as we drag it over to bloody Gandalf.  Notice the text is a different color in the second pic, and it has an outline?  You can select your text color while you have the text tool active, and the outline is called a stroke.  You would right click your text on the “layers” window and pick Blending Options, just like  we did for the blood transparency.  Pick the checkbox at the bottom that says “Stroke”, and select a color.  It defaults to red, I usually do white text with black stroke.  Pick a stroke width, I usually go with 1.

Now, you’re not going to waste an entire paper on two tokens, so repeat the steps above and fill the paper with monsters, labeling them as you go.  Keep track of your layers, as they can get confusing.  Rename them in the layer window as you work and merge down layers you have finished.  It’s very easy for the blood layer to sometimes end up over the text layer, and you don’t want that, you want the text always on top.

This thing with the layers can be the most confusing part.  If you are not too familiar with photoshop go and  find a basic tutorial to help you with layers.

You like my Homer Simpson handwriting?  So does my wife.  Okay, so you now have a document full of tokens… Let’s get them to the game table!  Print them out at the highest quality your printer allows, using the best paper.  I use glossy photo paper.  It simply looks the best.

Once it prints out, check it out.  You should have a 1″ pair of Gandalf tokens.  Now it’s time to use your supplies.  Use your 1″ hole punch to punch these suckers out, using the window on the punch to align them perfectly.  You may need to cut them into strips from the printout, so they can fit in the hole punch.

Next, apply your glue directly unto the metal washer and stick and stick Gandalf on there.  Then just flip him over and apply more glue, and stick the bloody Gandalf on the other side, and  there’s your token!

If you decide to use these, you’ll see that it leads to faster game play.  Everyone knows who’s who at the table, monsters have numbers to make running them simpler, and players can custom design their own look.  I gave my friend elf ears in photoshop and he uses his own picture.

One last thing.  When I first started making these, I made the mistake of making minions like this as well.  Minions never get bloody though, so I was wasting time and ink.  What I do with minions is diferent.  I print them out on cardstock, and stick them on 1″ round wooden disks.  Michael’s Craft store has a bag of 52 alphabet circles for $2.  They also come with an adhesive built in.  Just peel the backing and stick your monster. They work perfectly for minions, since it’s possible to have so many of them at the table.  They are a lot lighter than metal washers as well…

Lara’s Wood Painted Package Sticker Alphabet Circle (Pack of 6)

Well, that’s it.  Wow, that was long… If there is anything you don’t understand, leave me a message and I’ll try to help you out.

If you found this tutorial interesting and useful, perhaps you’d like to purchase your supplies for it using the following Amazon links, and help out the site at the same time:

Ek Success PSPNP13 1-Inch Paper Shapers Circle Nesting Punch

100 count 1″ washers for $9.66

6 pack of glue for $6.49

Lara’s Wood Painted Package Sticker Alphabet Circle (Pack of 6)

1″ Alphabet Circles (6 pack) for $16.14

Let me know if you make the tokens.  I’d love to hear about it, and thanks for reading!

Stumble It!

That’s the reason I made my tokens.