So, after almost 2 decades I decided to 0lay DND again. Since I have been and always will be forever DM, I’ve been reading up.
I am very charmed about the idea of foundry (that I have a liscence to (what can I say, I’m impulsive)), but have no experience with.
So: DM’s and players that play locally: how do you play?
Do you do oldstyle pen and paper? Printed maps? 3d printed? Foundry for battle and the rest theatre of the mind? Weird combos?
Tell me and inspire me to navigate my fresh crew and myself through this new and perilous world.
Edit: did NOT expect so many reactions so fast here, loving it.
For dungeons, I do pre-drawn maps on grid paper, glued to cardboard, cut into tiles, per room, that I can place down as my players explore. I think having something like that makes the game more exciting and dramatic. It also lets me build more complex puzzles. My last map had minecart tracks all throughout that the players needed to use to move a piece of mining equipment to a certain spot to unlock a secret area. If I hadn’t had it prepared in advance, describing it specifically, or drawing it on a whiteboard, would have made it too obvious, I think.
For more open stuff though, like exploring a large aboveground region, or minor standalone encounters, I think theatre of the mind works well, and saves prep time, which is important. For games that rely more on the battle map, like PTU, which is what I actually GM, something like a dry erase board with a grid works well in these cases.
Love how you made an analog fog of war.
Thanks! I prefer it to just covering the map with sheets of paper, because it doesn’t give an indication of which way the dungeon goes or how big it is. It also makes it easy to transport the whole dungeon if I need to, because all the pieces can just go in a folder