4e: Maptool, The Macro Template, And You!

This is mostly for my 4e group, but hopefully anyone new to using Veggiesama's campaign template will find this helpful.

As we have (almost) solved the dark mystery of Jorden and progressed to level 2, this is a good time to spice up the maptool system, using Veggiesama's campaign template to give our characters a little more flair and make the experience more complete and user-friendly.

THINGS YOU WILL NEED:

• Maptool version 1.3.55 (found here - we're using an older version in our game, so everyone will have to download this new version)
• TokenTool (found here)
• Veggiesama's campaign template (found here - that's a direct download link)
• Your complete character sheet

Download and unzip Maptool. When you open the folder, here's what you'll see:



Click on 'MapToolLauncher'. That brings up a window that looks like this:



Max Mem is the maximum amount of memory your computer will allocate to Maptool. I have 2 gigs, so I feel comfortable setting that value to 512 or 768 to ensure that I don't lag or chug once I get in-game. Min Mem is something that you can leave alone. Stack Size is very important, you want to set that to 4. If you run into stack overflow errors in-game when you try to run macros, setting it to 6 or 8 may even be necessary. We'll leave it at 4 for now. Click 'OK'.

You'll see a blank field. This isn't what we want at all! Go to 'File' and select 'Open Campaign', then navigate to the location of the Veg2.1_Framework.cmpgn that you downloaded earlier. Click 'Open'.



Note: your bars will probably be different from the ones in this screenshot. PCs generally only need Selection, Chat, and Initiative, but that's up to you.

Ahhhh, that's better. You'll notice a few things immediately: most importantly, the template for the NPC / Monster on the top left, and the template for the Player Character on the top right. On the bottom, we have a sample NPC, and a sample PC. We can ignore those.

Click on and mouse over the Player Character token, and you'll see this:

Pretty swanky. On the mouseover at the bottom left, it displays HP, Defenses, Passive Insight and perception, and other facts about that character. We'll set those up in a second. On the right, you'll see a list of powers and other macros that apply to the character. This is where you'll see all of the things you can do in combat, as well as all of the commands you'll use to set up this particular character. Before we do anything else, do a ctrl+c and a ctrl+v to make a copy of the token somewhere else on the map. Then, click on 'Character sheet'.


This is where we're going to put in the information about our character. Mine is a 1st-level Warforged Bard named Clarkson, and I have the information all ready to go, so let's do that.


That's better. I do the same thing for my defenses, taking special care to note the Armor and Shield bonuses right at the top, and only adding my Class and Enhancement bonuses for Will Defense: Warforged Mind is +1, and Bards get another +1.


I do the same thing again for my skills - DO NOT add your ability modifiers. The only thing you add are +5 for training, and any feat or class bonuses. As a Bard, Clarkson gets +1 to all untrained skill checks, so that goes in there. Armor Check Penalty is calculated automatically down at the bottom, so don't include that either.

And It's Surely To Their Credit

The Senate passed a bill today, the main provision of which prevents credit card companies from raising interest rates unless the payments are more than 60 days late. After that, the rate must be returned to the original rate if the holder pays on time for six months. The industry has been spiraling out of control for years now, and the recent economic troubles have only seen a marked increase in interest rates for cardholders - sometimes with no late payments or warning at all. Although the bill is not as gutsy or effective as the earlier-rejected 15% cap on interest rates, it's a start.

Over the past week or two, I've been working on signing a new lease for a condo on the south side of town. Inevitably, a discussion ensued regarding my credit - specifically, my lack thereof. Although it wasn't a problem for this lease in particular, I've run into the issue before with leasing agencies and T-mobile. I simply don't have any.

When I was at school back in Virginia, I remember clearly walking into the student center on my first day of orientation to find the room filled back-to-back with banks pushing credit cards. My father, grinning a bit wryly, warned me to steer clear. I had known already that I didn't really want to fall into that trap - there were plenty of warnings from parents, family members, and panels at CNU's orientation that railed against getting deep into debt this early in my life, so I did what I thought to be the responsible thing, and eschewed it completely.

The real world proved to be a little more complicated.

This is a terrible time for anyone to be in debt, and I'm still extremely reluctant to get a credit card, especially because the status of my job is up in the air. Nobody in my office is really sure where we're going to be in a month or two, and the company for which I work has been hinting at the possibility of layoffs, which has everyone feeling a little morose. I'm in no immediate danger, but the future is uncertain.

Being only 21, I haven't really had to worry about my credit rating. My car is in excellent working order, I'm able to get a cell phone plan, and I'm certainly not buying a house any time soon, but I know that at some point in the future - perhaps soon - the time will come for me to Become An Adult and drive myself into debt in one form or another. It's more or less an inevitability, and the prospect of it worries me.

Am I crippling my future prospects by staying out of the game for as long as I can? And if so, what's to be done about it?

Little Things

This past week has been a whirlwind of antihistamines, sinus infections, and fevered hallucinations. This happens two or three times a year for me - for whatever reason, the changing of the seasons brings on allergies, which inevitably turn into a nasty sinus infection. Every time. Without fail. It's a real pain in the ass. If my language is stilted, it's because I'm still swaying back and forth, posting through a haze of acetaminophen and menthol cough drops.

So while I've been doped up on NyQuil, I've had plenty of time to peruse the internet, and possibly due to my current state, some things have taken hold of my addled mind more than others. Here are a few of those things.

1. Remember how Vince Wilson (the ShamWOW guy who had his tongue bit out by a hooker) is basically the Scout from TF2? Well, he's just been topped. Unbeknownst to all of us, Billy Mays has been moonlighting as the Heavy:


Simply incredible.

2. More TF2 stuff: Meet The Spy. Yes. That's about all that needs to be said.


3. This particular video brings out the nerdish fanboy residing deep (or not-so-deep) within the inner recesses of my mind. Edgar Wright has been keeping a video blog of the Scott Pilgrim vs The World shooting, and apparently it's going pretty well. This particular video even has Brian Lee O'Malley in it! I'm one of those guys who watches the director and cast commentary on movies over and over again, so to say that I've been following these obsessively would probably be an understatement.



I'm really, really excited about the Scott Pilgrim movie, because I am an unabashed, retarded fan of Scott Pilgrim. I've never been too big on traditional comics. I like superhero stuff, but the continuity has always been too dense for me to jump in and start reading (plus, comics are expensive as heck). It is at times incoherent, at times ridiculous, and at times infuriating. But despite that, I adore it, primarily for the feel of it - the raw energy that the comic exudes. It blends real life and relationships with ridiculous video game fights and the occasional tiny breaking of the fourth wall. It all combines to form a really compelling universe that I would like to see explored further.

I've been in the process of writing a comic for a while - and by process, I generally refer to the banging of my creative tendencies against a brick wall until blood comes out. That blood is then exposed to a complicated milling process, a dark nightmare machine that bellows smoke and failed dreams. The end result is a delicious powder not unlike cornmeal. My point is that if I can capture the feeling of Scott Pilgrim without direct plagiarism, I would be really proud of the result.

I may post some of it later. The tricky part is going to be finding someone to draw it. I can't draw a straight line with a ruler.

Sundries

Just doing a little tweaking with the blog template - added stuff for my twitter and my last.fm station (thanks for the reminder, Gene). That should be it - things are cluttered enough as it is, and I don't want to bog down the page too much.

Monday, Monday

(Daa daaaaaa, daaa daa-daa daaa)

Since I started playing in Joe's 4e game, I haven't been able to shake the notion that that whole setting would make an excellent comic. D&D comics have been attempted before with varying degrees of success, Goblins being perhaps the most prominent offering, but that particular comic has... well. Art issues. I have been known to enjoy tea in the past, and suffice it to say, Goblins is not my cup of it.

The whole notion of a shared storytelling experience vis a vis the Dungeon Master is a concept that has an incredible amount of potential. Players have been participating in this experience for years, and if there wasn't meat there, they wouldn't return to the table. Much of the potential fun, of course, lies in the "table experience" - a mediocre story is often overshadowed by the fact that everyone is having a great time simply playing the game - but I have played with DMs who create stories that could hold their weight when compared to any of the mainstream fiction writers, given a little narrative tweaking.

Comics, particularly webcomics, have seen something of a renaissance in the past few years, and although it can take some effort to sort the wheat from the chaff, we've seen some incredible stories take shape - Spike's Templar, AZ (occasionally NWS) and Tom Siddell's Gunnerkrigg Court spring immediately to mind - if you aren't reading those comics, you really should be. The power of the comic lies, in my mind, in the ability to craft every part of the narrative, to show the reader exactly what you want them to see. It subverts the imagination on occasion, yes, but it also allows an author complete control over their work in a way that mere text does not.

What I would love to see is a confluence of those two concepts. Incredible stories are being played out weekly at game tables the world over, and if someone with enough artistic ability, narrative skill, and an ear for dialogue were to try their hand at translating these stories into an appreciable medium, the resulting work would be quite a thing to behold.