Troll Lord Games

These are the new heavy card stock low profile screens I am talking about.

Since they have been out a long while, what do you think?

I like them, a lot. Aside from being incredibly sturdy they have had a lot of things on them that have kept me from having to look in the book. I have even used the weather tables!

At first I didn't think I would like it being in two separate parts, but I have even come to like that as well. Largely because of how the Trolls broke down the tables between the two.

So what do you think about them after getting to use them for this long?

I've been using them since I got my hands on them. I like the fact that the CK can look over the screen easily. It was hard before because I have some short people at my table.

~O

I like them, structurally (low profile, two-piece). There's a lot of CKG info on them would be my only gripe. For tables, I really like the heavy-duty portrait screens better (especially for the "liquid combat damage" table ). Otherwise, I think I do prefer the landscape ones better.

EDIT: The landscape ones have the liquid damage, too. But overall the tables are still more useful on the portrait ones, in my humble opinion.

I find that while sturdier, they don't protect me from my players nearly as much; the taller but more wobbly portrait screen would usually absorb the shock of the first few dice or dry erase markers or Cheetos thrown at me, where they now pass harmlessly over the lower screen. I have since built a very large screen out of foam board that seems to do the job of protecting me from my group, and also seems to keep the players from being antagonized by my hideous visage.

I haven't really been able to use the new screens much as we haven't been playing a lot of face-to-face C&C lately, unfortunately. The weather charts may or may not be useful, depending on how you play I guess.

LOL

I like the landscape and portrait screens. One of these days I'll get around to cherrypicking tables from both sets of screens and printing my own inserts for my 3-panel fold out screen.

Aergraith wrote:I find that while sturdier, they don't protect me from my players nearly as much; the taller but more wobbly portrait screen would usually absorb the shock of the first few dice or dry erase markers or Cheetos thrown at me, where they now pass harmlessly over the lower screen. I have since built a very large screen out of foam board that seems to do the job of protecting me from my group, and also seems to keep the players from being antagonized by my hideous visage.

I haven't really been able to use the new screens much as we haven't been playing a lot of face-to-face C&C lately, unfortunately. The weather charts may or may not be useful, depending on how you play I guess.

Haha, yes that is funny!

I can't make any comparisons. I only have the portrait screen (presently out of print). I haven't had any of the ckg screens for my convention sales as of yet. I'm plenty happy with the portrait screen, although I'd like to see it laminated and in one piece. Also, the encumbrance section will have to be updated.

I have the older verticle sceen. I saw and handled the shorter one's at GenCon. I coveted them, but did not purchase. I like the taller profile. But those shorter screens did tickle my fancy. Now I wish I had laid the money on the table.

D'oh!

SR, you should be able to order a landscape screen from the Trolls. As I recall, it's a direct sales item only (apart from some sold at cons). I think it's still listed in the Troll store. However, the portrait screen is not. I'Ve heard it will probably return. If it were to be landscape size, I don't think they could fit all of the info without needing glasses to read it. At my table (the one from The Hall of Justice-Superfriends), I sit on a bar stool. I have no problem seeing over the portrait screen.

I love the form factor, the construction quality and the art. But I found one of them (The one labeled Situational and Adventure) to contain mostly information that is only very rarely needed. Things like "What the weather is like in a tropical savannah in September" just aren't frequently needed pieces of information in m campaign and that table is pretty huge. That table takes up half of an entire board. And in the "Adventure" section, you have information like how much a bag of salt costs. I wouldn't really call the cost of dry goods "adventure".

I have found the tables and data on the portrait screens to be much more useful during play. I want my DM Screens to contain those items I find myself frequently looking up in a rule book during play and that entire screen has information I might look up once during an entire campaign or never.

I have found that because that weather chart is there I am saying, "The weather today is..." more often. I've then found it interesting how differently the players do things when it is a heavy rainstorm instead of nice clear skies.

mbeacom wrote:I have found the tables and data on the portrait screens to be much more useful during play. I want my DM Screens to contain those items I find myself frequently looking up in a rule book during play and that entire screen has information I might look up once during an entire campaign or never.

I have all the CK screens and if I ever get to run a game I plan on using my landscape screens in the middle then use the hard casing portrait screens on either side; creating a crenellation wall separating me from them. Creates plenty of room to do my creative CevilKing. And has all the info from both screens readily available.

Treebore wrote:I have found that because that weather chart is there I am saying, "The weather today is..." more often. I've then found it interesting how differently the players do things when it is a heavy rainstorm instead of nice clear skies.

I agree with Tree. the weather stuff is good. I like to think that I am a decently good GM and have, in the past, included weather in the game. Sometimes just for story telling and sometimes as a deterrent. The weather charts remind me that climate doesn't mean that there is only one type. It also reminds me that there can be problems moving around in it.

It also makes me fondly remember a Dragon Magazine, from the 80's, that had an article about weather and gaming. Not only did it have an article but it had a pull-out weather chart screen that you could use during the game.

The tables I think are useless are, Provisions, Lodging and Meals. (There had to be something better to put in that ¼ space.)

Besides the weather chart on screen two, my next favourite is the Light Underground. Once you get it from the CK Guide it is easier to implement without having to look it up. It adds a whole new dimension of light that you wouldn't have even considered otherwise. Having something that is just in range of your light source but is more of a shadow until it reaches your light sources full capacity or having a wall of ice that emits an ominous glow where you an see frozen animals and humanoids trapped within, etc.

I think the second screen is more of a reminder/nudge of things you could do to make the story telling a little more fun. There is a big difference between steering a boat on serene waters vs. tempest waters; climbing a wall in dry conditions vs. a downpour of rain, are those shadows friend or foe, etc.

Treebore wrote:I have found that because that weather chart is there I am saying, "The weather today is..." more often. I've then found it interesting how differently the players do things when it is a heavy rainstorm instead of nice clear skies.

We must be talking about different tables then. The table I'm talking about doesn't tell you any of that daily weather stuff. All it tells you is that in the month of january, in a boreal forest, the climate is.......drumroll........SNOW. The entire month. Or that in the month of July in a Savannah, it is.........DRY. Maybe I don't have the latest screens your referring to? I actually would like a table that would tell me its rainy or partly cloudy with a chance of rain by the day. BUt even so I wouldn't want it to take up an entire half of the page. And do I really care about the cost per bowl of pottage or jar of Garum (fermented fish sauce)? What about a bottle of Malmsey? I don't even know what it is (a Hungarian dessert wine: thanks wikipedia!), but I now know what it should cost. I want tables on a DM Screen to be the kind of information you're likely to need every session, or nearly so. I can't imagine needing to buy a 1 pound bag of salt every session.

mbeacom wrote:

Treebore wrote:I have found that because that weather chart is there I am saying, "The weather today is..." more often. I've then found it interesting how differently the players do things when it is a heavy rainstorm instead of nice clear skies.

We must be talking about different tables then. The table I'm talking about doesn't tell you any of that daily weather stuff. All it tells you is that in the month of january, in a boreal forest, the climate is.......drumroll........SNOW. The entire month. Or that in the month of July in a Savannah, it is.........DRY. Maybe I don't have the latest screens your referring to? I actually would like a table that would tell me its rainy or partly cloudy with a chance of rain by the day. BUt even so I wouldn't want it to take up an entire half of the page. And do I really care about the cost per bowl of pottage or jar of Garum (fermented fish sauce)? What about a bottle of Malmsey? I don't even know what it is (a Hungarian dessert wine: thanks wikipedia!), but I now know what it should cost. I want tables on a DM Screen to be the kind of information you're likely to need every session, or nearly so. I can't imagine needing to buy a 1 pound bag of salt every session.

No, we're using the same screens, you just apparently do not also use the other table below the big one and to the right.

Sure I use it. Although I don't really need a chart to tell me "moderate bad or severe" weather. A chart like you mention that tells if it's rainy or sunny or windy would be cool though. But that very basic weather condition chart is relatively small so I think it's a nice enough thing to have. I prefer charts to contain frequently needed rules minutiae that I don't want to have to constantly be paging through rulebooks to find or attempting to memorize. But that's not even the table I was talking about. I was talking about the one that takes up the entire upper half of the card and doesn't really offer much for the day to day CK. I'm also talking about the prices of goods that, (at least in my campaigns) almost never get purchased, like fermented fish sauce and hungarian dessert wine. Maybe some folks deal with that alot and I'm just not in the mainstream of C&C CKs. I very much miss the things like weapon damage lists and treasure tables so I can quickly calculate treasures for monsters on the fly. I literally used those tables every session. I've actually cut and pasted the old tables onto my new screens because I love the form factor so much but the information on the one card just wasn't very useful. The other card is spot on. I use the stuff on it pretty much every session as well. I couldn't be happier with it. I particularly like the combat maneuvers and expanded surprise modifiers.

If I wanted really detailed weather charts I'd pull out the tons of resources I have that have them, from Dragon magazine articles, and I think even the Greyhawk boxed set has weather tables. I know I have some extensive stuff for Kingdoms of Kalamar, especially the fan made charts for the entire freakin world. Likely I have a half dozen more resources that I have forgotten have such tables.

I just don't like overly complex. So that little chart tells me on a 1-10 its a nice sunny day. Or that its got heavy clouds and visibility is impaired, or its bad enough that we can only see maybe up to 2 miles. Or so bad that you can only see half a mile, at most. From there, and from referencing the bigger table above, I can decide if its due to rain, snow, etc... So it fits the level of simplicity I want.

Other times I picked up a set of weather dice at Gen Con, and I just use those. Just like I picked up other dice that roll hit locations, or races, even classes for standard types of D&D.

So I am finding myself liking the weather charts.

The other charts definitely cover the majority of other things I'd look up. About the only thing they could add to these to make me perfectly happy is the full Grapple rules from the 4th/5th printing.

So the only thing I look up regularly is spells. I'd love for someone to come up with some incredible system to make it even easier/faster to look up the spells.

Treebore wrote:So the only thing I look up regularly is spells. I'd love for someone to come up with some incredible system to make it even easier/faster to look up the spells.

How about pdf's.

Heard it directly from the Troll's mouth yesterday...the ckg screen is still available through direct order from TLG. I didn't think to ask about the eventual return of the portrait screen, or a landscape screen with the portrait info on it.

Ooooooh, weather dice. Forgot about those. Would love some of those. just don't burn half of an already small DM screen page for what could be done with one tenth of the screen realstate or that could be filled with information that isn't common knowledge, things that need to be referenced in a book. Everybody knows it's snowy in January in the mountains and Dry in July on the prairie. Because that type of weather info is common knowledge, not something that would ever need to be referenced, it's just wasted space IMO. However, I would totally rebuy them if more frequently useful information (spell info, common DCs, weapon tables, etc) was placed on the second screen. I'd also buy screens with nothing but spell information on them. That would be cool. What I do now is cut and paste (from my PDFs) all the spells that my players and monsters have and put them on a couple of reference pages in my binder. That way I'm not pulling out the books nearly as much. Oh, and I have copies of all the digest books to use as table reference. As a DM who travels alot, they make my DM bag WAY smaller and lighter.http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/aaa5/? ... nQodXSEA-A

I'm going to start using the Runebound movement dice for world making and maybe get some "weather" dice to go along with it. I like rolling for stuff.

Sir Ironside wrote:

Treebore wrote:So the only thing I look up regularly is spells. I'd love for someone to come up with some incredible system to make it even easier/faster to look up the spells.

How about pdf's.

They suck. I much prefer paging through the books. I was thinking that if the spell sections was taken out and made into its own PDF with each spell hyperlinked to the master list in the front would be pretty sweet.

Treebore wrote:

Sir Ironside wrote:

Treebore wrote:So the only thing I look up regularly is spells. I'd love for someone to come up with some incredible system to make it even easier/faster to look up the spells.

How about pdf's.

They suck. I much prefer paging through the books. I was thinking that if the spell sections was taken out and made into its own PDF with each spell hyperlinked to the master list in the front would be pretty sweet.

I'm not a fan of searching PDFs either. I'd love to have something like you mention though, with hot links. PDFs are good for cutting and pasting though. If you're good with Photoshop, or some other image manipulation program, it's pretty easy to build your own reference pages. Whenever my players pick their spells, I go through the PHB PDF (now in color!) and cut and paste all their spell descriptions onto a couple sheets of paper and give it to them to keep with their character sheets. Kind of like spell cards for 2E back in the day. That way, whenever someone uses a spell, they have the description right in hand.

mbeacom wrote:

Treebore wrote:

Sir Ironside wrote:

Treebore wrote:So the only thing I look up regularly is spells. I'd love for someone to come up with some incredible system to make it even easier/faster to look up the spells.

How about pdf's.

They suck. I much prefer paging through the books. I was thinking that if the spell sections was taken out and made into its own PDF with each spell hyperlinked to the master list in the front would be pretty sweet.

I'm not a fan of searching PDFs either. I'd love to have something like you mention though, with hot links. PDFs are good for cutting and pasting though. If you're good with Photoshop, or some other image manipulation program, it's pretty easy to build your own reference pages. Whenever my players pick their spells, I go through the PHB PDF (now in color!) and cut and paste all their spell descriptions onto a couple sheets of paper and give it to them to keep with their character sheets. Kind of like spell cards for 2E back in the day. That way, whenever someone uses a spell, they have the description right in hand.

I could probably do what I mentioned with Libre Office.

i love the landscape screens, although I never use them for the tables- just for rolling dice behind and keeping my maps and stuff secret. In fact, I use them for the same purpose in my OSRIC game too (although I'm going to have to make combat table overlays to stick onto the screens for that game).