Comments on: Battlegrounds: Clock Tower

By: Scott

Scott — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 05:51:29 +0000

@Wickedmurph: Cutouts are a good option for things like this. If it’s a setting element that you might re-use at some point, gluing them to some cardboard or other reinforcing material helps. Gears probably don’t come up a whole lot in the typical campaign, but boats might be another matter.

By: Wickedmurph

Wickedmurph — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 22:58:39 +0000

I set up an encounter recently that involved the pcs fighting river pirates on a river-boat. I used the battle mat to draw out the river, and used paper boats to lay overtop. That way, the boats could move around the river, drift up and down, row and things, without having to constantly reposition miniatures – they just slid along. You could easily do something like that for the clocktower settings – cut out gear templates from graph paper, then rotate them right on the battle mat. This would work well for moving walkways, conveyer belts and axles with platforms attached as well.

By: MadBrewLabs

MadBrewLabs — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:04:23 +0000

Nice series, and I especially loved reading about this clockwork battelground. Keep churning out the good work! MadBrewLabs's last blog post: Dungeons & Dora

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 04:08:49 +0000

Thanks. I’m trying to keep the settings reasonably common and/or generic, so they’ll be useful to as many people as possible. My goal for this series is to present some possibilities for unusual fight locations and hope that some people are inspired to adapt them.

I don’t think every fight needs to be in an “unusual” environment — most campaigns have some amount of travel through forests, across plains, and into dungeons, so there are bound to be fights with just the usual furnishings. But an unusual location really makes a battle memorable. I try to do at least one during each character level.

Sometimes it just takes a twist on a more “normal” setting. I’ve got an article in the works on that, too.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 02:31:56 +0000

Really interesting post! Most DMs/GMs I’ve conversed with ‘talk’ about neat environments, but continue to use ones that they are familiar with (usually forests, buildings, and one strange environment). This series you have going is sure to get any DM’s creative juices flowing. Even if they can’t find a place for a clock-tower in their game, it would be easy to file off the serial numbers and make a mad sanctuary or an Astral Plane-like area with floating objects.

I really appreciate your effort!