TOPIC: Recommendations for Changes to the Player Mats

I actually had Melee Equipment and Ranged Equipment and got a lot of pushback against it from the Discord crowd.

John Ohlinger (Salsa John) wrote: It may be better to place the labels above the two tokens for MELEE or even use MELEE EQUIPMENT since mats are mainly used in sealed.

I'm curious what specific benefit you think "MELEE EQUIPMENT" would offer? To me the word equipment is so generic that 1. it doesn't add anything and 2. it potentially is slightly confusing, because aren't my armor and my boots and such also logically part of my melee equipment? Every token on the mat is used during melee, except for the two slots in the RANGED area.

At one point I had floated the idea of "HAND-HELD (MELEE)" or "MELEE HAND-HELD", because hand-held is how PHB refers to these particular slots, but I'm also perfectly fine with just "MELEE" (letting the slot names speak for themselves).

I don't have any strong feeling on above/below placement; you might be right on that part.

The Ranged label and the rectangle backround around the ranged tokens should probably be the same background as the Melee. The backgrounds for Ranged slots are currently lost in the picture and do not stand out.

+1, good idea

David Zych wrote:

John Ohlinger (Salsa John) wrote: It may be better to place the labels above the two tokens for MELEE or even use MELEE EQUIPMENT since mats are mainly used in sealed.

I'm curious what specific benefit you think "MELEE EQUIPMENT" would offer? To me the word equipment is so generic that 1. it doesn't add anything and 2. it potentially is slightly confusing, because aren't my armor and my boots and such also logically part of my melee equipment? Every token on the mat is used during melee, except for the two slots in the RANGED area.

At one point I had floated the idea of "HAND-HELD (MELEE)" or "MELEE HAND-HELD", because hand-held is how PHB refers to these particular slots, but I'm also perfectly fine with just "MELEE" (letting the slot names speak for themselves).

I don't have any strong feeling on above/below placement; you might be right on that part.

The Ranged label and the rectangle backround around the ranged tokens should probably be the same background as the Melee. The backgrounds for Ranged slots are currently lost in the picture and do not stand out.

+1, good idea

I like your label "MELEE HAND-HELD". Thank you for pointing out that all of the tokens except ranged can refer to Melee. IMO the label MELEE is not enough since the other tokens affect Melee too.

I like the Melee and Ranged Mainhand and Offhand in the center of the mat. It is a prominent area and more attention should be directed to these token slots. The point of the labels is to draw attention and give insight for placement of tokens. Just like the label for SINGLE-USE directs placement. That is why I feel the labels should be above and centered over the two tokens (we also tend to read top down). If only MELEE and RANGED labels are chosen then put arrows pointing down to the token slots for each. Do you have a reason for not putting the labels above in this area?

The text on offhand token should be consistent with the other tokens. Capitalize the "W" in Weapon. Separate the shield with a parenthesis and insert a parenthesis before Weapon. It would read like this:
(Shield) or (Weapon if Monk or Ranger).

I made the change to the offhand text, I'll post it shortly.

The labels were ALL below, to be consistent, but i inverted the Baubles box and moved it's label to the top for spacing.

I'll try moving the melee/ranged ones up to see how that looks.

J

Latest version...

Nice work! I can't wait to see one of these bad boys in print.

Jason Robinette wrote: Latest version...

This looks really good. Thank you for making the changes.

I haven't read everyone's comments. I apologize for my ignorance if already stated.

Appears to be longer horizontally and my concern would be table space between you and fellow adventures. It's been a little bit since GenCon, but I'm guesstimating to about 3-4" between the current player mats.

This looks great, thank you for the work you have done.

Much less confusing than the old mat. Excellent work