TOPIC: When Tokens escape Pucks (From DM guide)

The beholder board looked great to me. I hope that is what all boards look like in the future.

To be clear the prototype sliders some people tried out in Grind were created by Master ED. Since they are only prototypes there will likely be some improvements made if Jeff decides to go in that direction.

MetaphoricDragon wrote: The other thing I saw was the sliding board for the beholder. It had a higher lip around the combat board to accommodate lighting. Seems to me those type of boards would be much more prone to prevent knocked out tokens from flying off the table at least.

Good eye. Those lit puck walls are prototypes of what they would like to do everywhere. I got to hear a short explanation about them during build. They not only help keep the pucks on the board they also make it easier for the DMs to see the board as they normally block the combat light with their bodies when they lean over the board.

They were having some issues as they are lightly constructed right now. The DM or players moving the tables or bumping or shifting the board could easily break them at the joints. Less of an issue in the beholder rooms where the boards just stayed in place but more an issue in other rooms where the tables get dragged in and out all day. But when they resolve that they would like to have those lit stops on all the boards in the future.

Less seen was that they had a couple different table feet in use to make the sliding less noisy and smoother. The beholder rooms all had tennis balls jammed on the feet. Especially needed because of the linoleum or whatever faux-stone floor they had there. Most of the other tables had felt feet added, but those felt feet had a tendency to just crumple under the sideways pressures and pull off. By Sunday some of the tables would make a terrible grinding when puled out. One table (Stone Man in the Deeperdark Combat) had a type of normal rubber foot with a small plastic sliding disc (like a moving robots or moving men or similar type of thing) adhered to the bottom. They seemed to hold up, but during tear-down I think they got swept to one side and are probably gone now. I forgot to grab them as I was busy with other tasks. They just fell off when the table got lifted and folded for shipping.

Yeah, I would totally help pay for used black tennis balls with a slot cut in them for all the combat tables.

justusedtennisballs.com/Used-Tennis-Balls-pre-cut-hard-court-box-of-100-HCP100.htm

For the majority of rooms, the tables could just stay out. The wizard board hanging on the wall is a sure tip-off that combat is imminent. Absolutely nobody is surprised when the board comes out.

You could throw a curtain over the board to maintain some surprise as to what is going to attack.

Lodestone (KH) wrote: By Sunday some of the tables would make a terrible grinding when puled out.

When I ran room two on Sunday, Rock-moninoff the composer would sing one of his compositions to the party after they angered him with their presence.

1) The token popping out...yeah, we got that line about it being an automatic miss as well from exactly one room DM...knew that couldn't be right, especially as it would be unfair if someone else bumped your token out... but just moved on so that we could finish killing the monster. Still, definitely needs to be addressed for next year one way or the other, as nearly every combat had multiple tokens pop out.

2) Played with the prototype pucks on Saturday night in grind and LOVED them. Another suggestion our group made was having a few different colored outer rings, to make it easier to figure out which is a given characters as they get returned (green for druid & cleric, red for barbarian & bard, etc)

I tried the prototype magnet puck once on a practice throw. It will take some getting used to but I think it's a great solution.

Cain Eyebright wrote: 2) Played with the prototype pucks on Saturday night in grind and LOVED them. Another suggestion our group made was having a few different colored outer rings, to make it easier to figure out which is a given characters as they get returned (green for druid & cleric, red for barbarian & bard, etc)

Thanks for the feedback. That clearly is an option and is being considered. Just waiting on the TPTB to determine what they want.

Ed

Mike Steele wrote: We had many tokens fly from the pucks during combat this year (and every year). It's never been a problem, the DM (or a player) just pop the token back into the puck where the puck is sitting, and we move on. I've never had a DM say that a token out of the puck would be a miss, I hope that is a rare event.

Maybe it was a miss from where the pick was sitting.

Kirk Bauer wrote: I have an idea... if we only had pucks with magnets that held the tokens in place...

In our TG run we was giving experimental pucks with magnets in the bottom and they were fantastic!!

Dave wrote:
It is a great idea. Just make sure you can still quickly get the token out of the puck when it's time to go. They won't just fall out of a magnet. You might need a small hole in the in the bottom so your finger can push it out when necessary.

All one had to do was push on the edge of the token to pop them out with the experimental ones we got to try.