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#1 j-pop_jedi Apr 07, 2010 1:59:11

I just wanted to talk about the successful game I ran last Friday.  It's a 3.5 game with no real magic users in the group. I decided to spice things up for myself for this game.  The game takes place in a big city currently.  The pcs are all level 3ish.  The group has 7 players and usually 5-6 show up regularly. I do grid battles on big 1" grid chart paper.  I use 2 sheets to fill the table about 5'x2.5'.  Usually I make all the maps and npcs for the city.  This time I decided to just make the monsters. So, I let the pcs do what they need to do ahead of time, then the plot begins.  The undead have stormed the city and the pcs need to go to the poor ward to fight them off.  I have the paper on the table and hand each pc a different colored marker.  I give the normal house dimensions and let them go wild on the landscape.  I let them put one "advantage" on the board each, like a log pile to push over, a pile of rocks(for the wannabe hulking hurler), etc.  When they are done, I start putting down minis in the houses.  Red for woman, grey for man(we have alot of minis).  I challenge the players to come up with personalities and back stories for these npcs.  If you drew the house, you have to play that npc basically.  I just fed the players information the npc might know about where the undead are. This turned out awesome, and they want to reuse the map now(I took notes strait in the house on the paper for the npc's personality traits).  The only hitch is when the pc had to deal with their own npc, talking to themself was foreign to the nondm's in the group. My ultimate goal is to get some of the other pcs familiar with dming so we can hand off that responsibility at some time. Now I'm thinking about doing this for most encounters...it makes drawing the map a fun experience instead of a dm chore.