So yeah, I was just wondering what most of you guys do when you're playing -- are you using Miniatures? I'm used to that with D&D, but I'd like to go without them. Do you guys have drawn out maps to keep track of where people are, or is it all verbal description? I have a hard time sometimes keeping track of my NPCs when I have like 6 or more in the room.

I was also wondering about having info available for quick reference. We really want to keep the action moving, and stopping down to add skills, attributes, etc. can get tedious sometimes. I was thinking about having index cards for all the characters (and NPCs) that had common dice pools calculated. For example, when you use this gun, roll this much, unless there's a modifier, etc. Having precalculated pools for different firing modes, different weapons, for different methods of defense, all there at once so we can roll quickly and keep it moving pretty quick.

Do you guys do stuff like that? Is there a better way, or a standardized way of doing that, or does everybody just read off of their character sheets?

Thanks for the help.

Most of our SR games use lined paper (one line is 1 meter). Though we have pulled out the maps and markers on a few occasions.

(I should also mention that one of our most brilliant D&D GMs has also managed to run entire D&D combats without any map what so ever. And created a non-euclidean maze, we're still not sure how it managed 19 right angles before crossing over itself)

I'm not a game-demi-god like Draco's DM so I sympathize with your plight. I haven't actually run an SR4 scenario yet but I've been reviewing the rules and looking for shortcuts to keep the game moving. One of the ideas I've been considering is to pre-calculate the combat rolls for the NPC grunts on their two or three most common attacks and then try to stick to those attack types during the engagement.

So if the scene has a gang tussle with the PC's during a heavy rain at night and the gang is packing light pistols and knives, I don't wait until one of the bangers trys to shoot a PC to start the math, I've already got half the math done- I just need to add movement and cover modifiers.

Also give a thought to condensing the basic information of each player's weapons onto notecard sized cards. Then when the team is tooling up for whatever phase of the run they just grab the cards of the weapons they're taking (no more arguements over whether or not you've brought the panther cannon) which has all the relevant info on that weapon so the player doesn't have to look it up or put it all on a messy character sheet which never has enough room for everything.

Everyone needs to play a game with Keith. When we first met him he was mute. No one's seen him in over a year (it became a year as of last December), though we do know he's alive. That boy created some of the craziest things ever (the D&D game that's on hold has not only it's own metaplanear configuration, but it's own magic system, sorry, systems--he created no less than 2 additional magic systems into D&D, both arcane based, but radically different enough that PCs would have to learn the spells one by one if they wanted to duplicate their effects, and it's own monsters, AND its own economy (imagine potions being half off because they're ridiculously common, yet have the price vary from location to location because one place is the supply capital for some good, while some other place makes other things)).

Also he could make anything sound cute and cuddly. I swear.

For Minatures, might I suggest the GREAT Games Workshop products, Inquisitor and Necromunda? Available at a store near you! You might want to take out an extra mortgage, though. They are fairly GRIMNDARK, but last time I saw them (It's been a while since I played 40k) Shadowrun was the first thing that popped to mind. Trenchcoats, needless metal doodads and funny little bits of technology. Depending on the model.

I'm going to go scrub myself with bleach and steel wool now. So dirty..

For me it comes down to prep time. If I have the time and means I'll make props (maps, messages, pictures, items etc.) and use hex maps made in photoshop for encounters that require it, avoided when possible. Otherwise I'll write up area descriptions and track PC and NPC movement in the 'mind's eye'. I'll generally use the same method for D&D, Twilight 2000, Call of Cthulhu or what ever game I've run. I usually don't have the prep time for some things, but I'll usually have tons of reference notes to use for each session whether it's a pre-made campaign or something I wrote.

What works best for my group is having two maps, One basic floor plan and the other GM map with all the Baddies. If they do their legwork than I'll hand over the map, but if they wait until the run starts than I draw it as they go. My Group makes perception check everywhere they go, even if there is nothing there. It help to build the suspense. I try to paint the visual picture until it comes down to combat. Having the maps helps the players set up tactics for clearing a room but it won't tell them what's in it. I kind of picture that most buildings have an emergency evacuation plan with a little red dot that says "YOU ARE HERE" And in emercency situations the show up in AR glowing towards the exits.

As for the simlifying combat, I find an NPC Scratch Sheet to be useful. Once Initiative goes down, it helps me keep track of turns and damage to NPC's and Players. My players are smart enough to know what to roll and when. I just have to tell them the modifiers or how much damage they take. The only thing I stuggle with is forgetting to write down the PC's armor and having to ask them everytime they get shot at (Which is more often than they should.)

I don't like to use maps because I feel like they detract the players from the description of the action and make them switch to "tactical game" mindset, getting them away from their character. So most of the time, I avoid using maps and prefer describing what each character sees.

I love using maps and other visual tools to help tell the story. Like Draco pointed out you just need to lay out the scale beforehand and then use the core rules. You can even have a scale ruler and move characters like you would in Warhammer minis. If you are really into miniatures and have a detailed table you can play an entire campaign with the board used to play out combat (better way to keep track of environmental conditions like cover). It is also a good way to get PCs to start thinking of tactics.

I use maps, but not ones you lay down on the table and stick minis on. I use them to give the players an idea of the layout of a place and only after they have moved all around it. (I have nothing against wargamming. In fact, I am an avid war gammer, with four multi thousand point 40k armies, several necromunda gangs, etc)

As for the Weapon Cards, those actually work well. Index card, fill in all the info for it, put ammo count across the bottom and clip count on the right side. Add two paperclips to keep track of those. Make sure you include the total DP for each weapon. My players always write Smartgun or Lasersight like this... DP: 12 (14). My players also have Gear Cards and Battle Cards.

Gear Cards cover things a character would carry on him, or in something. Normally things like "General Carry", "Working Carry", "Sniper Carry" and "Buttpack", "Car", etc. It prevents arguments over what they do or do not have, since if Joe Sammy is walking down the street and his player has the cards "General Carry", "Colt Gov 2066" and "Long Fineblade", that is exactly what he has.

Battle Cards have numbers along the right side for tracking Stun Damage, Numbers along the bottom for tracking Physical Damage and Overflow, the Characters movement rate, armor rating, Body/Soak, Initiative, Ranged Defense (w/ Active Dodge), Melee [Parry/Block/Dodge] (w/ Active Dodge), etc.

My mage makes up cards for each of his spells, the hacker has one for his deck and a couple for programs/matrix actions, while the rigger made several up for his drones.

The combined effect is that in a fight, the Battle Card has all the quickly needed defensive and initiative numbers, with damage tracking. The Weapon Cards he has out show his current weapons, their stats, his DP with them, and track Ammo. Gear cards are what equipment he has on him, with maybe a second one for a pack or such. The special cards (Magic/TM/Hacker/Rigger/Etc) give quick access to information for using the characters abilities, as well as tracking what he has with him for the Rigger. The cards also help avoid excessive wear and tear on the character sheet.

Thanks for this! I'm gonna pass this along to my players. It's probably a little more detailed than some of them care to get, but some of them will definitely benefit from it.

I like the idea of giving them a floorplan -- I feel it's only fair if they would have it in their AR anyway. But I would think that sometimes the floorplan in their AR may not match what is actually there... Using minis can be cool, but I'd like to stay away from it if I can. Partly because I like describing things verbally, and partly because some of my players are purists. One told me he doesn't want his RPG "turned into a board game" with the minis. I don't know if its as bad as he makes it out to be, but there's something cool about having that much more of it in your imagination.

My pleasure.

I like the verbal description too. sometimes maps keep things too technical and you lose the imagery. however, this is shadowrun, and things are technical,so I like to use a whiteboard with different colored markers for fight scenes. it keeps track of placement and area effects(it even gives me a little leeway as a GM when eyeballing distances). But when the fights over, the maps gone and its back to the imagination. I also avoid buying a hundred miniatures(I did that for battletech).
I have a sheet with the players condition monitors, perception rolls, contacts, negative qualities, and guns(for ammo tracking). I'm still working on cheet sheets for sr4 myself. but theres so much to know I think I'm just getting really good at flipping through the books(at least the BBB)

I don't use minis or large maps for three reasons:

1) I don't have a lot of space,
2) I don't like having to draw the damn big thing, and
3) Minis never quite look right to me. If I'm going to use minis they better look exactly like I imagine them to in game, and I'm not about to go and sculpt minis for my game since I barely even have time to play, much less sculpt minis

Typically I just use 2D maps that I either print from Sprawl Sites or download from the internet (google search for apartment, house, office plans is awesome - and many of them with scale!). Usually I just write in pencil some shorthand for the characters' names, though I've been thinking of making little markers to handle this.

Have also thought about doing something with Google Sketchup so I can have a 3d rotatable map and move characters around inside of it, but that can be somewhat limiting especially if the combat moves outside of the existing 3d map into regions undesigned. The nice thing with a 2d map is you can just add elements via pen/pencil to it and rough it out.

I've used a white board in the past. Then I can draw a rough sketch of the situation with an erasable marker, and update if needed. Another bonus is that everyone can see it, and we don't have to pass a piece of paper back and forth every time anyone need to make a decision in combat.

I have a digital projector that I hook up to my laptop. For complicated combat scenes I create a map in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop and place a grid on top of it. I project the map onto a white wall or whiteboard. NPCs and PCs are floating head icons. I move the icons where my players tell me to.

I did the minis things for awhile; I even created my own Cardboard Heroes style cutouts and used a wipe-map. However, it took too long to set up and I couldn't do cool things like hide certain areas or objects from the players' POV.

I'll use MP3s or CDs for nightclub or party scenes and play Muzak for elevators (and maybe quiet rain for atmosphere) but otherwise I leave sound effects alone. A guy I played D&D with used to play video game music during battle scenes and it was really really annoying.

Reference cards for spells, programs or complicated pieces of gear are good and I recommend them. Check out Aaron's resources. His cheat sheets and his program cards are awesome.

I tend to draw a map on an A4 sheet, sometimes it's a building layout or sometimes it's a much larger outdoor area. I'll let my players have a look at it if they want and I'll only label things that are obvious or things that they've actually discovered so a dumpster outside the office building would be marked "dumpster" but the security room inside will just be marked "B1" and I'll have the line "B1 - Security Room"room in my GM book to look it up. If my players discover that it is a security room I'll put that line on the map.

Everything else is verbal or done with pencil notes/dots/crosses on the map.

This would potentialy cause a professor of mine to have a heart attack and spin in his own grave, that is if he doesn't start to debate about the number of dimensions needed to develop the maze.

To be fair, it was 19 right corners and 17 lefts, or something like that. Longest repeat was 7 or so.

But yes.

One of the other players mapped it out in 2D sometime later and you had to pretend that all the crossing over didn't actually occur.

I know I commented on a thread similar to this one before in the last year.

Miniatures
I use 25mm miniatures for the PC's. I encourage players to eventually purchase a miniature for their character, but I have many from the last 20+ years of RPGing and allow them to borrow as needed. I don't care if a miniture looks like the character, the biggest thing is matching up a race to a race (ie. a dwarf mini for a dwarf character.) Weapons, garb, whatever. It's jsut a placemarker. You can use a Parchesi game piece for your miniature for all I care. Long as I can readily identify it and it's within that one inch scale.

For NPC's I use a mixture of mini's and some form of tokens. I have found hte BEST tokens to be the aprox. 1 inch tiles from a Scrabble game. A single game (10 bucks at Walmart) provides you with two full sets and some extra bits. I used markers to permantly color the edges of each set (ie. one red, one blue) and use these to indicate the persons in a bar or a building. The letters are great distinguishers to keep track of damage and initiative for NPCs and I frequently will toss out names using the starting letter (ie. the bartender marked A will be named Adolf or Andrew or..) I have a total of 5 different colored sets of Scrabble tiles and they are useful if the PC's get in a fire fight where there are say, Lonestar cops, gangers, and innocent bystanders all involved. Each color is a specific type of NPC.

I also use spare odd colored or odd shaped dice to represent things at the moment for hte characters. A summooned spirit might be a bright pearlescent green polyhedral. They can be turned so the number up is a marker for identification purposes. This is a great use for all those non-sixsiders you have in your collection from that other game, you know, the one that causes cancer.

Mats
For mats, well, I have a couple hex ones I bought here or there from a Gencon long ago, but my favorite mats are the 1" squares I made myself. Get a roll of 24" white butcher paper (3 bucks at walmart) and cut it so you have mats equalling 36x24." Using a ruler or a T square, block it off in one inch squares with a pencil and hten use a sharpie to darken the lines. (A tip: instead of a Sharpie, use a fine point wet erase marker that you have already for marking on the mats... it's permanent on the paper once it's laminated and you can easily clean off your T-square once done) then take to a store and have them heat laminated. I used my local teachers shop that charged me something like 2 bucks for the first foot and 1 buck for every foot after. (I also laminated nearly all of my heavy use D&D big maps this way. They'll last and look great forever!) Make several of these, grid the backs as well as the fronts or leave some blank on the back for nice unmarred white space. This effectively doubles the number of mats that you have. And one of the best things, these mats are CHEAP! For the price of a couple of the store boughtdeals, you can have loads of self-made mats. Simply roll them up for storage in a card board mailer tube or you can even use one of those "lost it's mate" old socks for storage.

For movement, I use little tape measures. The 3 or 10 foot kind you can get at any construction store for a buck or two apiece. The nice thing about these is A.) portable as drek, since they are no bigger than a half dollar and B.) you can flex them easily to see how far movement is in a non-straight line, like going around a corner or even a more circuitous route. The grid on my map is for general placement and eyeballing distance. (Which is why I prefer grid over hex maps) I use the grid to lay out my buildings, streets, etc, but by using the tape measure for movement beyond straight line, I can sttay away from the boxiness that gridded mats and graph paper sometimes create when drawing. Usually, my scale is one 1" block= a square meter. This works well for containing each miniature/Scrabble tile and makees eyeballing movement easy to count.

Having multiple 2x3 foot mats mats allows you to create large floor plans but still use them on a normal sized dining table and have room for the players and books and dice rolling as well. It also allows you to break up the combat action easier if part ofthe party is in one place and the other part is somewhere else. Simply set up a cheap card table off side the main table or even use the floor for the secondary party.

I use a combination of "drawn before the session" mats and blank mats to draw upon during the game depending on how complex my run is that day and whether the party has done their legwork. I create a lot of my floorplans on the computer and print them out for hte GM sheet, with notes and markers as to were things the party wouldn't or shouldn't know about. By having more than a half dozen mats, it's merely a matter of whipping them off an on the table as needed.


With all that being said, it may sound like a game at my table is a logistical nightmare. Actually it's jsut the opposite. With the hour or two game aid prep I spend on doing up mats and maps, I find the game moves MUCH faster on the table and having hte layout there for the players to see and tactile minitures and tokens, it allows the players (and hte GM!) to have a much better idea what is going on in that fire fight or in the B&E. We spend a lot more time playing and a lot less time re-stating the environment or arguing about "where" a character was or what the distance mods are. Each player moves his own miniature during their initiative so there is no arguing over the piddly stuff. With Vis a Vis pens, it generally only takes me a few minutes to draw out a basic floor plan of a building or room as I go, filling in details as perception rolls happen or movement takes place. Once oyu get used to doing it this way, I think most people will actually dread going to a completely matless style of play. and no, I dont draw out "everything" If I dont think a physical encounter is going to happen, I dont typically draw a floorplan. However, should the unexpected occur, I can always whip one out in a matter of a couple minutes. No real lag to game play.

I hope these tips help!

Vlad