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March 2, 2015

Advanced Initiative Tents

Quick post today!

A long time ago, I told you about the technique of using initiative tents.  Go check out that post to see what I'm talking about.

Well today, I'm going to show you ADVANCED initiative tents.  Advanced initiative tents have the character name and any emblem drawing on the player-facing side, and on the GM-facing side they have the character name and a place to write initiative... plus all kinds of useful information the GM needs for that player's character during combat!

See, in my experience, the best initiative tents are old business cards.  But it struck me that VistaPrint has cards for super cheap if not free.

Behold, the advanced initiative tent...  for Pathfinder:



I am not being paid by VistaPrint in any way for this post.  They don't even know I exist.  You can get a certain number of cards for FREE from them, and after that, simple one-sided cards are cheap.

Make them yourself on the VistaPrint custom design page using the vertical card base and the "Add a Table" option.

You can also add a back that's the exact same but rotated (so the fold is always in the same place) for a little extra fee, doubling how long you can use these cards for.

Then just hand one to each player, ask them to put their name and draw a picture either of their character or an emblem that represents them on the front, fold on the light grey text, write their name on the back, and fill in all the stats on the table.

Then each combat, hand them out, have the players erase their old initiative and write their new initiative on the bottom, and pass them back.  See the old initiative tents post to get more info on that process.

How about one for 5e D&D?



Or one for Fate?  Now, this one might stay hanging on the GM screen all the time, since the GM wants to see everyone's Aspects all the time, and the PCs' initiative scores don't really change.



Keep in mind I have no talent for design.  These were put together in just a few minutes on VistaPrint's card designer.  You can probably design ones that look better than mine.  You can design them in Photoshop and upload them to VistaPrint, if you're really savvy.

If you do that, please send me a link so I can post it here!  Post in comments or find me @RunAGame on twitter.



PS. This is how much I love my readers:  My FIRST instinct was to "kickstart" this thing, and then just use VistaPrint to make my backer rewards.  With the keywords "indie" "RPG" "Fate" "Fifth Edition" "Pathfinder" and "geek" I couldn't fail to make a ton of money...  But I thought better of it.

1 comment:

  1. I love the initiative table, when I game online on Roll20.net. Everyone can see when it's their turn. I've tried that, using one sheet of paper with initiative order showed in the same manner as those tents, but I didn't think about writing something on my side of the screen. I think I'm gonna test this idea during next weekend game night :D Thanks!

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