Battleboard suggestions

avalon willowcrest

avalon willowcrest

Adept
(The following is a thread intended for players/staff members to discuss potential improvements to the battleboard system based on their observations/experiences. - Stephen)
having recently played at a chapter with the battle board system i can see its benifits but also a couple somethings i do not like
and im not sure if it has been addressed in this forum post all ready

the benifits is that there is way less paper and is alot easier on the logistics of any chapter
something i do not like, the character i played this past weekend had very few skills, and spells, but i was trying to picture my main with a full 4 collumn with various spells, and i couldnt imagine someone who had a 10 collumn.

something else
battle boarding magic items is a horrible idea
due to large teams carrying multiple magic items, and those being passed around, the tiny pieces that are cut from the battle boards are much easier to loose
than a full tag.

and i know that my 2nd goes into another argument of limiting magic items, but thats not what this post is about, and is something i am against anyway.
 
Re: Battleboard system

Just got back from the 1st event in SF with the new tag system and data base! LOVE IT!!!!

My nearly complete 5 up collumn all in one place all so easy to fallow with a lot of stress off logistics for pulling hundreds of tags, so LOVEING IT!!!!!!!

on another note the magic items battle boards do still need work
only problem i had was not with the crossing off of the magic items usages but was with the layout of them, i have 2 magic items that do bless, one charge on each, but the tag i got said bless and had 2 dots for crossing off, wile this makes it easy for me as a player to check how many charges i have of any given spell with in my magic items, all in one place... if i was to give that item away or sale it or loss it there really should be an other tag... one that can be handed over easily

so, my suggestion is rather then doing one tag per spell for magic items with the full amount of usages per spell on each on each one, but to do a tag per magic item with all the spells and usages on it based of one magic items at a time

so say i have 3 magic items
one does
1/day bless, 1/day life and 2/day cure lights
the next item does
1/day bless, 3/day cure critical
and the next does
2/day life, 2/day death ....

I get 3 tags not 5

I get a tag that has
bless O
Life O
cure light OO

an other that has
bless O
cure critical OOO

and another that has
Life OO
death OO

and not 5 tags with one spell each with its combined counts....
 
Re: Battleboard system

Good Morning, Just finished up a weekend in CT with the new battle board system. I still think it is too early to tell if is a rousing success or not. Just a few points that came up.

1: Without all players pre-regging and pre-logisting their character the logistics process is greatly slowed as it requires each battle board to be filled out and printed when that individual get to logistics. This comment also applies to any subsequent logistics periods that may occure during a given event if a significant percentage of people take different spells day 2 or 3 than day 1.(any suggestions here would be greatly appreciated).

2: Writing individual magic item tags vs pulling the apropriate skill tags I think really ends up being a wash for effort and materials with the previous creation of multiple charge tags. If not making it slightly more effort in the new process as logistics either has to enter an print tags or hand write a bunch of tags.

3: I don't believe that this is really using all that much less in raw materials currently as now a 1st level fighter with no skills uses just as much space on a battle board as a 10 Block Earth Caster with 25 levels of ritual magics. While it saves the caster paper. The fighter ends up with sheets of blank paper that they need to carry around with them.

Again just my observations an I understand that this is brand new. I am looking forward to seeing how this system evolves to become more efficient over time.
 
Re: Battleboard system

Hammerfist said:
2: Writing individual magic item tags vs pulling the apropriate skill tags I think really ends up being a wash for effort and materials with the previous creation of multiple charge tags. If not making it slightly more effort in the new process as logistics either has to enter an print tags or hand write a bunch of tags.
Click to expand...

How did CT handle the MI item tags, did they use the supplied default ones in the database ( http://alliancecharacter.info/mi.pdf ) or another system?
 
Re: Battleboard system

kittenpunk2 said:
on another note the magic items battle boards do still need work
only problem i had was not with the crossing off of the magic items usages but was with the layout of them, i have 2 magic items that do bless, one charge on each, but the tag i got said bless and had 2 dots for crossing off, wile this makes it easy for me as a player to check how many charges i have of any given spell with in my magic items, all in one place... if i was to give that item away or sale it or loss it there really should be an other tag... one that can be handed over easily
Click to expand...


Magic item tags were done that way by your chapter, i agree two items should never be combined on the same tag. I also want to try and stay away from having magic items tags generated in the database because it will just slow that process down even further. Currently logistics can have as many people as they want checking items in because of the tags, they aren't stuck with just 1 person doing everything because it's all in the database.


So what your suggesting is adding another row of circles (3 rows of 5 circles)

So with your example item: one does
1/day bless, 1/day life and 2/day cure lights

the first row would be bless, 2nd life and 3rd cure light ( this would also be written on your tag ) all but 1 circle in first row crossed off, all but 1 in second crossed off and all but 2 in 3rd crossed off.
Any items that have more charges then 5 can take up 2+ rows

This ITEM would take up only 1 tag
 
Currently CT is still pulling tags from the existing tag system for Magic Items. My statement on hand writing tags is based on an experiment when prelogisting a large amount of items last week.
 
For the most part you got me right

But you cant just throw 3 lines on there and say it works for every one, hell i have a item that is got 4 diffract spells on it and i bet there people that have a lot more verity on a signal item, the good part a about this is once that tag is made in the data base its never going to be needed to be made a gin because magic items don't change, it just needs to be re printed if saved to say a players data in the data base. or added to magic items look up in that database that way when checking the magic item # on your magic items tag can be used to look up the magic items spell tag and print it easily # code who brings the items in to logistics and if handed off it still all would work right.\
 
I like the battleboards, but if they could be smaller. I heard many people complain about the fact that boards were 1/2 sheet of paper. So if it can be looked at and see if it could be made smaller?
 
MKing said:
I like the battleboards, but if they could be smaller. I heard many people complain about the fact that boards were 1/2 sheet of paper. So if it can be looked at and see if it could be made smaller?
Click to expand...

>.> I needed the whole half sheet for my templar. I agree it seems a bit much for our fighter and rogue types. Our casters and split classes definitely needed the extra room.

Cat, I'll take that into advisement. You should see that change in affect in May.
 
hey 1/2 the sheet is full on mine as well....but it can be smaller..set the font size smaller..something...its big and I need another pouch *just* for my battleboard...thats silly!
 
huh, i find that interesting.. i don't know how other chapters run, but at HQ you have to have your character card on you at all times in case a marshal needs to see it to verify your skills. The way I saw the battleboard set up was that it was an extension of the existing card... so by folding it in half you'd be back to the normal size of your original character card... therefore these BB's wouldn't take up any more room than you were already using to carry your existing old card.
 
Robb Graves said:
huh, i find that interesting.. i don't know how other chapters run, but at HQ you have to have your character card on you at all times in case a marshal needs to see it to verify your skills. The way I saw the battleboard set up was that it was an extension of the existing card... so by folding it in half you'd be back to the normal size of your original character card... therefore these BB's wouldn't take up any more room than you were already using to carry your existing old card.
Click to expand...

This! +1.

We too require our players to always have their character card on their person.
 
The same goes for AllianceCT. I think the point being made is that this needs to be in a place that is easily accessable while previously a person could fold their character card up nice and small and may not have to take it out all weekend. A full page of cardstock, even folded in quarters still taked up a lot of room in a pouch.
 
CT requires it as well. But, you since you don't need to refer to it often it gets buried behind other stuff for sake of space. I know I've been evolving my gear based around that premise for years. Having to pull out my battle boards repeatedly made me rethink a lot of things.
 
Have you guys thought of having a crib note type for carrying around on regular paper & having the battleboards for reference (players can hold in bags or have in their tent/cabin)?
 
Cat: I totally agree. It would have been great to get the MI information all on a single tag, or even on two or three tags (I have an item with 1 each of like 7 different spells...I think that one would need more than a single tag). It would just further assist cutting down the clutter.

Perhaps it would be worth it to look into a "battleboard" and a "battleboard lite"? People who need the full size could make use of it, like casters, while people who have fewer per-day skills, and/or skills that don't change could use a much smaller version. That might make logistics more complicated instead of less, though...

Overall, I loved the battleboard system, however. I found it MUCH easier to track spells, and I thought logistics actually went quite a bit faster than anticipated. I can't wait to go back and play around with them some more. Nice job development team!
 
prashka said:
I found it MUCH easier to track spells, and I thought logistics actually went quite a bit faster than anticipated.
Click to expand...

1 ) we loved having you
2 ) ya it made spell tracking a bout 90% easier
3 )logistics took about 1/5th the normal a mount of time but then a gin are chapter is vary spell heavy so typing up a little bit for each person vs pulling near a hundred tags per person was a nice change....
hell i'm still on the low side with my spells and i have 70+ charges counting MIs and from memory
 
Love the battleboards. However, I tend to make my own battleboard on the other side of the sheet with my MI charges. I'd love to see all the effects of one item be on one tag, instead of different tags for different effects on the item. If the item is handed over, it's singular tag is passed over as well.
 
prashka said:
Perhaps it would be worth it to look into a "battleboard" and a "battleboard lite"? People who need the full size could make use of it, like casters, while people who have fewer per-day skills, and/or skills that don't change could use a much smaller version. That might make logistics more complicated instead of less, though...
Click to expand...

Anazstaizia said:
Love the battleboards. However, I tend to make my own battleboard on the other side of the sheet with my MI charges. I'd love to see all the effects of one item be on one tag, instead of different tags for different effects on the item. If the item is handed over, it's singular tag is passed over as well.
Click to expand...

These two are what I'd like to see...in addition, if the MI tags could be somehow "attached" to the MI number in the database (as Cat suggested earlier), you just have to add that MI to the character's possessions and it could auto-print all their MI tags on another sheet (or instead of the Battleboard for the "Lite" version). And each time you pre-logist, your current MIs pop up so they don't have to be entered again...just have to check the currently-submitted list against what's in the DB and make (hopefully) small adjustments.
 
umm.. you guys realise the MI database is not the same thing as the Player/character database right? what you are proposing for Magic items to be integrated with the battleboard system (IMO) would be a huge undertaking... Plus, I don't agree that it's the right thing to do. MI's like all other transferable items (produciton, etc.) need to remain seperate for the symple reason of they can be bought, sold, stolen, therefore they have no place on the battleboard.

as far as creating a MI battleboard, presumably in the MI database, I suppose it is possible, but I don't know that that would fall under the scope of the ALC. Different chapters do things differently. For example, at HQ, Logistics doesn't touch the MI db. Our GM has access to it only, so I've never even seen it.

Also, Having pre-cut, writable, "Effect" tags for MI's that Logistics can just pick up, write in the effect, and prep the charge amounts, seems far faster than individually re-printing each magic item tag when a player checks it in. There are teams on the east coast who have 40+ MI's they check in per game...
 
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