Read Letters

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Fri, 31 Jul 2009 09:49:19 -0400

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Thu, 30 Jul 2009 13:56:07 -0400

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Tokens for D&D 4th Edition

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 21:40:00 -0400

Download the latest token template: D&D 4E Token Template File (1.2 MB)

The 4th edition of the Dungeons and Dragons game is great - fast paced, well balanced, and very creative. The various classes and powers all capture the “feel” of the D&D game perfectly. At this point, my friends and I have put dozens of hours and hundreds of dollars into playing D&D 4E, not to mention the time spent prepping for sessions, designing adventures, and building maps.

The only real downside to 4E, if you can call it that, is that the idea of the battle grid has gone from “nice to have” to basically required. The tactical combat simply needs the grid to function, and putting a battle grid onto the table means you’ll need some way to represent the players and the monsters they’ll be facing.

D&D Miniatures are an option; they’re inexpensive, fairly attractive, and available for all of the player classes (except for the new Psionic power source, and a few of the Primal classes, though I’m sure both of those will be remedied eventually), and nearly all of the monsters in the Monster Manual and Monster Manual 2. The problem with the D&D Minis line, specifically with the monsters, is that they’re randomly selected in the boxes. Need a specific monster? Your only real options are to get lucky or to hit up one of the websites that sell singles, like Troll & Toad or Ebay. If you need more than one, well, I hope you enjoy browsing Ebay.

One other option is simply to create your own printable tokens for PCs and monsters. If you’ve got a copy of Illustrator and a few hours on your hands, it’s fairly easy to come up with a decent design, and once you’ve made your tokens, you can print as many as you need.

Since I do have a copy of Illustrator, and I do occasionally have a couple of hours to rub together, I did just that.

I came up with a simple design for the player classes, categorized by power source, and a design for both normal monsters and minions. The tokens are square, designed to fit on the standard 1” grid used by D&D 4E. I tried to pack a lot of information into a small space, and overall, I feel like I was pretty successful.

Player Tokens

On the player tokens, the background color represents the character’s power source: gold for Divine, blue for Arcane, maroon for Martial, and green for Primal. I don’t have token templates for the Psionic power source yet, but the current plan is for Psionic tokens to be purple.

The corners of the player tokens have an icon that again represents the character’s power source: a sun, lightning bolt, shield, and leaf, for Divine, Arcane, Martial, and Primal, respectively.

The inner ring of the token shows the character’s alignment and race. The central area has a periodic table-style abbreviation for the class, as well as the class’s role.

Monster and Minion Tokens

The monster tokens pack a lot of information into a small space — in fact, depending on your DM, the monster tokens might be showing too much information!

The color of the token differentiates between a minion and a normal monster - light gray for the minion, black for a monster. A red inner ring denotes an elite monster. The inner ring also displays the monster’s full name and level. The central area of the token shows a “periodic-table”-style abbreviation for the monster’s name, and the monster’s role in combat.

The great thing about these monster tokens is that they can be printed at various sizes to denote the various size classes:

Status Markers

Along with the player tokens, I also created circle-shaped tokens for 4E’s standard status conditions, bloodied players/monsters, and the various player-inflicted effects: defender marks, Avenger Oaths, Ranger Quarries, etc.

These markers are 1 inch circles. They’re designed to fit neatly into the center area of the player and monster tokens.

The Tokens in Action

Here’s a shot of the tokens in action:

There are more photos of the tokens in my Flickr photostream.

Making the Tokens

Printing the tokens out is a no brainer; if you’ve got something that can open Illustrator files I assume you know how to print things correctly. For ease of use, I recommend printing the tokens out on heavy cardstock, the heaviest your printer can handle. They’ll be stiffer, tougher, and easier to move around the battle grid.

Once you’ve got them on paper, you have a choice — you can cut them out with a craft knife and a ruler, or you can save yourself a lot of trouble and pick up square and circle cutters from Amazon. Make sure you get the right size (the linked cutters are for the 1” square and circle), too small and your tokens will get cropped, too big and they won’t fit on the grid properly.

If you find that simple cardstock isn’t holding up well, or you’d like something with a little more heft, you can glue the cardstock tokens to precision cut laser bases from Litko Aerosystems. These bases are inexpensive (so you don’t have to feel bad about using a lot of them), strong, and pretty thick, for easy handling. For an extra touch of craftsmanship, try gluing a small square (just under 1 inch) of felt to the bottom of the base!

Downloads

D&D 4E Token Template File (1.2 MB)

The token templates are in Adobe Illustrator format. All standard status effects, defender marks, and bloodied tokens are included, as well as templates for player tokens for each power source, and both normal and elite monster and minion templates.

via redcoat668.files.wordpress.com Hey, is that the White Tree...

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:09:08 -0400

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Hey, is that the White Tree of Gondor?

Colophon (That's a pretentious way of saying "About Me")

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 13:59:00 -0400

Hey there! My name is Joshua Tompkins, and this is my website.

(There should probably be some ultra-hip photo of me here, but I can’t find one where I’m wearing a ironic enough t-shirt)

As of this writing, I’m 27 years old, and I’m a senior programmer at a growing discount brokerage firm in Gainesville, Florida. I love to write, to draw (though I’m not very good at either), and to write code. I’ve been building websites for a living for almost 9 years, and for fun for about 5 years before that.

I have an amazing girlfriend, a cool apartment, great friends, and the awesomest dog ever born.

I play Dungeons and Dragons, read too much fantasy and scifi, and I have an unhealthy love for Apple products.

Elsewhere

If you’re interested in the other content I produce, I post (infrequently) on Twitter, mostly about dorky stuff, have a few photos available on my Flickr photostream, and tend to post most of the interesting things I see during the day to my Delicious feed.

About This Site

Read Letters (past tense, get it?) runs on Tumblr, an easy-to-use blogging framework. I love Tumblr - it’s the easiest way to get my thoughts onto the proverbial paper, and in my experience, if blogging isn’t easy, I just don’t do it. I’ve got nearly a decade of abandoned blog designs to prove it, too.

My domain (www.joshuatompkins.us) is hosted by MediaTemple. MediaTemple has one of the most technically interesting hosting setups around, and they’ve got a kick-ass iPhone app to manage them.

My Home Setup

I do most of my personal work on a Mac, specifically the Late 2008 Unibody MacPook. I’ve thought about upgrading to the new 13.3” MacBook Pro, but with the exception of the non-replaceable battery, it’s no different from my current laptop (I sprang for the top-of-the-line MacBook back in November), so I’ve managed to avoid the temptation so far.

I use a Rain Design mStand and a 22” Dell LCD monitor when I’m at home, paired with an Apple Wired Keyboard and a Logitech MX1000 laser mouse.

I do most of my design work in Photoshop, Illustrator, and (for personal projects) Coda. I upload files to the site with Transmit. For coding that’s beyond Coda’s capabilities, I turn to Textmate and Visual Studio (under emulation). Anything I write that’s not on a webpage somewhere was probably written in Apple’s iWork.

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Fri, 24 Jul 2009 10:31:25 -0400

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A Tale Most Terrifying.

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:32:27 -0400

Let me tell you a story.

Here at work, there are these automated boxes in the Men’s that will release air freshener at regular intervals, an invention that was far, far too long in coming, and should really be more widespread.

Anyway.

We have these boxes and I love them as much as anyone can or should love inanimate objects in a public restroom, which is to say, approximately as much as the average person loves his friendly in-laws. But (and there is always a But, especially in a bathroom! Seriously, I crack myself up) I have a problem with these things, in that when they release the air fresher, it sounds exactly like someone sneezing. Exactly like.

Can you imagine how you’d feel, alone in the bathroom, when your most intimate of actions was suddenly interrupted by the sound of a quiet sneeze? Does the terror of that moment still your heart and freeze your insides?

It does mine, my friend. It does mine.

"Some days you loot the bodies, and some days the bodies loot you."

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 11:08:06 -0400

“Some days you loot the bodies, and some days the bodies loot you.”

- Will Hindmarch

Birthing Wallpaper

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 14:35:22 -0400

Birthing Wallpaper

Aww. (Image courtesy of Gizmodo)

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 11:05:00 -0400

Aww. (Image courtesy of Gizmodo)

"Remember, if you want to read Dune as an allegory about the Middle East (and you should), the heroes..."

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 09:32:12 -0400

“Remember, if you want to read Dune as an allegory about the Middle East (and you should), the heroes are the guys who live in caves and bomb the shit out of the developed-world imperialists who’ve come to suck up their spice.”

- io9 - Make the New Dune More Like Laurence of Arabia

No comment.

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 10:09:00 -0400

No comment.

The Museum of the Improbable

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 09:45:50 -0400

The Museum of the Improbable:

Gorgeously-rendered 3D models. The rendering style is excellent - at first I thought that the models were actually, you know, models - made of plastic and metal.

Some Christians wonder why other people think that Christianity...

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 09:31:49 -0400

Some Christians wonder why other people think that Christianity is a religion of ignorance - and some just don’t care.

Yet another scheme. Sort of a Sons of Horus/Black Templars...

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 14:54:35 -0500

Yet another scheme. Sort of a Sons of Horus/Black Templars mixup.

Another color scheme, pure white, gold trim, crimson highlights....

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 14:23:51 -0500

Another color scheme, pure white, gold trim, crimson highlights. This is the one I originally wanted to go with, but I’m not sure how it’d look on an actual model.

One possible color scheme for my next batch of Space Marines.

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 14:11:57 -0500

One possible color scheme for my next batch of Space Marines.

Venerated Dreadnought

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 10:54:03 -0500

Venerated Dreadnought:

An incredible looking Dreadnought, painted (I think) by the guys at Games Workshop.

Coda

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 08:39:50 -0500

Coda:

Haven’t posted in a few days, and thought I’d plug Coda, Panic’s amazing HTML coding environment. Just one more thing to make Windows people wish they had a Mac.

"He’s got his piece of the Triforce, that little slice of godlike power that lets him tear out..."

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 15:17:17 -0500

“He’s got his piece of the Triforce, that little slice of godlike power that lets him tear out the spinal chords of three Moblins like you’d peel the skin off an orange. But most of all, he’s got Moxy. Pizazz. Mad skills. Whatever you call it, he’s got balls so big he has to hire somebody to carry them for him, like Gunga Din if Gunga Din hauled around a set of mammoth testicles instead of water.”

- Neil Stephenson (age 13) - A Weak Link In the Chain (from this SA thread)