Using a vitural board to play Chainmail

[Deleted]

I have been interested in creating a virtual playing board for "Chainmail" or "Swords & Spells" utilizing either cyberboard or vassal.

Cyberboard cyberboard.brainiac.com/

Vassal www.vassalengine.org

I have a bunch of vector clipart miniatures that i grabbed, just have to take the time to turn them into counters.

I started to make a board to handle ship combat using 2nd AD&D rules but gave up trying to understand the rules. I might try again using the ship rules in I think the Wilderness & Adventure book.

[Deleted]

This is an idea of some vector graphic art (taken from the Perfect Captain) to use for mini counters

[Deleted]

I guess there are no figure stand sizes in Chainmail? I looked all through my 3rd ed pdf copy but I didn't seem to see them. Anyways I mounted this figure on 5/8" scale as stated in Swords & Spells. Taking the 72dpi per inch for computer screen resolution as my scale.




Here is counter at x2 scale



and 4x the scale.



Using either vassal or cyberboard allows you to zoom in and out of a battlefield or board top.

[Finarvyn]

I must admit that I've never tried a virtual board for miniatures battles. Can you give us a quick synopsis of how it works? (I like the look of your graphic "miniatures"!) :-D

[Deleted]

You'll have to go to the websites to find out what these programs are about.There is a whole history in of itself with these programs that allow you to play old board games such as Avalon Hill and SPI on the computer.

At the moment these games don't provide a computer AI to fight against. At their most useful they allow opponets to PBEM board game style games.

--Oh I am just manipulating the graphics I found on a website, I don't want to take credit for the original design. What is nice is they are in vector format so can be manipulated extensively.

[Deleted]

Perhaps the De Bellis Vassalus module for playing miniatures warfare on the Vassal website gives the best example of what I am interested in making for Chainmail.



www.vassalengine.org/community/index.php?option=com_vassal_modules&task=display&module_id=

[Deleted]

same set, there are a lot of figures



2x


4x

[serendipity]

dmcamp said:

This is an idea of some vector graphic art (taken from the Perfect Captain) to use for mini counters

The virtual playing board sounds like a kewl idea; I've never been in a game which used one.

I have to admit, though, that when I first viewed this graphic, I found myself wondering, "Why would they want counters of four Japanese women walking through a rice paddy?" And then I realized it was an aerial view...

[Deleted]

Hmmm well you do make me wonder if I was just randomly confronted with the image, not having any idea what it is, if I would come up with something as imaginative

Um the AD&D Battlesystem 1ed came with a couple counter sheets of top down miniature graphics to be used as either bases of minatures or as miniature substitutes.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlesystem

[mahrundl]

serendipity said:

dmcamp said:

This is an idea of some vector graphic art (taken from the Perfect Captain) to use for mini counters

The virtual playing board sounds like a kewl idea; I've never been in a game which used one.

I have to admit, though, that when I first viewed this graphic, I found myself wondering, "Why would they want counters of four Japanese women walking through a rice paddy?" And then I realized it was an aerial view...

For me, it was: "Why is Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh skipping along with a colour changing umbrella?"

Strange tricks our minds do play...

[crimhthanthegreat]

mahrundl said:

serendipity said:

The virtual playing board sounds like a kewl idea; I've never been in a game which used one.

I have to admit, though, that when I first viewed this graphic, I found myself wondering, "Why would they want counters of four Japanese women walking through a rice paddy?" And then I realized it was an aerial view...

For me, it was: "Why is Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh skipping along with a colour changing umbrella?"

Strange tricks our minds do play...

I had the same thought, it is funny what many, many things look like when you don't see them in the context intended.

[philotomy]

dmcamp said:

I have been interested in creating a virtual playing board for "Chainmail" or "Swords & Spells" utilizing either cyberboard or vassal.

*Bump* -- Did you keep at this, Oswald? I was just looking at Vassal, and thinking this would be pretty cool.

[Malchor]

Looks like someone cracked using Chainmail on Roll20: www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10216573938561079&set=gm.10156990652015882

From the looks of it, they are using simple round tokens.

Not to get too fancy, but here is how I recreated it in Roll20 for my own use:

1. Create a white token with a transparent background or download this 
2. As DM, open your Roll20 game
3. Pick a player's character sheet, edit and drag the token to the token box and save
4. Drag the token the map
5. Hover over the token and click the gear, pick a color close the color of the player (look in the lower left for the color)
6. If you want to get fancy, you can add a letter and overlay that on the token, sadly there is group feature, so you have to always make sure you select both objets (token+letter). For my use the letters are L, M, H (Light, Medium, Heavy).
7. For missile units, I used a Token Markers to mark with the bullseye icon, and the guidon (banner) for a leader
8. For cavalry, they used larger circles, I used an oval, pulling a token twice as tall, everything else is the same

I may make a video explaining the above.

I also have index cards drawn per Chainmail for terrain which I may scan and upload as well to give a complete package to get things going.

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