Treasure Tables is on hiatus as of December 13th, 2007 -- after two years of daily posts, I needed a break. If you're looking for GMing material, I have two recommendations: the hundreds of posts in TT's archives, and my new project, the multi-author GMing blog Gnome Stew. Happy GMing! -- Martin

Use Two GM’s Screens

Mon. January 23, 2006 

Want more screen real estate? Take two 4-panel GM’s screens and overlap them, offsetting them by one or two panels, and then paperclip them together. Voila! You now have a 5- or 6-panel screen, and loads of room for all your secret stuff.

I love GM’s screens, and this is how I usually set things up at my games.

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Comments

2 Responses to “Use Two GM’s Screens”

  1. Frank on January 23rd, 2006 12:03 pm

    Interestingly, I’ve pretty much gone away from GM screens. A big part of that is that D20 really doesn’t need one anymore (since you don’t need to do table lookups in the middle of combat anymore). I put up the D&D 3.5 screen from Dragon Magazine (with panels added with some of the Arcana Unearthed information), but I almost never reference it. I look at it once or twice to check if an action provokes AOO but that’s about it. Skill DCs are occaisionally looked up, but I found myself looking in the rules instead of the screen.

    Cold Iron has some table lookup, but it all fits on one sheet and is easier to have in a sheet protector sitting on my lap desk. Perhaps if I went back to play around a table, I could print the Cold Iron tables in a large font and put them on a multi-page screen. But I really don’t feel the need to hide behind a screen anymore.

    I liked the Kingoms of Kalimar screen for having flip over panels. That seems a better way to expand real estate without the GM needing his own dining room table for the screen. I copied the idea when I added a page to my 3.5 screen.

    Frank

  2. Martin on January 24th, 2006 6:59 am

    The Kalamar screen (and its ancestor, the HackMaster screen) are incredibly cool.

    The one downside, for me, is that it’s a lot harder to clip things to them than with an ordinary screen — I mainly use my screens as a place to keep notes, lists and other items.