GM Screen not great

[Jarec]

Well just got my GM's screen and overall not that impressed.

Firstly the artwork. The two centre panels are just featureless brown sludge and one of the end panels is just white with a rune and the RQII logo on it. Not very interesting for the players to look at. If you are expecting something on par with the MRQI GM screen art you will be very dissapointed.

The inside is almost as bad. Lots of space taken up with things like armour types and costs tables but nothing at all about Combat Maneuvres. A nice summary of the effects of the different combat maneuvres would have been way more useful than most of this stuff.

To be honest about the only tables on there that are of any real use are the combat situation modifiers, the fumble tables and the sorcery manipulation table. 2 pages out of 4 at best.

And if you like having things like the armour types and costs on your GM's screen (why would you?) then it still doesn't have the enc values on it.

overall 3/10 - to be honest I probably will create my own GM reference sheets and not use the screen at all, or better still print of the tables that are actually useful to a GM and glue them on the inside of my old MRQI screen.

Of course this is all just my oppinion

 

[almightygm]

The advertisement says, "With stunning RuneQuest artwork facing the players." So there is a rune and then two brown panels? Is there any artwork at all facing the players? The omission of the Combat Maneuvers is a little odd.

 

[Jarec]

The only thing I would call artwork is the Dragon picture that I've seen on some of the RQII adverts. It's on the LH side panel if you were a player looking at the screen. One of the ones you are unlikely to see properly basically.

The melee weapons table takes up a whole panel and once Arms & Equipment is out it will be out of date anyway.

I really wish that companies would take the time to ask players what tables they would like to have on GM screens before they print them, I've rarely seen one that entirely satisfies my needs. Certainly the level of content on the MRQI screen was a lot better choice. Even the font on this one looks bigger limiting the amount of content even further, the armour table for instance takes up the entire width and is mostly whitespace.

 

[Jarec]

I've taken some pictures of the screen if anyone is interested in seeing what you get.

http://www.filefront.com/15702845/PICT2006.JPG
http://www.filefront.com/15702855/PICT2010.JPG
http://www.filefront.com/15702861/PICT2011.JPG
http://www.filefront.com/15702867/PICT2012.JPG

 

[master of reality]

Listing armor costs on a GM screen is very irritating. When will a character suddenly encounter a shopping mall where they must choose the best armor at the lowest price. Screens should only contain info about combat, magic, and adventuring ( i.e. illumination, drowning, lifting heavy objects, suffocation, etc.). Thanks Jarec, for telling us about the GM screen. I'll do what you essentially did and glue the important tables on my "obsolete" MRQ1 GM screen.

 

[gran_orco]

Could you tell us dimensions, please?

 

[Ravelli]

A nice summary of the effects of the different combat maneuvres would have been way more useful than most of this stuff.

:shock: That's a staggering omission! How disappointing.

If you're cobbling your own GM screen together try this customisable one. Very practical.

 

[Malakor]

The quality or use of the exterior artwork is subjective, and since my players seldom see the back of my board, I don't think it will be an issue at my table.

The only real problem as such that I see with the armor table, is that it appears to take up the entire width of the board when the tables could have been pulled in more tightly and something added beside it, at least, that's what I would have done.

Jarec, I can't tell from your photos (and I'm in the US, so mine hasn't arrived yet), is there the summary table for number of maneuvers gained (success vs failure table)?

I will likely make some modifications to my board to suit my needs, or build one of my own based off of it.

Ravelli. . . glad to see Studio 2 has those boards back in, I was wanting one sometime back and finally got the plant manager where I work to have the boys put me 3 of them together from the description and sketch I did for him (I work in a printing company, so I usually make my own GM Screens and our plant manager is used to my projects. . .I gave him a pair of four foot wide maps of my game world to mount for me next week, one is going on the wall of my office at work, the other on the wall of my study at home)

 

[Jarec]

Dimensions are the same as the previous MRQ sceeen and it's on the same heavy card stock.

No table of combat maneuvers gained I'm affraid.

 

[Malakor]

Thanks Jarrec. . . .guess I'll be printing that out immediately and taping it over that big, honkin' RQII logo

 

[mwsasser]

Unfortunately I have to agree. After being as impressed as I was with the updated MRQ2 main book... what a let down.

 

[gran_orco]

If anyone can do tables to paste over the screen, please, share them. :roll:

 

[Malakor]

I'll be printing the Combat Maneuvers sheet that Mr. Sprange provided and taping it, hinge-fashion on mine, probably over the weapons stats on the right side.

If I see any additional tables that I feel a need to change, I'll be happy to share pdf's of them, but with the exceptions of what's on the CM sheet, and a couple of what to me are minor formatting issues that I mentioned above, I'm happy with my screen. I may see things that I want to change as I use it, but that's typical for me :lol:

 

[Jarec]

Maybe we should create a wish list of what should have been on the GM's screen.

Personally I would like to see:

Combat Maneuvers
Fatigue
Humanoid hit locations
Fire, Heat and Cold

 

[gran_orco]

Movement tables
Inanimate Objects table
Illumination & Darkness (although this has disappeared)
Food & Lodging table
Casting magic situational modifiers

 

[NulSyn]

I just got mine in the mail and I am a little disappointed too. Its still very usable to me, and not nearly as bad as I was expecting due to this thread but I do have a few issues. I think they already have all been mentioned.

One whole panel towards the players is what I thought would be the product information "paper sheet". Instead its an actual part of the screen. When I realized it was not a piece of paper coming off and it was actually part of the screen, my jaw dropped at how bad that is.

The quality of the screen material is wonderful.

The artwork on the players side(minus the product sheet :? ) is nice for me.

I wish the armor table had been updated to have the missing info.

Really needs a Combat Maneuver List; I honestly don't understand how this got to the production phase without it.

 

[Jarec]

I ran my first game last night since getting the screen and I spent more time hunting through the rulebook than I spent looking at the screen. Asside from combat Maneuvres, falling and inanimate objects were situations that arose that I hadn't planned for in my scenario preparation that would have been nice to have instantly to hand.

 

[dbhoward]

Thanks everyone for all the info and especially the photos.

I know what not to ask for for my birthday now.

 

[phantomwhale]

Thanks for the share - just saved myself 10 quid I think. It's not a total disaster, but I can see it just not getting used. Besides, I threw at least 80 quid at MRQI products before finding the core system broken and never playing with any of them !

Think it might be time to cobble up some inserts for my savage worlds GM screen - great idea of providing the core screen (in landscape format too, to allow me to see my players occasionally) and allowing custom inserts for both sides.

 

[Jarec]

Having now seen the Arms & Equipment guide with it's fantastic Weapons and Armour table at the back I'm even more astonished that whoever put this screen together thought it was more useful to fill half of it with redundant poorly produced tables rather than including things like Combat Maneuvres. Save your money and buy the A&E guide instead.