Director's Battle Board Help

This guide pertains to the list of commands available only to the director at the top of the Battle Board. If you need to figure out how to use the Battle Board, please click on the Help link at the bottom of the Battle Board.

Basically....

Directors run their creatures in the same way that players run their characters. Two good things to keep in mind are that you can change the layout of a Battle Board in the middle of the game (using the Edit Battle Board link), and that the general pace of an encounter requires a bouncing back and forth between the Frog and the Battle Board. Here is the general course of events....

1. Chatting about the adventure leads up to an encounter.
2. You click "New Encounter" in the Frog to lay down a separator and give it a name.
3. People inevitably talk a bit about it, but soon the encounter begins.
4. You click "New Round" in the Frog, laying down another separator but also resetting action lights and movement limits.
5. You click "Launch Battle Board" which sends out a link leading to the Battle Board in a separate browser window.
6. Everyone goes to the Battleboard and moves their characters.
7. Once finished for the round, they return to the main chat page and resolve the action.
8. If the encounter continues you click "New Round" starting the process all over again.

Action Lights
These images in the character/creature table are designed to help both Players and Director keep track of who has moved and who has acted.

On the Battleboard.
Movement Light On means that the creature/character still has steps left to move and is not done yet.
Movement Light Off means either the creature/character has moved all they can move that round, or they have moved as much as they have wanted to and turned the light off voluntarily.

In the Frog
Action Light On means the creature/character has not yet acted that round.
Action Light Off means the creature/character has acted and is finished for the rest of the round.

As Director you can toggle the action lights on and off with a click. Players can only voluntarily turn their light off. The same goes for the movement lights, except - turning a players movement light back on does not grant them more steps to move with. It is garnish at best, reserved for mistakes on the player's part.

Edit Battle Board
This link loads the current Battle Board into the editor in a separate browser window. When finished making changes to the map, close the window (or simply leave it), return to the Battle Board and click the Refresh link. This will send a command to all the player's browsers to refresh themselves and show the changes you have made to the map.

Place Creatures
This opens the Battle Board Creature Placer in a separate browser window. Be sure to hit Refresh when finished.

Move Characters
This opens the same page as the Place Creatures link, except now it allows you to move player characters. Once again, hit Refresh when finished.

=Refresh=
This is the all important Refresh command. It is absolutely necessary to getting the changes made with the three prior links to your players. Basically it sends out a message which forces their screens to refresh.

Don't fret about using the Refresh button, it will be barely noticed by your players. At worst it might cause the screen to flicker and computers to explode :-).

Reset Movement
This resets everyone's movement back to zero steps taken. It does not move characters and creatures back to where they were at the start of the round, so it should be used very infrequently if ever (hence the reason why it is at the far end of the screen). It does not need the Refresh link to work.