Pyramid Review
Combat Pad
Published by Open Mind Games
8.5" × 11" pad with steel core, 26 punch-out magnets (eight blue PC labels, eight black enemy labels, four green NPC labels, two "Next Round" labels, two "Round" arrows, two "Turn" arrows); wet and dry erase surface; $16.95
Bookkeeping remains one of the toughest tasks in a GM's job description, and combat probably ranks right at the top of that. You have over a dozen participants acting at a dozen moments, and that doesn't even include the bystanders. It won't solve all your woes, but the Combat Pad is a big step in the right direction.
Who does what when is secondary only to who's suffered how much damage for troublesome accounting. The pad is a flat cardboard plate, 8.5" × 11" (so it fits neatly in with all the rest of your paperwork), with a metal insert. A magnetic sheet is included, with labels and markers stamped into it. Punched out, these become nametags to be arranged on the pad in initiative order . . . simple enough so far.
If the magnetic feature isn't nifty enough, the entire product has been covered with a wet and dry erasable surface. Either type of marker can be used to write on it, and the lettering wipes away easily. This lets you scribble the characters' names on the labels (the tighter your pen writes, the better), as well as making notes about ongoing effects on the pad itself (like the aforementioned damage to combatants). A small arrow marked Turn points . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: April 13, 2007
Copyright © 2007 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.