Written by: Zachary Velcoff
Intro
Like many TTRPG groups, ours had its first remote session on March 20th, 2020. By the time we returned to in-person play nearly two years later, my players had come to love Czepeku maps. We had to figure out how to incorporate them into in-person play. When two of my players moved out of state (Oz for love, Gilmesh for grad school), we had to adapt our setup to hybrid play as well. This blog will detail a high-level overview of our dungeon setup, with a table custom-built to display Czepeku maps.
The Table
The tabletop, 8’x4’, is special order furniture-grade Baltic birch plywood, the sort used in high-end finishes and aircraft interiors. Kiira, our woodworker, chose this strong ply because she didn’t want it to buckle or warp, especially after cutting a hole in the center for a 50" flatscreen television.
The table legs are 4x4 posts, with 2x4 knee braces. The legs are bolted on so as to be easily removable, in case we ever have to move the table. The TV is supported by 2x4s. Kiira sanded the tabletop, routered its perimeter, and stained all of the wood black cherry.
Bartleby, our handyman, cut a thin ledge around the rectangular hole in the center and set over it a cut sheet of single-strength plexiglass to protect the TV from spills and wayward dice.
The Tech
Willa, our dev, built the PC we use. It has three displays: its own monitor, the tabletop TV, and a second TV, which sits across the dungeon from the DM chair.
The tabletop TV displays the PCs’ view of the maps. We use FoundryVTT, self-hosted in AWS, to display Czepeku battlemaps and tokens. This view is from the perspective of a Foundry user who does not correspond to a particular player but is granted the ability to see what any token owned by every in-person player can see. This way, we ensure that in-person players can see what their characters can, but not what their remote allies can. At the Campaign Connoisseur tier, these battlemaps come pre-configured with walls and lighting, which saves me time as a DM, and deepens my players’ immersion. Whenever possible, I like to use Czepeku’s animated battlemaps, which are also available at this tier and always cause my players’ jaws to drop.
The second TV displays Discord, which our group uses for video chat. Our remote players see us from the perspective of a webcam mounted atop the TV and hear us from a Blue Yeti microphone mounted to a ceiling joist over the middle of the table. Whenever I run a battlemap that has a corresponding Czepeku Scene, I’ll display the Scene from this TV as well, granting my players two perspectives on what their characters see. At the Blade Wielder tier, I can display animated Scenes as looping videos in a media player for that extra visual impact.
For lighting, I hung lanterns containing Philips Hue smart bulbs, which I control from the Hue mobile app on my phone. The app can generate lighting presets based on an image, so I like to match the color schemes of Czepeku maps and scenes for extra immersion.
Conclusion
I hope this blog gave you a good high-level overview of my group’s setup and maybe even inspired you to create your own!
There are things I want to change about our dungeon: actually finishing the basement, attaching cupholders to the table, and configuring a Stream Deck for more seamless control over lighting, camera focus, and music. One thing I know will stay the same, however, is our use of Czepeku’s art! Czepeku maps and scenes are a vibrant addition to any TTRPG game, whether in-person, remote, or hybrid.
Process Pictures
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