DM Initiative Tracker: Track player status and progress Paperback – October 6, 2018

Somewhat hesitantly, I bought this instead of the traditional, good ol' graph paper spiral notebook hoping that it will be a nicer way to prepare for my upcoming campaign. Why the hesitation? because there were no images of the inside of the book.Well, now I know why, and y'all are welcome. Whoever designed this has clearly never run a d20 campaign.Several points:* half the pages are less usable from the get-go. In a bound (non-spiral) book, the actual initiative tracker HAS to be on the more accessible "side" of the book - the OUT part - in EVERY page. Why? because it's the "dynamic" area of the page, where things change the most. In this case, all pages are oriented the same, so odd ones have the initiative next to the binding (less comfortable to write into), and the even ones have it mid-page (easier and better).* same amount of space for character info and actual initiative tracking? seriously, what on earth? character info is static and "small". The init tracker has to hold the inits, char/monster names, HP, and (to be really useful) their dynamic conditions. It needs far more room than a couple of numbers per character. Could easily have fit the char info at the bottom of the page instead.* the big one: generally speaking, an init tracker does not have one line per init, for the simple reason that multiple chars/monsters can inhibit the same line... you would like to have groupings, like 1-5. 6-10. 11-15 and so on, with blanks for the actual init numbers within each group, and if you really want to go the extra mile, MORE THAN FIVE lines per middle grouping of five (for same-init issues). Thus a great tracker would have 7 groups (up to 0, 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-20, 21-25, 26+), with the five middle groups having 6-7 lines per, for a total of 40-45 lines, with big bold line-separators between the grouping for easy visual reference. This is the one that convinced me that whomever created this had very little (if any) experience running real games.I give it two stars instead of one in acknowledgement of the book quality - the cover is slick, it has a nice tactile feel, and the pages and printing are of good quality as well. Designed properly, I would be filling it in right now with the encounters for the first session. Sadly, it shall instead remain unused on my shelf unless I find someone who wants it, or ultimately discard it in a few years when I discover it gathering dust.Save your money. You can easily do better by downloading freely available combat trackers from the Interwebs. My search for a nice one in booklet form continues.

Any RPG that requires you to keep an initiative order over the range of the combat as to which creature or character goes when, this is a great way to keep track. There's a lot of pages, definitely enough for a whole campaign. Works great with any version of D&D or Pathfinder, and the many D20 style games, and probably lots of other games that use a similar way to track initiative. Lots of space to write notes in or add quick-ref stats in for each PC. I found this VERY useful in my D&D 5e game I ran yesterday.

One thing I would add to the book is a place for hit points. The rest is great the way it is. Sturdy and cool design.