This weekend I finally got a chance to run a game using my Awesome GM Box. I thought some of you might be interested to hear how it performed in the wild.
I was running my irregular Paranoia game. Something about being behind a large block of White made it feel all the better – more ominous.
Purely as a screen, it of course did the job. I really liked being able to write character names on the top of the box, corresponding to where the players were sitting. I liked it better than name tents, as those tend to get knocked about. I used Squares map as a chart to keep track of treason, commendations, fines and so on. The card slots were great for holding notes that had been passed to me (as folded cards, so they hung in plain sight). The Hex tokens were used a couple times for chairs and such, and I liked having the hex map out there for drawing quick rooms. All these things were really great.
However, I had to laugh when one of the first things I did was open up my stock Paranoia GM screen to look something up. I did this on more than one occasion. I also found that on the whole, I didn’t make much use of the whiteboard on my side of the screen, save for the Squares map. The glue I chose for the whiteboard wasn’t so hot, which made it a little frustrating in light of the fact that I was hardly using the whiteboard overall. And the strap harness I put together to carry the box feels a little unwieldy.
I think the box in the current form would work great to the side of the gaming table, as more of a supplies depot for handouts and such. I’m mulling over ways to revise the design to make this even better, but my gut feel is that I may want something smaller for the GM screen proper, using the bigger box to hold handouts, props, supplies and the like. Redesign stuff is brewing. I’ll let you know how this goes.





