MAC: Valuable software for tabletop gaming?

[Erywin]

Heyas folks,

So just picked up a new Macbook Pro and an IPod Touch for a company I am starting, but I am also looking at getting back into DMing some of the new 4e stuff. I am currently a DDI subscriber and have DMed quite a few 3.5e games in the past without much computer help.

I am looking for some Mac friendly software to help with the campaign I want to run, namely the 4e version of War of the Burning Sky. I am hoping to be playing at a friends place and he has a projector hooked into a networked Mac mini, though doubt I can get him to get it to project onto the table for game sessions.

Any tips and software suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thanks for the help in advance.

Cheers,
E

[Nylanfs]

I believe that most of the software from the guys that did MapTools is MAC. Of course since I don't a) have a mac and b) don't use Maptools that often I could be mistaken.

PCGen also works on a Mac, draw back being that a) you have to download the new 4e starter kit data files and b) you have to enter all of the data yourself.

[heruca]

You could get a GM Client for Battlegrounds and install it on a portable external hard drive or on a flash drive. Or just install it on your new MacBook Pro and take it with you to the game sessions.

Either way, you'd also want to get a Floating License that the Mac Mini can use to drive the players' view on the projector.

[Trevalon Moonleirion]

I'm a huge fan of Circus Ponies' Notebook software. It's a fantastic way to keep track of the goings-on of your campaign, and a pretty solid way of organizing information about your campaign in general. It follows the same organizational principles of a real notebook, but it's got pretty powerful search and indexing features, and clipping features, audio annotation. Lots of neat stuff.


I've been demoing Zengobi's Curio for the past two weeks and have been planning for an upcoming gameday adventure using it. If you at all enjoy brainstorming with mind-maps, and collecting a lot of information into one central spot, it's pretty neat. I think I'm goning to wind up purchasing the software once my demo is up.

There's not too much else I can think of. I run Campaign Cartographer in a Windows virtual machine for the few times I want to mess around with a map from the old Forgotten Realms Atlas, and do the same thing for DDI stuff. It's not an ideal solution, and definitely not something for a DM looking to run off of a laptop battery, but you've got the option. For what it's worth, the Windows 7 RC works pretty well in VMWare Fusion on my MacBook. (I need more RAM, for sure, but it's not too shabby)

Congratulations on your purchase--I think it's a fantastic helper at the game table if you have PDFs of your rule system of choice, or internet access.

One other Mac-thing that I tend to do is have different things on each virtual desktop (Space in OS X terminology). Space 1: Adventure/encounter info; notes on what's happening Space 2: rulebooks Space 3: copies of character sheets.... you get the idea--i'm a big fan of multiple desktops as it makes mutli-tasking a little bit easier.

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

We use GameTable, it's Java so it works on Mac, PC and Linux. It is nothing special and amazing, but it does its job and is free.

Link: http://sourceforge.net/projects/gametable/

[azhrei_fje]

I would second the recommendation to check out MapTool. It's only tool out of a suite of free and open source tools for helping GMs and players with gaming. If you also pick up a campaign framework that fits the game system you're using, a lot of stuff is automated.

A "campaign framework" is a file created by someone to automate the tasks of gaming in a particular rule system. Such a file is important because MapTool supports ALL game systems but doesn't require ANY game system. That means you can use it to play D&D, Savage Worlds, Shadow Run, Backgammon, and Risk. The goal is to provide a tool for gamers, but to let them choose how to use the tool so that it best suits their needs.

[Erywin]

Thanks for all the advice! I have taken a look at running MapTools, just having a few issues on how to run it nicely. Do most folks download it or just run it off the website launch thing? Still fairly new Mac convert so getting used to how things run around here. I have a DDI subscription but also access to a PC that I can use to print out characters and such. Still figuring out where we are playing and if we will have access to the projector or not.

Oh one other question with MapTools, can I use maps from PDF materials as backgrounds for the maps and resize the grids to make them fit? More specifically I am looking at running the 4e version of War of the Burning Sky and wanted to use their maps to play on.

Cheers,
E

[azhrei_fje]

I use the WebStart on my MacBook Pro running Tiger, but I understand that the latest Java update from Apple has broken the WebStart feature (ugh!) so that's rather unfortunate -- the ZIP technique is a pain on the Mac because Apple, in their infinite wisdom, chose not to provide a GUI option for marking a script executable! So running the Launch MapTool-OSX.command file is a pain to do.

Re: the PDF question, you would need to take a screenshot of the PDF image and then import it. What I've done with my Paizo PDFs is to select the background image of the PDF and drag it to my desktop. Using Acrobat Reader 8 (not 9!) this grabs the image and removes all of the room numbers and other text! Paizo did this RIGHT -- and left all that stuff on a separate layer of the PDF making it much easier for us "electronic rpg'ers".

You're really better off asking these questions on the RPTools forum, though.

Oh, and since I didn't put this in my previous post: Standard disclaimer -- I'm the site admin over at RPTools.net Forums • Index page as well as a code contributor, but other than that I'm just a happy customer. (Now I think I'll go add that to my .sig)