What to put on DM laptop?

[Voadam]

SRD for looking up spells, monsters, and class abilities as needed.

Pictures pre selected for NPCs, Monsters, Items, Scenes, etc.

An electronic copy of the player's sheets so you can look up their stuff yourself.

I use www.invisiblecastle.com for online dice rolling.

If you have an electronic copy of your module being able to use a search function is useful.

PDF sourcebooks you plan on using are fine, but I wouldn't make them a high priority.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

Broadband service,
Firefox (or IE7 if you prefer)
A link to the Hypertext d20 SRD
http://www.d20srd.org/

Open up a separate browser tab for everything you need.

Music would be nice too as would fantasy art depicting what you are describing to the players.

 

[Mean Eyed Cat]

That said, if you're tossing a lot of 10-die fireballs and such around, it might not hurt to get a programmable die roller to do some of the heavy lifting for you.

This is especially true for higher level games. My players are now around 12th level and the encounters I throw at them are requiring more and more dice rolls. The dice roller program on my laptop has been a life saver.

Some of the programs I use on my laptop:

The Everchanging Book of Names
NPC Designer
InnMage
Dice Roller
3.5 SRD by Goodman Games
Campaign Cartographer (I like to show some maps during the game)

Plus various pictures of people and places (I also show during the games), various sound bites (rain falling, dog barking, etc.), a book title name generator (can't remember where I got it), and a spreadsheet program that randomly rolls character's skills (for Spot and Listen checks). I also keep track of all the treasure the characters find on my laptop. Finally, I use my computer to record all the game sessions with a microphone and a recording program.

Recently, my laptop was in the shop getting a new hard drive. So, I had to run our last game without it. I felt totally naked!

 

[cougent]

If I were to use a laptop at the table, and frankly I just don't see that happening, here's some things I would put on it:

This is a new experience for me as well, and as Kid Charlemagne said this is mostly because I am traveling to someone else's house to run the game instead of hosting it at my house as I have done before. (I am really going to miss my big comfy DM chair) I am giving it a try to see if I can make it work for me, and to (grudgingly) start to move into the present / future online world of gaming (even as a DM). I am seeing from the info presented that an Internet connection is going to be important now and in the "4seeable" future. (sorry, I could not resist)

 

[ZombieButch]

I really like using a personal wiki for keeping all my campaign notes. My favorite is 10 Foot Wiki. It's set up for campaign material right out of the gate, so it doesn't require much tweaking (although it's really easy to tweak should you want to).

 

[Nylanfs]

Heya Cougent! Obiously PCGen is a must <points at sig> But I'm sure you knew I would say that one thing you'll find handy is the 5.13+ versions have random NPC generation for use with the RSRD datasets. Plus it has the 1990 US Census name list in it so you can generate quick random names. Plus it has random treasure tables built into the RSRD set also.

Since I'm a player the only things I need to have on my laptop are my pdf character sheets, I use Angargor's searchable SRD, and I use the GMGen client to roll dice.

 

[cougent]

Heya Nylanfs, small Internet isn't it?
Yes PC Gen is a definite and thanks for the news on 5.13, I am still on 5.10 so I need to upgrade already.

All the suggestions have been great, but I have already overwhelmed the poor HDD and will need to upgrade it next week. The sad / funny thing is that I can now get a bigger USB Flash drive than the internal (12 GB) HDD that came with it. Gotta love technology!

 

[masshysteria]

I actually carry everything I need on a flashdrive and plug into a PC. I try to make it as simple as possible.

Open Portable Firefox:
Tab 1 - TiddlyWiki with all your campaign notes. It takes a little bit of time to familiarize yourself with how to use TiddlyWiki, but when you do, it is the best campaign journal/planner/notebook you can get. I even have each players character sheet on the wiki and can open them in new tabs is I want.
Tab 2 - Dice roller. I prefer to roll real dice, but when you need to roll a lot or want to roll secretly, it works well.
Tab 3 - d20srd.org . For $15 you can have a download an offline searchable version.

Attached is an example of a wiki I'm working on for an Eberron adventure and the flash die roller I made and use.

 

[Erithtotl]

Tablets

I use a Motion Computing Tablet PC (pure tablet, not keyboard even). It has completely changed my DM'ing experience. I routinely make it through entire sessions without opening a book. All my notes are in Microsoft OneNote, and I keep my NPCs in Access.

 

[johnsemlak]

Question--when 4e comes out, are we expecting WotC to be giving out searchable versions of their books to D&D insider subscribers? That will be most cool.