A Flight of iPads

[nedjer]

Just done blogging about trying a full 'rules replacement' with a bunch of (mainly borrowed iPads) round the table.

The first 30-45 minutes was much playing with the toys to get setup. After that it was surprising just how totally they took the place of hardbacks. Previous single tablet trials were all passing it around and trying new stuff; but apart from some in-game messaging and a few diagrams they might as well have been books with bookmarks.

Players are really fired up about it and after one each - want one for each PC basically; though nearly everyone's going to wait for an Android Honeycomb at £200 or so rather than blow cash on an iPad2.

Any other reports on flights of iPads and the like? Similar positives or something negative we ain't come across yet?

 

[Morrus]

I sometimes use my iPad when running a game - mainly just for PDFs and quick Compedium searches, though, rather than any applications.

 

[Steel_Wind]

I'm waiting on the iPad 2, as the 3G support in the current model does not support the AWS spectrum which I need where I live for reasonably inexpensive wireless 3G access. Data rates in Canada are otherwise insanely expensive.

Adds AWS? Then I'm all over it.

Two others in the group have iPads and use them as .pdf readers at the table. Mixed reaction, but the lack of the clamshell screen getting in the way of players' faces is a big plus.

The most obvious iPad App is a fully drag and drop and, look and feel wise, complete clone of the GameMastery Combat Pad. When this is released as an App? I'm all over that, too.

 

[falcarrion]

How useful an Ipad or Android tablet depends on how you want to use it and the apps you can use. There are character sheets, spell books, initative trackers,
and apps to help run a game if your a Dm. It also depends on the type of game your playing. Right now I would give the edge to the Ipad.

 

[Janx]

so what apps did you use?

What app for viewing PDFs?

On SW's comment about 3g:
Why aren't you using a real wifi connection where your playing? I got no clue what Canada's like, though i do have some friends in rural places, but if you got internet, a wifi hub is $50 on top of that.

 

[falcarrion]

I use I4e for my character sheet. I do have dice rollers but prefer rolling my own. For pdfs I use good reader. I use table top initiative tracker. I'm checking out DMTool, which I recently down loaded. I also use D20 rules, rpg sheet, Imonster srd, Ispells SRD, Spellbook for when I'm playing 3.5.
When ever a new one comes out I like to try and see if I like it.
I recenty got animal companion which worked fine but needs a little work in grammar. Otherwise it does what it is suppose to do.

basically I'm a DnD game app junkie...lol

 

[nedjer]

so what apps did you use?

What app for viewing PDFs?

Tried PDFs before with GoodReader and they work OK-ish, but the idea's to get to a level of ease of use that's convenient, fast and gives access to browser features/ rapid multitasking.

Using a live html version of the game and Safari was all that took, as persistent cookies, css image replacement and css styling in the latest version of the game makes the fairly large rule set download into Safari fairly fast. Even the interactive charts were fast when online.

However, that ain't enough, as (whatever the kit) running online means there are some (modest) data costs, a little lag and the need to create an exception to prevent having to download again when you clear your browser cache.

Most importantly, there's also a lack of 'ownership' in terms of having your own, possibly custom, rule set on your discs to do with as you like.

So, with costs, access, speed and ownership in mind; saving the game as html or .doc for offline reading, searching and editing was what led to the enthusiast reaction. Offline clean html wasn't quickish, it was fast and, therefore, convenient. In addition, the player's love the customisation where they're looking at the same rules, but one's got the Midnight black styling with little animated mummies stomping around and another has pics of Arthurian scenes on a zoomed text setting . . .

Goodreader saves Safari's webpages as one of it's lesser known features, but there are a few other inexpensive offline readers on the iStore.

 

[Steel_Wind]

so what apps did you use?

What app for viewing PDFs?

On SW's comment about 3g:
Why aren't you using a real wifi connection where your playing? I got no clue what Canada's like, though i do have some friends in rural places, but if you got internet, a wifi hub is $50 on top of that.

You misunderstand. I have Wifi at home and work. I live on the edge of -- and work in -- Toronto. LA, Chicago and New York aside, it doesn't get LESS rural in North America

I don't have an iPad currently - although two members of our group do.

I have a 1+ hour commute -- both ways -- to work and I take public transportation into the city (and out) every day. I will get an iPad 2 with AWS spectrum support so that I can surf on my commute at reasonable data rates. The cost of data wireless transmission in Canada is insanely high on the large providers. Probably five times the cost it is in most large cities in the USA. (Long story)

If I used an iPad 1.0 on Rogers Wireless data rates on that commute, my data bill would be *easily* $200-300+ a month. Not happening.

With AWS spectrum support on the iPad 2, I can use a modded SIM card from Wind Mobile - and that data cost will drop to $25 a month for unlimited bandwidth - which is a price I can more than live with.

I have wireless hubs at both work and home -- but my decision to get an iPad is based upon its value-in-use on my commute. It's not there yet -- but soon should be.

 

[Janx]

You misunderstand. I have Wifi at home and work. I live on the edge of -- and work in -- Toronto. LA, Chicago and New York aside, it doesn't get LESS rural in North America

I don't have an iPad currently - although two members of our group do.

I have a 1+ hour commute -- both ways -- to work and I take public transportation into the city (and out) every day. I will get an iPad 2 with AWS spectrum support so that I can surf on my commute at reasonable data rates. The cost of data wireless transmission in Canada is insanely high on the large providers. Probably five times the cost it is in most large cities in the USA. (Long story)

If I used an iPad 1.0 on Rogers Wireless data rates on that commute, my data bill would be *easily* $200-300+ a month. Not happening.

With AWS spectrum support on the iPad 2, I can use a modded SIM card from Wind Mobile - and that data cost will drop to $25 a month for unlimited bandwidth - which is a price I can more than live with.

I have wireless hubs at both work and home -- but my decision to get an iPad is based upon its value-in-use on my commute. It's not there yet -- but soon should be.

ah. that's why I asked. Net access on the commute is a different problem than net access while gaming (assuming gaming is as somebody's house).

I have an iPad 1 with just WiFi. Its good enough for at home/work, as both places have WiFi. And if one of my more primitive friend's didn't have a WiFi hub, but had internet, I'd get him one because $50 to put a firewall/DNS/DHCP/router/switch/WiFi HAP on his unsecure single connection DSL/Cable Modem is worth it for a million reasons.

 

[mattcolville]

The *potential* for the iPad or something like it is pretty phenomenal. With a front-facing camera, which we'll see in the next rev, you could run the whole table using ARG. Though most of the ARG apps I've seen so far are pretty dodgey.

If the [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tq0JKXiTwUg"]Combat Manager[/ame] ran on the iPad, that would be colossal. A genuinely unbeatable combination of app functionality and form factor.

Right now, as a PDF reader, it's good. One HUGE advantage is searchable PDFs. I have my Ptolus PDF on my iPad and it's 1,000 times more useful than the actual Ptolus book. Not only is it, obviously, lighter and easier to carry around, but the ability to search for whatever you need means you could really RUN Ptolus with it and trick your players into thinking you'd read the book.

UNFORTUNATELY and I put that in app cap to draw attention to it, there are problems with the Dungeon PDFs.

IF you are running D&D via a VTT like Fantasy Grounds, then the Dungeon PDFs are great. Tactical maps can just be dragged into the appropriate folder, and viola! Instant battlemap!

Since the tokens are stored in a separate, transparent, layer, when you copy the image you just get the battlemap, not the tokens. Which is what you want. Otherwise the players would SEE the tokens and you'd have to photoshop them out first. Brilliant. Really, really useful for us playing online.

However, that same PDF will look balls on the iPad because the iPad can't render those transparent layers. Doesn't matter if you're using Dropbox's PDF Reader, Goodreader, FastPDF, it's an iPad problem.

So on the iPad--if you were trying to use it to run the game in person--all you see are a bunch of tokens floating in whitespace. You can't see the tactical map behind it.

Adding to this is the annoying fact that WotC has not used the same method across all issues. Sometimes the map and tokens are baked into the same image, sometimes the tokens are in their own transparent overlay.

I can't really think of a fix, other than to just publish both Player and GM tactical maps in every Dungeon mag. If they do all the tactical maps with transparencies, then it's awesome for VTTs but bad for iPads. If they bake all the layers into one image, it sucks for VTTS but is great for iPads.

Maybe someday we'll get a better PDF engine on the iPad, solve the problem.

Edit: sorry, didn't mean to embedd a video. Just wanted to post the link. /sadface.