Coreyartus
Explorer
This is for all the DMs out there that don't want to use laptops for gaming. I've discovered something I want to share with you. I may be late to the game, so this stuff may have been around for a while, but I'm excited about it and want to share it.
First off: I don't do virtual gaming. I'm an old fart that plays D&D once a week in-person around a table for the last couple of years. Nothing against VTT, I just prefer seeing my friends in person. I know it has its place and its awesome. It's just not preferred by my group.
Secondly: I don't like playing in-person games where everyone is hiding behind their laptop screens and phones. I played in Adventurers League (and other earlier OP campaigns) specifically because that's not as probable in those situations. I'd postulate the participants are more likely to be there because at some level they choose to enjoy the non-virtual aspects of table top gaming in-person for those situations.
But I've always been a bit jealous of those that had these great set-ups that connected the TV and a computer so they could use Fantasy Grounds or Roll20 or Tabletop Simulator to use maps and fog of war and such. I'd spent hundreds of dollars on printing costs to get maps created so my friends and I could use them with our minis on our table tops. I wasn't interested in the vast array of capacities in those programs--I simply wanted to save money on maps. I didn't want to be constantly referring to a computer, and my players didn't want to do that either.
I make this post because I found an app usable on my own phone that gives me the capacity to have digital mapping without needing to have a laptop intruding on our space, and without having to invest lots of money to make it happen. It's changing our game.
I bought an app for $10:InfinitasDM. Used my own old non-smart TV. Bought a Chromecast device to hook up to its HDMI port for $40. Made a frame from spare wood lying around to rest it on.
Now I have whatever digital maps I want with fog of war for $50. On my iPhone.
There are few bells and whistles in the app--it does more than what I've described--but it's not a huge program you have to invest tons of time in to learn with all kinds of features you have to pay money for. But it does allow me to use maps I download onto my phone from Dropbox or Google Drive, upload them into the app, and hide them with a layer of fog so I can reveal them when we explore. I can still have my players use their own minis on the surface of my TV. They can still use their own dice, their own character sheets, etc. There's not magical initiative rolling program or encounter generating features. No dynamic-lighting. It has tokens we don't use, notation-writing capacity we don't use, even some pre-made adventures we don't use. We still have to lift and replace the tokens every time we need to move the map, and I have to reveal the map manually myself, but it's a whole new world for us.
For $50, I will be able to save hundreds of dollars on printing costs. I can use whatever map I find on the web, because I can scale up or down. It saves everything for me for the next week's game. And I didn't need a laptop. For my group of old-fashioned gamers, it has allowed us to have a new aspect we haven't experienced before.
Anyway, again--I'm probably behind the curve on this news, but I thought I'd share.
First off: I don't do virtual gaming. I'm an old fart that plays D&D once a week in-person around a table for the last couple of years. Nothing against VTT, I just prefer seeing my friends in person. I know it has its place and its awesome. It's just not preferred by my group.
Secondly: I don't like playing in-person games where everyone is hiding behind their laptop screens and phones. I played in Adventurers League (and other earlier OP campaigns) specifically because that's not as probable in those situations. I'd postulate the participants are more likely to be there because at some level they choose to enjoy the non-virtual aspects of table top gaming in-person for those situations.
But I've always been a bit jealous of those that had these great set-ups that connected the TV and a computer so they could use Fantasy Grounds or Roll20 or Tabletop Simulator to use maps and fog of war and such. I'd spent hundreds of dollars on printing costs to get maps created so my friends and I could use them with our minis on our table tops. I wasn't interested in the vast array of capacities in those programs--I simply wanted to save money on maps. I didn't want to be constantly referring to a computer, and my players didn't want to do that either.
I make this post because I found an app usable on my own phone that gives me the capacity to have digital mapping without needing to have a laptop intruding on our space, and without having to invest lots of money to make it happen. It's changing our game.
I bought an app for $10:InfinitasDM. Used my own old non-smart TV. Bought a Chromecast device to hook up to its HDMI port for $40. Made a frame from spare wood lying around to rest it on.
Now I have whatever digital maps I want with fog of war for $50. On my iPhone.
There are few bells and whistles in the app--it does more than what I've described--but it's not a huge program you have to invest tons of time in to learn with all kinds of features you have to pay money for. But it does allow me to use maps I download onto my phone from Dropbox or Google Drive, upload them into the app, and hide them with a layer of fog so I can reveal them when we explore. I can still have my players use their own minis on the surface of my TV. They can still use their own dice, their own character sheets, etc. There's not magical initiative rolling program or encounter generating features. No dynamic-lighting. It has tokens we don't use, notation-writing capacity we don't use, even some pre-made adventures we don't use. We still have to lift and replace the tokens every time we need to move the map, and I have to reveal the map manually myself, but it's a whole new world for us.
For $50, I will be able to save hundreds of dollars on printing costs. I can use whatever map I find on the web, because I can scale up or down. It saves everything for me for the next week's game. And I didn't need a laptop. For my group of old-fashioned gamers, it has allowed us to have a new aspect we haven't experienced before.
Anyway, again--I'm probably behind the curve on this news, but I thought I'd share.
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