DMing from a Laptop

[reanjr]

- Where do you put the "adventure" (event and location descriptions)? Word? Other?
- How do you manage NPC's and Monsters? Excel?
- How do you manage (unidentified) magic items?
- What about maps (for you)?
- What about visual aids (for the players)?
- What other programs/aids do you have installed
- Do you use a Dice roller instead of dice?
- Do you still use a DM's screen?
- Anything else?

Word is great for anything you are going to print out or have to read large blocks of text from. But it's horrible for general use and notetaking. It's just overkill. Use notepad. Better yet use Microsoft OneNote. It's absolutely designed for that sort of thing. Outlook notes can be good for this as well, but it tends to be a bit slow. Opera's notes feature is really good for this sort of thing.

For NPCs and monsters, again, I use Notepad, but Excel could be useful if you like that sort of thing. It's just a bit slower to navigate than plain text. The same note programs as before would all be useful.

Unidentified magic items get their own .txt file that I quickly alt-tab to. If it's a charged item then I can keep track of charges without missing a bit.

Maps for me usually only consist of the barest accuracy in drawing, so I just use something that lets me draw (MS Paint). MS OneNote would probably handle this really well, too. For better maps or lots of them, Photoshop Elements is reasonably priced ($100, I believe) and should do everything you need.

I don't use visual aids usually. If I do, I usually just send my players a URL for the picture.

I always use dice rollers when I have a computer in front of me. It's way easier. I wrote a custom one that exactly suits my purpose (it has a button for each die type, left click rolls the die and gives a result, right click adds the result to the current total, there is a text box for typing in something like d4+2d6+5 or anything like that).

I also use several versions of the SRD so I never have to use a book. I also at one time had a wonderful spell management program I wrote that let you search for instance, for any spell with the Fire descriptor, that required no expensive material components, between levels 2 and 5, with no saving throw. Great for quickly making an NPC spellcaster. You could create a spells known list, a spells memorized list, etc. and just click a spell to remove it from the list as it was cast. Unfortunately, I lost that program somewhere... along with the XML file of all the spells...

Now that you've made me think about it, I really should work on an app designed for keeping notes and stuff. That would be nice...

 

[Fenes]

I use a laptop during game. On it are the following documents:
- My Home-brew regional sourcebooks. Each is a word document containing geographical information as well as NPCs, hyperlinked. So if the players enter a town's noble quarter and I got a location there, it will have links to the NPCs met there, making for easy reference. Same goes for NPCs themselves - links to friends and foes are in their entries. The sourcebook grows mostly during the campaign, I add new stuff while I prepare an adventure.
- Another Word document containing the adventure notes, and the adventures before that (I usually start a new file when the page count reaches 100 or so).
- A list of random names fitting for the current location.
- A Word document showing the PCs, with stats and equipment
- The bookmarked SRD
- Tons of PDFs for easy access (search!) during games.

I print out the adventure notes, and track initiative and HPs on them with pen notes, and my notes during the session which I use for the campaign history also go on those pages. I roll real dice.

 

[Zappo]

I use Word for adventures, Notepad for taking notes, a dice roller, and calculator. I don't use a DM screen.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

That's an absolutely cool idea. The only problem I foresee if burning is out relatively quickly as gaming sessions can easily run 4-8 hours at a stretch. That's a long time to have it running...

 

[Jupp]

Well thats roughly 250 game sessions considering that the lamp runs for 2000 hours before it fails. But most of the time those lamps go much longer than 2000 hours. A new lamp costs what? 400$? Thats not too much money if you have 5 people sharing the price or so....

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

I downloaded this but I can't seem to figure out how it works. The cells where all the rolls should appear all have ?NAME? in them? Is there something in Excel I have to turn on for this to work?

You have to install the complimentary macros in Excel. Just go into the "Tools" menu to the "Complimentary Macros" option (I might have the names wrong since I use a french version of Excel). Install them all (you don't need the Office CD) and the necessary function (RANDBETWEEN()) will install itself automatically.

AR

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

By the way, thanks for everyone for their input, and a special thanks to Mark @ CMG

AR

 

[Keepiru]

You have to install the complimentary macros in Excel. Just go into the "Tools" menu to the "Complimentary Macros" option (I might have the names wrong since I use a french version of Excel). Install them all (you don't need the Office CD) and the necessary function (RANDBETWEEN()) will install itself automatically.

AR

In Microsoft Office XP I found it under "Tools -> Add-Ins" Put a checkmark next to "Analysis Toolpack". I needed the Office XP CD to install the option.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HP052092301033.aspx


Just wanted to say, that projector + the NWN editing tools is an awesome idea!

 

[reveal]

Took me forever (search feature is slooooooooooooooooooooooooooow) but I found the thread I was looking for in the Software section.

Buttercup asked what software should be on a DM's laptop. Good thread.

http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=55794

 

[XCorvis]

- Where do you put the "adventure" (event and location descriptions)? Word? Other?
- How do you manage NPC's and Monsters? Excel?
- How do you manage (unidentified) magic items?
- What about maps (for you)?
- What about visual aids (for the players)?
- What other programs/aids do you have installed
- Do you use a Dice roller instead of dice?
- Do you still use a DM's screen?
- Anything else?

I use a program called KeyNote to keep track of all my adventure data. It's just a glorified RTF editor that has a tree-type layout of individual pages. I've also seen it called a heirarchical note pad. I actually dislike the program (it's bloated and weird), but at it's basic level it does what I want, and it's free. I set up nodes (essentially a separate document) for each character and their history, each adventure plan, each adventure log, nodes for NPCs, monsters, allies, house rules, etc... It's quite handy to have them all in one document, and I can sort things however I wish. If a node gets too full, I can break it into sub-nodes and it gets easy to find things again.

For unidentified magic items, I can just flip back to the area they found them in.

Currently for combat management, I'm just using text stat blocks in KeyNote, and index cards for combat. I scribble HP and AC on the cards, because they get used far more. I'm going to see about using excel next - it sounds very useful. I'm also using traditional methods for mapping - graph paper for draft maps, and a very large battlemat for combat. I haven't used any other visual aids yet, but I expect I'll be printing them. (We have an excellent large format printer at work that I can occasionally abuse for personal gain - 36" glossy Eberron overland map? No problem.)

Other programs - I've tried a couple stat block pasters, which are kind of handy, but I think I'd prefer a text file. I have pdfs for easy access (searchable is great), and I use Andargor's offline searchable SRD ( http://www.andargor.com/ ). If I was online might consider using the Hypertext SRD ( http://d20srd.org/index.htm ), which I also like quite a bit, and has spell and monster filtering and an encounter level calculator.

I would like a dice roller, but I haven't found one I like yet. I'm still using regular dice and I don't think I'll ever stop completely. (It's so much faster to just grab a d20 and roll.) I'm still using the dm screen because of the dice and the index cards, but I don't really need it too much. I'd like to get one that actually has useful info printed on the inside, for once.

One of my players bought the Battlebox, which has these handy little cards that detail combat actions as simply as possible. I'd love to get a version for my computer, but it would have to be free. I suppose I could just make my own from the SRD.