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Message: <blockquote data-quote="drakhe" data-source="post: 1585573" data-attributes="member: 4930">Hmm must be my longest post to date... I started using a laptop at the table because of two reasons: I wanted quick lookup of reference texts and I wanted an option to do certain types of roll's without the PC's noticing anything (like for instance the tell-tale ratle of dice behind the screen, I never liked the whole concept of the occasional dummy roll to keep 'm guessing, and, anyways, my players allways think something bad is going to happen). I'm thinking of stuff like hide, move silent, disguise and the oposed skills like spot, listen, ... . So I ended up writing my own little program (called QuickSpot ;-) ) that could do about 5 or 6 skills and some neat stuff like choose one random <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f44e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt="(n)" title="Thumbs down    (n)"  data-smilie="23"data-shortname="(n)" />pc or answer a yes/now/maybe question (allways been jealous of my adnd dm's yes/no/maybe dice...). At that time, RPM, DMF & CS were beginning to carve a niche for themselves and WOTC had commisioned eTools and PCGEN became very popular. eToold/PCGEN were checked for character developemt (I ended up usingf eTools but if PCGEN had been at that time where it is now, I don't know which way I would have gone) So (since I was lacking time to expand my own QuickSpot) I started to look at these other progies. first off: RPM: liked what it did, had the combat manager and did the skill rolling thin (and much more) but I never realy liked the interface (a real pitty because I like what the program actualy does, it realy is just the interface and it's just my bad, I know Luke is listening closely to the folks using RPM). Then I looked at CS but never realy got in to it (maybe because after several emails, they never responded to my inquiries, and recently there's not a whole lot going on (the site seems in a stalemate))Finaly I checked out DM Genie and imediatly loved it. The interface much more to my liking and with enough of the features I would have liked. So for some time it was my app of choice (but also read at the end for an important observation). Then recently (because of a news item about an update on the ENWORLD front page) I again looked at DMF (dismissed it early because of lack of features I liked/needed) and it immediatly was apparant thet Todd had done a lot of work in DMF. Right now, it seems to be less feature laden as the others, but it's doing what I want it to do and the inclusion of tablesmith and a reference database for stuff like spells have me looking closer. DMF might just beat DM Genie. So basicaly I like all these progies. At the moment I'm using DM Genie, but (and thats actualy a good thing) most of the folks working on these programs are so dedicated and update so frequently that I may have to choose again soon. Now for the important observation: even tho I like these programs and actualy would like to use more of the features actively during play, I am (both as DM and player) usualy deep into character and sometimes the laptop, my notes, yes (heaven forbid) even dice get in the way. I've also noted that some players just don't like anybody/anything make rolls for them (one of the rolls I've always done on the laptop is initiative and, even after doing it the laptop way for almost 2 years now, one of my players recently remarked "so were not allowed to roll our own dice anymore???"</blockquote>

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