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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Clint_L" data-source="post: 9230005" data-attributes="member: 7035894">Here's how DDB has changed the way I play when I am running games for students after school:1. Everything is on my laptop. Except dice; I enjoy rolling dice so I bring a bag and share them with any students who want that experience; most prefer digital dice.So instead of carting around a huge, heavy bin, with books, terrain, miniatures and the whole 9 yards, I just have my laptop, which I have anyway. And the players can't forget their stuff because they just have to have their laptop or a phone, which they do because they are at school anyway. And even if they did, I can just bring up their characters on my laptop. Overall efficiency is much higher, which means we can start playing right away, no muss, no fuss.2. Organization of materials is much more streamlined. Instead of a bunch of books and sheets to sort through, I just have a bunch of tabs open on my browser. Typically, I have one for the adventure, two for maps (one which only I can see, and one which is shared with the characters and shows what they can see, lets them move their characters around, etc.), one for characters, one for looking up rules as needed, and the encounter builder/manager.3. The game runs so much faster. If a random encounter happens, for example, it takes me a moment to create it using the encounter builder, hit run, and ask everyone to roll initiative. Everything is tracked, so I know exactly whose turn it is, what the character and creature abilities are, can get more detail information by hovering over, say, a spell, and so on.4. Everything is saved and easy to resume. Our last game ended mid-combat (parent pick-up happens when it happens). Before the Winter Break. It'll be a month between sessions. And I'll be able to open up that combat on DDB, hit "resume", and there it is. The map still has the tokens on it. We will instantly be able to continue the battle for Wave Echo Caves.5. All of the players have access to all of my rulebooks for their own games. If they want to run their own game over the break, they can. In fact, because we are a school club DDB gifted us a copy of every single book up through Rime of the Frostmaiden when I registered with them (the new programme is not quite so generous, but does include all the core books).School games are 90 minute sessions, once per week. Most players are learning the game as they play. Without DDB, it would be very hard to get much actual play time. I can't tell you how much time it saves during the game, and my prep time is more than halved.My home games are pretty much the same, except I am a miniatures and Dwarven Forge guy, so we don't use the maps feature on DDB as much, and all my players prefer using actual dice. And we play for 3-4 hours.</blockquote>

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