PDAs at the game table

[Eternalknight]

Following on from a thread in General about laptops at the game table, does anyone use a PDA? If so, what do you use it for (playing / DMing), what sort of info do you track and what type of programs do you use?

I have a Palm myself and am curious to hear your answers.

 

[MythosaAkira]

Up until recently, I've used my Palm (Zire 72) as a DMing aid. I used programs I wrote for keeping track of calendar time and weather, basic PC info, critical hits, name generation (with TableSmith eXpress), and tracking/assigning XP.

I'm going to be switching back to a laptop after my next campaign begins, however. The Palm worked well, but for some of the things I want to put together it'll be quicker to do them on a laptop rather than develop them for PalmOS.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

Oh heck ya! For me it was almost essential. I bought a copy of Tomeraider and loaded it up with a searchable Spell, Feat, and Monster database. When playing a spellcaster it really earned it's keep especially in the realm of Monster Summoning spells. I also had a neat program that figured Turning Results with the click of the stylus. The only problem is that 3.5 came out and the databases were all written for 3.0. That kind of spelled the end of my Palm Pilot usage.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I have the SRD on my Palm, but still find it quicker to look things up in books.

I should probably try using my laptop at the game table sometime.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I have the SRD on my Palm, but still find it quicker to look things up in books.

I should probably try using my laptop at the game table sometime.

I've got the SRD (A linked html version) on my palm, using Plucker. Works great. Much, much quicker than looking anything up in the books, especially since I can do a whole document search.

I also have a spreadsheet with my spellbook on it.

Anyone found a good character generator for the palm? Or any useful DM aids (I did find A DM aid, but it's too smart for it's own good, and doesn't work).

 

[MythosaAkira]

Or any useful DM aids.

You might find TableSmith eXpress / Namemaker useful. It comes with tables to generate Angel/Demon Names, Arabic Names, Book Titles, Celtic Names, Dwarf/Norse Names, Elf Names, Fantasy Names, Fantasy Names, Herb Names, Lizardfolk Names, Lovecraftian Names, Orc Names, Orc Tribe Names, Organization Names, Shakespearean Insults, Tavern Names, and Town Names. You can also edit the tables and import your own.

I have a few other Palm utils on that page as well, but they're fairly specific to my world or campaign. The XP Tracker can be useful if you use the alternate XP system from Unearthed Arcana.

Personally, I haven't found that many good DM aids for the Palm out there. Or, rather, I haven't found many DM aids at all, which is why I wrote my own.

 

[maransreth]

So far everyone has mentioned software for the Palm brand of PDAs, what about PocketPC?

I have an XDA and it uses PocketPC, not Palm OS. I did find a spell database for it, but it was 3.0 and wasnt compatible for some reason with my version of PocketPC.

 

[diaglo]

my hat of electronics at the table knows no limits.



diaglo "once had an electronic D&D board game back in the early 80's" Ooi

 

[Seeten]

Assuming you have PDF books, you can copy and paste sections of the books using Adobe Acrobat Pro. I have my entire spellbook in a pdf form, per spell, makes the whole thing search free. Just flip through the 12 pages of spells in pdf.

 

[Plane Sailing]

My Palm wouldn't be any good for DMing, but I used to use it for character sheets - I'd design them in Excel and sync them using tinysheet (and latterly documents to go so I could use 320x480 full screen).

The disadvantage vis a vis paper was that you haven't got it on all the time and you have less area to display stuff on. The advantage was on automatic calculation. Get buffed or a bonus from a spell? write the number in the appropriate box or update your attribute and see everything else change magically. For my barbarian character I had a little tick box that turned rage on. For my sorcerer character I had a second sheet will all her spells, keyed to automatically display the appropriate ranges, durations, DCs etc according to CHA and level.

Neat and handy, but it's now been replaced by my laptop at the gaming table.

Cheers