Recommend me some software

[farscapesg1]

OK, the DM of our group is thinking about starting to use a laptop at the gaming table. Can anyone recommend some good software for the DM (and the players possibly also)? The idea is to try to cut down on the books and paperwork he has to maintain during the game session. He would like something to keep track of combat and character info. Preferrably free.

Any suggestions?

 

[Airwolf]

Farscape,

Follow this link and look for the one called Excel Character Generator. It's great for the players.

The DM can load the characters in a data base and pull them up on his/her screen when needed.

http://www.rpgsheets.com/cgi-bin/arcdb.cgi?action=pop

If the url does not work, just go to rpgsheets.com and look on the left side of the screen for the "Popular Sheets" link.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

I use a piece of software when I'm running D&D called DMGenie ... found at, unsurprisingly enough, http://www.dmgenie.com

The same piece of software, stripped down just for character creation and available at a lesser price and called PlayerGenie is also available there. The beauty of this is that if everybody had a laptop and software, you can trade exported characters back and forth (letting the GM keep an updated version of your PC, and letting the GM to add loot to your PC, including identified and unidentified magical items that the player can't see the actual name of.)

You can run combats, track time both in rounds and globally (which is really nice) including generation of weather and calendar tracking. It only contains core SRD material, but has pretty solid wizards for adding custom classes and the like.

Really, it's the only way I'll run D&D anymore. It's made my games run SO MUCH FASTER. It'll even let you roll init and "begin combat" and set everybody in initative order, letting you perform actions, cast spells, apply conditions and the like as you go down the list. Apply damage from spells, roll mass saving throws, secret Spot and Listen checks, etc etc.

--fje

 

[Plane Sailing]

Moved to software forum!

 

[Plane Sailing]

I know 2 DMs who use DMGenie exclusively, and love it. I tend to use a combination of Word documents for my adventures and Excel for tracking combat, tracking the adventurers xps and loot etc.

- although the last adventure I ran I decided to do it laptop-less and I felt that I engaged with the players more (although they didn't notice any difference, apparently!)

Cheers

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Personally, I use an Excel spreadsheet (self-designed) for rudimentary combat tracking and initiative, and an HTML SRD to look up rules.

 

[Joshua Randall]

DMGenie is the best software I have seen for D&D playing.

 

[Taren Nighteyes]

Check out RPGXPLORER

Just released - the interface is beautiful. So far, it has been easy to use, and the plan is to continue improving/adding to the core software.

The website is www.rpgxplorer.com

Check it out!

Taren Nighteyes

 

[DMFTodd]

There's Combat Managers, programs to run combat, track init, do attack/damage rolls: DM's Familiar, DM Genie, RoleplayingMaster, GMGen (part of PCGen, the only free one on this list)

Those programs also keep track of information for you, specifically geared to D&D. There's also HTML versions of the SRD if you're not using one of those programs.

 

[farscapesg1]

Thanks for all the advice. The DM is checking out DM Genie right now and is pretty impressed