Utilities/software useful for a DM

[2WS-Steve]

Though the combat managers would simplify and take less time, my characters are mostly new and the few older consider dice rolling a "fun" part of the game.

Everything else though is top-notch advice, I really appreciate it

Just a note -- I found the managers (I use DM GEnie) incredibly useful even though almost all die rolls were done with regular dice.

They're terrific for tracking hit points, initiative order, and spell/effect durations.

The only die rolling I automated was initiative, since it was a hassle to enter the numbers and have players calling out things. Nobody seemed ot mind that.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Wow, lots of links! I'll have to check them out tomorrow, I running a little low on gas and only thre quarters of the way home.

Uh, my bad. I just realized I am home. That'll teach to drink until after dark-thirty.

 

[DMFTodd]

>> Though the combat managers would simplify and take less time, my characters are mostly new and the few older consider dice rolling a "fun" part of the game.

Combat Managers don't require you to use the dice roller. You can use it but everyone still rolls their own dice (though your benefits are pretty limited), or use it just to roll the DM's dice and let the players roll their own (what I do), or let the computer roll all the dice (which I don't think many people do).

Even if you're rolling all the dice yourself, the combat manager is still tracking initiative for you, keeping track of hit points, tracking spell/other durations, making ready/delay easy, and other little things.

 

[Radiating Gnome]

I find myself looking for an initiative tracker/combat manager and not quite finding what I'm looking for. Maybe someone can point me in the right direction.

To begin with, I'm not really looking for a suite of other tools -- I'm not opposed to having/buying them, but I won't be using them much. The application I need/want is the initiative tracker.

Here's what I want: A initiative and turn tracking solution that will allow me to move quickly through combat, tracking PC & NCP initiatives, spell and effect durations, handle ready and delay actions, and is easy to use. I don't mind having dice rollers, but don't need them.

Here's the tricky bit -- I also want a separate PC view of the initiative tracker. I'm using a dual monitor setup, and would love to be able ot display the initiative tracker for them -- or even better, a pared down version of the initiative tracker that only includes the information the PCs should have. I can set the monitor to match my desktop, so they can see what I'm doing, but that means that I can't have any DM-only information in the tracker. And, because this needs to be easily legible from across the gaming table, the display fonts need to be controlable.

I've looked at least briefly at a lot of the software solutions that are out there -- DMGenie, DM's Familiar, PCGen's GMGen tools, Roleplaying master, roleplaying assistant, DM's secretary, turnwatcher, and a couple of others I can't think of right now.

None of them support the dual-view functionality I was hoping to find -- and that's probably not a surprise, but it would be nice.

Turnwatcher is close to what I would like to have -- it's big and easy to read from far away from the monitor, and does a lot of what I would like it to do, but it doesn't track spells and effects at all.

GMGen looks good -- and I've tried using it for a couple of sessions. I like that I can control the information that is displayed in the initiative tracker window (so I can limit it to what I want the PCs to see) and it handles things almost the way I would want them to, but it has proven to be unreliable and buggy in play.

So . . . I'm not opposed to paying for a suite of tools like DM Genie when I'm really just looking for this one bit of functionality, but none of the ones I've demoed seem to quite meet my needs. Are there other packages out there that I'm missing, or have I missed things about the packages I've demoed?

-j

 

[kingpaul]

GMGen looks good -- and I've tried using it for a couple of sessions. I like that I can control the information that is displayed in the initiative tracker window (so I can limit it to what I want the PCs to see) and it handles things almost the way I would want them to, but it has proven to be unreliable and buggy in play.

What issues do you have?

 

[Radiating Gnome]

The primary problem is an inability to edit information once I've started a combat. Usually this means wanting to change someone's initiative score (they've declared they're going to delay until after someone else goes, for example). I can do it once or twice, usually, but eventually I am no longer able to edit the initiative score. I'm not always able to recreate this when I'm testing, which is clearly pretty frustrating, but in both sessions when I've been trying to use the tool it's happened.

Another thing that makes me concerned, but that doesnt' seem to really affect functionality is that the tool seems to create a process that never ends -- once I have GMGen running I get the hourglass pointer and not the mouse pointer. It's dumb, probably, but I wonder what the problem is.

Also, I was disappointed that I couldn't create hit point totals in the tool that were greater than 100 -- we're playing Age of Worms and the PCs are all about 12th level -- most of the things they fight have more than 100 hit points, so I would either have to come up with a way to convert hit points to use that part of the tool, or do what I ended up doing (not use it at all) -- an easy choice, given that I don't have a player view of the information and I don't want to share HP totals with the PCs (and I'm primarily using this to manage initiative in a way that I can make visible to the PCs and easy for me to manage at the same time).

I also would like to be able to edit combatants once I've created them. One of the things that I love about the tool is that I can use it to calculate experience automatically at the end of the battle -- but to do that, I need to have each party member's accurate level entered into the tool. If I need to change that (they gain a level) or if I need to correct something else (I've entered their initiative bonus incorrectly) I can't just edit the record -- I have to delete it and start over.

Admittedly, I might have overstated "buggy" -- it's not like it explodes or crashes my computer. But the initiative problem has come up a couple of times now, and in my most recent session, when once again I couldn't get it to respond to initiative changes, I just gave up and switched to my trusty index cards.

If you can show me how to work around those issues, I'll probably continue to use it. And if a player view is on the horizon . . . that would be sweet. The GMGen tool is the one that most closely fit my needs, and it's flexibility really impressed me. I just had enough problems that I was still hoping to find a silver bullet out there . . . .

-rg

 

[xnrdcorex]

Also if anyone knows of a dungeon creation tool/ mapper thats about as good as dundjinii but free I'd love to know about it!
Thanks!

 

[heruca]

xnrdcorex,

Take a look at DungeonForge.
http://www.dungeonmapping.com/df/public_html/

 

[xnrdcorex]

Thanks heruca!

Thanks everyone else as well!

 

[SkidAce]

Thanks heruca!

Thanks everyone else as well!

I use Excel (spreadsheet) type in everyone's initiative then hit sort on that column.

Things change? enter and hit sort again.