of Dice and Dragons

A couple of weeks back I asked for some feedback as to what I could do to improve of Dice and Dragons and one of the suggestions was for links to software tools so I thought I would start off with Freemind.

Freemind is a mind mapping tool (you can read about mind mapping here) which I use for all my brainstorming and also for organizing the various electronic materials I use for gaming. Now I realize that most everyone uses a directory structure for organizing things on their computers but that’s not always optimal (at least for me.)

Take for instance a character; you want to have their stats available (in my case an Open Office Calc Spreadsheet), maybe access to their specific feats, skill and spells (SRD or text files) and possibly other materials that are nicely organized into the appropriate areas of your hard drive - but their not all together in a single location so you either need to have all those files open or remember where they all are. If you’re running Freemind you can create a ‘map’ of the materials you need and access them all from there.

The really nice thing about Freemind is that it is written in Java making it fairly easy to use on all platforms. Keep in mind though, that it does write your preferences to the host machine so if you’re using multiple computers you’ll need to take a copy of them with you if you feel you absolutely need them.

Take a minute and download and checkout Freemind as going forward I’ll be including more tips, tricks and suggestions on how to use this tool in your gaming.

May your dice roll well.

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How many times did you forget to add in a temporary modifier? How about that feat which gives you a bonus to hit or a modifier to your armor class? Or that bonus you get from something that another member of your party did (e.g. the bless spell)?

To keep from missing out on these create a reminder card for each. Take an index card and write down what the skill/feat/spell is along with the highlights and then you can place the card in front of you while playing.

For example, I’m currently playing in a 3.5 D&D game running a Duskblade and one of the spells he has at his disposal is, magic weapon. The card created would have Magic Weapon across the top and would state the +1 enchantment bonus granted on attack and damage rolls along with the duration, 1 minute/level.

When the spell is cast during the game the card can then be placed in front of me as a reminder that I need to add that additional bonus.

This works for the GM as well. Be sure to create cards for the same types of items your players will along with reminders for spell like powers of the various creatures the party will encounter and the secondary effects of spells, traps and poisons.

May your dice roll well.

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In their latest installment of Save My Game the folks at Wizards look at a difficult topic, campaign detail.

I know first hand the perils of this very topic. As a GM I find myself building campaign settings with an immense amount of detail, everything from cities and towns to NPCs to multiple plot lines (I just love planting plot seeds). The problem that occurs at that point is that all that detail becomes the roadblock to having fun.

And let’s face it, when it’s no longer fun no one wants to play.

The article at Wizards gives some very valid points regarding how to handle this and I think there are two important takeaways here:

1. Communication – this is an issue with not only gaming groups but also in most other group settings. You need to talk about what’s going on. Ask for help, whether it’s a hint from the GM on what to do next or a recap. The important thing to keep in mind is that there are egos involved and your GM has invested a lot of his time and energy into the campaign, so use a little tact and be sure to point out the things you do like not just the issues you see.
2. Use your character – something often forgotten about as players. The character you play has knowledge that as a player you don’t, ask for an intuition check to get some help. You could also simply ask, “I can’t seem to remember, what is the custom here?” Asking that way gets you the information you need and also helps to validate the GM’s work (always a good thing).

Finally, if you are a GM, remember that that your players may not want to delve as deeply into your world as you may have when you built it. If your players really don’t want to know why the price of tea is changing (it’s due to the third cousin to the king’s second wife getting married to a green eyed bride), that’s okay, and if for some reason they ever need to know, you’ll have that information for them. Give your players the level of detail they need to enjoy the game, slip in a little something extra once in a while, and remember to enjoy the game.

After all, isn’t that why we play the game? To have fun.

May your dice roll well.

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In my last post I mentioned that while there are a number of character sheets available I use a spreadsheet to track my character’s particulars. While it takes a bit of work upfront, the dividends are well worth it.

With the way I’ve set things up making a change to an ability score adjusts other appropriate values. If, for example my character’s STR score goes down, the associated ability modifier is adjusted along with his attack bonuses and STR based skills. I included a separate column to track what his current max score is so that temporary changes can be tracked without fear of losing what his actual score should be.

Is it perfect? No, and I’m constantly updating and modifying it. In fact while writing this post I’ve already thought of a couple of alterations I should make.

Why OpenOffice? For starters while I use Microsoft products I’m a firm believer in open source and of course the price is right (free) which means I can share this with others and it only costs them the download time and disk space. The other major reason is that like the Evernote application I mentioned a couple of days ago (see Evernote for your spell list) there is a portable version so I have it installed on my USB drive and have it available to me when I need it.

As a bonus I can export my character directly to PDF so I can easily send it to anyone who needs a copy as most everyone has Acrobat Reader available to them.

For those that are interested here are the PDF and OpenOffice Calc (zipped) versions of my character sheet.

Do you use a spreadsheet or another application to track your character? If so please take a moment and post as I would really like to hear what you do.

May your dice roll well.

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Just recently I’ve had the opportunity to return to the player side of the role-playing table and found myself in need of a method of tracking many different things, among them a spell list.

For those that have been following the posts here for a while know that I’ve had many tips and suggests on how to do just that (check out sticky notes for spells and use those index cards) but I decided to take things in a slightly different direction, I wanted to do it electronically. In other words, I wanted to my laptop to track my spells.

Enter Evernote.

Evernote is an application that has a “continuous tape” to which you can add all sorts of things, text files, images, to do lists, and so on. As you add items you can also categorize them – so I did just that, a created a number of notes, one for each spell in my collection and categorized them as spells for my character. I keep the list of them at the top and then simply need to select the spell I want and all the details are show at the bottom.

Evernote is not the only application out there that wasn’t designed for the role-playing public but it adapts nicely to it, and it’s not the only one I use – as I fine tune things I’ll be passing along what I’ve learned.

Are there applications that you use for your gaming? Take a moment to post and share.

May your dice roll well.

You can checkout Evernote here.

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