of Dice and Dragons

For some time now I’ve been using my laptop at the gaming table - primarily as a reference tool. I’ve got a copy of the SRD available on it, keep my characters in a spreadsheet and of course it gives me the opportunity to pull information from the web during the game.

One of the things I’ve been looking for is a dice program - I know there are a lot of them out there but I couldn’t seem to find one that I liked or that fit what I wanted. My two biggest considerations were that I could have the program apply the modifiers I wanted easily, that I could group dice together and name them. Last week I came across a program called Virtual Dice Tray which I used at my gaming group’s last session and it would appear that I may not be using dice at the table again.

In the current campaign I play in I run two characters - a Duskblade and a Dragon Shaman - what the Virtual Dice Tray allowed me to do is create a “tray” that had all the dice laid out ahead of time (click the thumbnail to see the “dice tray” I set up). Now it was just a matter of double clicking on a die or group of dice and the roll is made. If I want to roll damage at the same time as an attack roll I can select both dice and then roll. The results seemed to be pretty random and using the program did seem to speed things up for me as a player and I can see where this would greatly speed things up for a GM, some ideas:

• Create a “tray” for each planned encounter - everything is ready to go and at your finger tips
• Create a “tray” for the misc. checks you normally make - spot, listen, search, etc.
• Create a “tray” with common dice groupings setup (3d6, 4d6, etc.)

It’s only been one session so I’m not about to throw away my dice quite yet but I can say that I am going to give this program a good trial as it seems to fit the bill.

Are you using a dice rolling program? Why or why not? If you are using one, which one and why do you like it?

May your dice (analog or digital) roll well.

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This was topic was originally published in Roleplaying-Tips as a Reader Tip (Use FreeMind For SRD Import) but I thought it was worth walking through it one more time, with a few more screen captures to help show the whole process.

Please be aware that while the “official” release of Freemind is at 0.8.0 I’m using the 0.9.0 beta 13 version and the screens do look a little different depending on the version so keep that in mind as you follow along.

First, download a copy of the SRD - I prefer the one located at DM Reference. For importing you’ll want to download the HTML Zip file. After downloading unzip it and note where you placed the files (in my case it is Q:\Gaming\Dungeons&Dragons\SRD)

Now, open up Freemind and create a new mind map.
	Next we’ll import the SRD. To do this we’re going to import the folder structure by clicking File -> Import -> Folder Structure.
What you should see at this point is the standard file selection dialog box. You’ll want to navigate to where you unzipped the SRD but don’t select that directory - open it and select the SRD directory you’ll see at that point.
The reason for selecting the second SRD directory is because we don’t need all the “extra baggage” that comes with this version of the SRD, we only need the HTML files - everything else is used if you want to view the SRD in your browser. Once you’ve selected the directory and hit the OK button Freemind will display a mind map of the SRD which should look similar to this:

For those that do import and use the SRD from Freemind I’d love to hear back from you on your experience.

May your dice roll well.

———-
I know it’s been quite awhile since my last posting, sorry about that. I went through a job change in the offline world over the last month (has it been that long?) which unfortunately resulted in shorter deadlines for my former position and a stack of catch-up work to do at my new employer.

~Scot
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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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