of Dice and Dragons

In the recent edition of the Roleplaying Tips Weekly E-Zine (#456 Stress-Free Gaming and Time and Character Advancement in PbEM) there was a reader tip submitted title Creating While Commuting which discussed using a 3G enabled phone to create the shell information for encounters and such while traveling instead of trying to lug your laptop everywhere.

It’s a great tip as many of us spend a fair amount of time in locations where you can’t boot up a laptop when the inspiration strikes – I don’t know about you but it’s a bit hard for me to balance a laptop while trying to push a cart through the store or walk the dog. So, as someone who recently drunk the Iphone fruit punch it got me to thinking about tools could be used for creating on the run.

1. GMail – As Ben, the author of the tip mentioned above, stated Gmail is great but it goes beyond just emailing ideas to my home computer, now I can stay in touch with my gaming group as well as keep up on the various gaming mailing lists I’m on.

2. Google Docs – With the Google Application installed I have access to the entire suite of Google Apps that I typically use, so word processing and spreadsheets are available to me.

3. Evernote – this is the big boy on the block when it comes to note taking on the run. Once you create an account, and install the application on your phone (available for most platforms) you can take a picture (like that fantastic church steeple you’re walking by) and store it online tagging for a game idea (possible location picture for next session). In addition you can store other text notes and picture of white boards (which are converted to searchable images).

Now I will be upfront, Evernote has a free account but if you’re a heavy user you’ll need to upgrade to a premium account – for me personally, I’m cheap and am looking at other options. Ubernote is one which doesn’t have the ability to search images and currently only allows posting images while on the full web interface. The other more spartan and recently started 3banana, is also worth looking at.

4. Reqall – This is one that will most likely be missed but a lot of folks as you don’t need a smartphone to use it. Once you sign up you can dial their toll free number and dictate up to 30 seconds and they will transcribe the recording and email it to you (they also store a copy online). This is of particular use when your driving so you don’t have that great idea lost because you shouldn’t text and drive (you don’t right) – 30 seconds is usually enough time to create the memory jogger you need for when you get home.

5. Pen and Paper – Don’t laugh, with all the technology available to us there is also still the chance that the network you use isn’t available or you’re sitting in an office where they don’t want cell phones turned on. In which case having a low-tech solution like small notebook or stack of index cards and a pen can come in handy.

Do you create on the run? What tools do you use?

About a month ago the folks at Gnome Stew had an interesting post entitled I Love My Tiny Notebook which talked about the fact that as a gamer (particular those of us that GM) we frequently have ideas pop into our heads and by having a notebook with us we can write them down for future use.

Now there were quite a few comments to the post and a fairly good rundown of the different moleskin notebooks out there as they seem to be the tool of choice. Personally I’ve never owned one and don’t plan to buy one as I prefer to use index cards.

I know, I know, I’ve mentioned a number of uses for index cards before but let’s face it they’re cheap (I can get 250 for $1US), fit in your pocket (I typically carry a couple of dozen held by a binder clip) and come in a variety of colors if you choose to color code your notes. For me when I use them, I write down my note and when I transcribe it into my campaign or session planning notes I toss the card out – one less piece of paper and since I’m moving towards an all electronic gaming setup I only have one central repository of information to glean from.

So you have the pen to write with, the paper or index card to write on, so what’s up with the cell phone?

Recently I’ve started using an online service called Jott which allows me to dictate and send myself an email for reminders of action items that I need to accomplish at work, or when I log back online when I get home but then it dawned on me (cue the climatic music) why not use it for gaming notes?

Jott isn’t really intended for long notes but for a short, couple sentence in length, note about a new campaign idea, character personality to play, location to develop, or anything else it’s great. I dial up the service, tell it who I want to Jott, dictate and the email arrives shortly after. Quick, easy, safe for use while driving and best of all it’s already on the computer where I’m going to end up putting it anyway.

You can use the service to send emails to other members of your group, individually or as a group (you can post to your Yahoo group if you use that service as well) which makes it easy to get the word out to everyone of changes of venue or cancellations.

On the whole it’s a pretty useful tool that’s available for free (yes, you read that right, free) and may just get you to “jott” down those notes that you say you’ll remember later but then never do.

Take Jott for a test drive, I’d be interested to know what you think.

May your dice roll well.

Update: Jott has become a subscription service, if and when I come across something that will accomplish the same function and is also free I’ll pass it along.

The folks over at Gnome Stew posted today about using a Wiki for your gaming group in their post: Group Lovin’ For Your Wiki. After covering the basics of what a wiki is they dive into the uses for your campaign and start by addressing one of the main strengths of a wiki, documentation.

As they point out items such as background information, house rules, stats, sessions notes and character journals are all excellent uses for a wiki but the real power is when the group collaborates on these items.

Getting a group to work together on session notes would allow them to have greater depth and detail as well as allow all the players’ viewpoints be expressed. I used a newsletter for my last campaign but it contained only my viewpoint (from the GM chair) which while good could have been better with others contributing to it.

The other major boon to collaborative work for a gaming group, which is also covered, is world building.

During the initial stages of The Realms of Rylon, my home grown campaign I asked my players to come up with background information and I did receive it to varying degrees but one of my players came up with a whole culture and history for his particular clan of kobolds. It was great, NPCs, maps, and interactions with other nearby locations were outlined and while I had it all in front of me the others at the table weren’t able to readily access it. I can only imagine what other ideas could have been spawned from those pages if I had used a wiki at that stage – it did come later but it would have been much more useful at the beginning.

Be sure to take a moment and give their post a read – it’s well worth it.

May your dice roll well.