Hi all, slightly different question today: I’ve been trying to use as little tech as possible for my in-person game in the last year, as I spend a large of amount of time with screens during my work day. However, recently the stack of stuff piling up at the table just became too much to navigate effectively. Especially because we frequently play in crammed places with a tiny table. We are currently playing shadowdark, which is well organized, but between rulebook, 3 zines (for character classes and setting information), extra adventures modules, notebook, extra monster book, GM folder with extra maps and tables and GM screen it is just too much stuff on the table. On top of that, I have to use my phone for the torch timer (which annoys me) and I want to reintroduce some music, as it is just better for the atmosphere. So how do you navigate adventure module, session notes, monster statblocks, music device and GM screen type stuff? Thinking about bringing my ipad, as it would be least intrusive and it could replace some of the print materials, but I am a bit clueless what apps work well for TTRPG stuff at the table etc. So far I use Apple Books to manage my pdf files.
I use “pdf expert” linked to my dropbox account to have quick access to my various modules. That plus an index card with page numbers that you frequently use makes it easy to navigate through a stack of books.
You should be able to see in my screenshot that there is a way to quickly go to a page in the bottom right, and tabs along the top for all your open pdfs.
I have the free version, and it works great for me.
Hey there! Thank you! This is exactly the kind of answer I was looking for! I am assuming this works offline too if you download the PDFs beforehand? One of the spaces we play does not have WiFi and phone reception which is both a blessing and a curse haha. Do you use the PDFs as well for referencing monster statblocks etc? Do you use paper notes at all?
It should work just fine offline if you download the pdfs to your iPad.
I do use paper notes. My group is split across several US states, so I basically only do online gaming these days. I just got a second monitor setup for my PC, so it’s mostly taken the place of the iPad (just because I no longer need to fiddle with dropbox storage limits).
My current setup is one monitor with discord and Google sheets, one monitor with pdfs, iPad with useful tables, notebook (and about a million disorganized index cards) with my notes and ideas.
Thanks! Will try offloading the book stuff to the iPad to reclaim some space and stick to paper notebook for the moment. Good hybrid solution I think!
My usage is very similar! I have my session notes in a notebook but keep notes on the world, NPCs, jobs, etc in Obsidian which I’ve linked to pages in my rule book PDFs. That lets me quickly jump to the actual rules (or location descriptions) from my notes
Ah, cool! How do you mean ‘linked’? Do you store your pdfs in obsidian and link them internally? Or just by jotting down the page number?
If you want to stay analog, I create a sheet like this. It’s based off The Lazy DM, great system for condensing essential information before a session.
nice! big fan of mike’s work myself, used his eight steps for a long time, but find myself only ending up with “strong start”, “NPCs” and “treasure” these days. But I think that is mostly due to running published adventures in the past year or so. Might use the full thing again since I am running mostly my own stuff this year. Great reminder! thank you! Mike also recently joined here! Hi @slyflourish , keep up your fantastic work!
I use a laptop sometimes where I’m running Obsidian and use it’s canvas feature to build a digital DM screen with little notes.
I also used this feature to display some dungeons as an abstract flowchart type map where I can zoom in to see content + notes I made (and sometimes little translations when needed)
that sounds intriguing! I never really wrapped my head around the canvas feature, but I do use the Freeform app to sketch out a mental map, drag in images and enjoy the endless canvas for that a lot. Also feels more intuitive to sketch by hand with the (much cheaper) logitech pencil. Seems like I have to revisit obsidian, the apple ecosystem dragged me back in with their pencil support in the Notes app, which obsidian wouldn’t do in a regular text file. Do you mind sharing a screenshot of one of your canvases?
You could store them in Obsidian and do that, but I keep them in a separate tool called DEVONthink that lets me deep link to specific pages of PDFs
To clarify I don’t think the canvas in obsidian supports drawing, but you can just slap any note on it and connect them.
The only thing I have at hand right now is my old dolmenwood gm screen:
And zoomed in:
With pre-made stuff I use:
- Secrets and clues (they don’t have to be from where the zine says.
- Monster stats
- NPCs: What they want, what they have,
- Locations, a list. May put in a page number. I print my map and keep it on the clipboard.
I’ve made it a habit to ask players where they’re headed next so I can prepare it. Often, it’s obvious and other’s it’s not. I try to check in anyhow.
will take some practice and tweaking, but I would try giving notebookLM a shot. you just load all your notes into it and ask it questions. just played with it for a little bit and it seems to work pretty well at a couple critical tasks:
-
searching rulebooks. can search multiple documents with just one query. also can use context clues, so its superior to “control F”.
-
random generator. the algorithm is bad at randomness in the sense of its bad at “pick a random number from 1-10” AKA: rolling on a table. however, you can generally ask it to describe a random whatever, and if you add in a few off the cuff words, it will functionally become random. like, if you ask it for a “random monster”, it will tend to pick the same ones. but if you say, “a random short monster”, or “a random bright monster”, it does a better job. (basically you become the random generator).
-
its only as good as your source material, so you’ll have to work on your sources. like, load up a document with all your favorite stuff. you don’t have to organize it that well. names, treasures, personalities, monsters, microfictions, poetry you like. just make sure its all stuff you like.
-
use the custom conversational style for the chatbots. you can ask it to only answer in the second person for example (so its easier to read things to players). you can and should ask it for short, definitive responses (by default its verbose, and likes to give lots of options).
this looks really good, I think I have been trying to use the wrong way haha. Will give it a spin and put together my own GM screen for my current game. That seems like a worthwhile learning project! thank you for sharing!
Intriguing about notebookLM. I like the idea to train a model on my own data, but then I am not sure what it will give me beyond slightly improved search or a semi-functional monster generator? Does it put out statblocks and abilities etc? There is a few monster generators that I am already quite fond off for mechanics, and everything else is just a question of reskinning (in my opinion that is)!
I would think of it as a VASTLY improved search function. much faster, and searching for things with the ability to use context clues is pretty great. So great for looking up rules. it gives you page references too…
then I would think of it as a very fast random THING generator. you can ask it for a monster, a treasure etc. and it very quickly finds your list of treasures and picks one (or a handful as it tends to do). as opposed to you flipping thru and finding the table, then rolling on it. it also is good at sorting thru a lot of information, so you can load in say, a book of fairy tales, and it can pull out the monsters from the book (essentially turning the book into a monster table).
hang on, i’ll post some examples
alright, so I asked it this, “create a personality for a fearsome monster, who has a soft side. one sentence only please”
and it returned this: “The fearsome monster has a body three yards in height, with thick-set arms, a great maw that swallows men whole, and a heart that yearns to be a poet, while being a champion of depravity”
a nice little spark for making a random monster/encounter. what makes it more interesting is the sources it created that from, and delving deeper into them. it made it out of three bits of text. one of them was a description of an Egyptian god I transcribed and put in a world building document. that is where the three yards in height and thick set arms, and giant maw comes from. but clicking on the link there is a lot more that I could pull from if needed. then the heart that yearns to be a poet was pulled from “house of orchids”, a collection of George Sterling poetry. the full link is a poem about a titan/poet with tons of great images to flesh it out. then the last part about champion of depravity links to a bit from a Hagiwara Sakutarō book about something appearing as “no more than a hallucination of the incoherent decadence of a poet whose central nerves are damaged by morphine addiction.”
so it gives out a quick description that could be used right away at the table. then with the links to the originals, it can be quickly fleshed out as needed. honestly, pretty impressed by this monster! a morphine addict giant that likes to swallow people whole with the heart of a poet.
then I asked it “can you come up with a single treasure that this giant poet would carry in a sack on their back?”
the reply:
The giant poet may carry a vitrified brain, a strand of ancient giant hair, or a blank octavo.
so yea, its pulling from my giant document of treasures and all of them are thematically linked to the monster. honestly, pretty great job here.
from my documents, vitrified brain is a brain that was turned into black glass during some cataclysm. basically a rare gem type thing. the strand of giant hair is thinner but stronger than rope, nice little useful item and its clearly just making a giant—giant connection here, but its appropriate. then the blank octavo is from my equipment list. obviously here its making a “what would a poet carry with them” association, and is honestly pretty good.