After all the shit-talking that jocks have done about roleplayers over the years, it turns out that those bastards were walking around with goddamned DM Screens on their sweaty-ass wrists the whole time!
But seriously though, I can totally use one of these:
Football 5 Pocket Arm-Play Holder
Of course, it's not remotely as hardcore as actually tattooing Armor Classes onto your forearm for reference...
... but it's still a cute gimmick for literally keeping a little something up your sleeve. If you're rules-light enough, you could fit everything you need to run a game in one of these, and use it as your travel/on-the-fly/convention game-screen.
Plus, these wrist-screens are ambidextrous. That's right; you can totally do this:
Obviously, no one should do that.
I will probably do that.
If anyone gives me any shit about it, at least I can tell them that it's football gear.
Tony T on the OSR Google+ community asked if anyone knew of RPG-related apps/games he might want to install on his new Nexus 7. Why, yes, Tony. Yes, I do. So many that I thought it might actually be dickish to hijack your thread with my gratuitous commenting, so I wrote this post instead. All of these apps are free, unless specifically stated to be otherwise.
1.) Old School Monsters Database: I'm still amazed that someone took the time to put this together for free. It's an easy-to-use, indexed reference of over 450 OGL D&D monsters. You can even sort them by level, and the terrain type that they're likely to be encountered in. Totally boss, and infinitely useable by the DM at the table. My only gripe is that the interface isn't entirely intuitive, since most of the good commands are located on the "menu" dots at the bottom instead of on-screen. Still, that's easy to get used to.
Honorable mentions: The creator, Appbrewers, also has an Old School Spells database and Old School RPG Tables that are equally nifty. I just find myself using the monster app a LOT more often for on-the-fly encounters.
2.) NameGenerator: This app by TofferJ is my second-most used utility. It gives you up to 100 names at a time (first and last) from a variety of languages/nationalities, including Ancient Greek. It's a real lifesaver when you're scrambling for something to call that random fishmonger NPC who the players have suddenly taken an interest in.
3.) Crawler's Companion: This one's primarily for running sessions of Dungeon Crawl Classics, but it also has a fun, tactile dice-roller that includes all of those goofy dice like d5's and d7's that DCC uses. It also lets you do batch-rolling when you need to quickly "roll all of the dice." Plus, the Criticals and Fumbles are pretty brutal for those times when you want a Natural 20 to be truly memorable for your players.
The only thing I don't like about this app is that it only runs in portrait mode. Still, that's a minor quibble for so much free goodness.
4.) NPC Generator: This is my go-to quick and dirty NPC creator. The names it comes up with are terrible/laughable, but it's great for quick stats and a general feel for random fishmonger personalities. The biggest downside is that it doesn't seem to have an option for saving the character for later. That's why I also use...
5.) NPC: This is the generator that you go to when you want details. Like, including the kitchen sink. More importantly, this is the generator that will actually let you save the random NPC's as text files for you to look up later. The names this thing comes up with are almost as bad as the other app above, but that's what the NameGenerator is for, n'est ce pas?
6.) Custom Soundboard: If you like to use audio effects at the game table, then this is the one to get the job done. I tried a few paid soundboard apps, but this free one is the least fiddly that I've found. It lets you custom build many completely different boards that you can just swipe through at your convenience. It's ad-supported, but the banners are small, located at the bottom of the screen, and unobtrusive.
7.) Gurk and Gurk II: Crushing li'l 8-bit, turn-based dungeon-crawl games that remind me a bit of the original Final Fantasy games. Gurk is free, but Gurk II will cost you a whopping 99 cents. As I write this, I see that they've created a third installment in the series, so I already know how I'll be spending my railway commute this summer.
8.) Quadropus Rampage: The best free Rogue-like game. Notice the period at the end of that sentence. It's an underwater dungeon-delve that pits your tennis-racquet-wielding quadropus against a mad god!
9.) The Bard's Tale: Cost - $1.99 Effin' hilarious, even though I hate bards really a lot. I can't totally hate this one, though, because he's voiced by Cary Elwes, a.k.a. The Dread Pirate Roberts himself!
10.) Knights of Pen and Paper: Cost - $4.99 Another cute, 8-bitty throwback that actually attempts to poke fun at the gaming group themselves, as opposed to the characters they're playing. This one has more of a railroady storyline than Gurk's.
So, what apps and games do you fine folks recommend?
First up, I have to thank Charles Akins over at Dyvers for diving into the vast sea of OSR blogs to give a short review/overview of what's out there. It really was an honor just to be nominated.
Now, on to the content. A while back I wrote a post about using DIY tokens to track item consumption in D&D games. Even though there's a serviceable Avery template for printing the tokens out ahead of time, I still needed a way to print out "blank" tokens on which to swiftly write things like "severed bear's head" on the fly at the game table. Hence, this:
I settled on a 1.5 x 1.7 size so that the tokens would be a little taller, which makes them poke out of the top of the page for easier retrieval.
Then, I thought, "might as well stock up the local town merchant while I'm at it." At first, I was using text-only tokens (because my artistic abilities are limited to remarkably lewd stick figures), but then I decided that they needed a little visual panache. Fortunately, the tremendous Telecanter of recedingrules.blogspot.com and the rip-roaring Roger of rolesrules.blogspot.com have both made some nifty Creative Commons/Free Use artwork available. I also ganked a particularly saucy picture of a potion from ackegard.com by Hakan. Don't worry, I printed a link to Hakan's site on the token card. I'm a helper.
Open these in a new tab to marvel at the delicious fruits of my labor. Or just, y'know, download them. If they prove useful, I'd love to hear about how you used them in your campaign.
I'm a long way from being done with the basic set of dungeon-delving equipment, but this seems like a decent start. I hit a snag when the best source of equipment images I've found turned out to be a bunch of scans from the 3.5 Edition Player's Guide. So, does anyone know of a great source for free-use images of dungeony gear?
Seriously, just load up the side of the pockets that will face the GM with useful info, and fill the sides that will face the players with pictures of female fighters in unreasonable armor. I guess you could put in boring rules reminders and shit instead. I dunno. Whatevs.
Seriously. Calculating encumbrance was an exercise in tedium even for the slide-rule carrying dungeoneers in the early 80's. Besides, what RPG enthusiast isn't already well-acquainted with the first cousin of Raggi's system, the video game Inventory.
We grok this shit at the cellular level.
This elegant solution still suffers from a common problem at the game table, though. People forget to write crap down. A lot. Plus, brace yourselves for this, some buttface players will occasionally lie about what their character is carrying.
Others have attempted to tackle this problem before, notably Faster Monkey Games with their Tracker Tokens product.
It's a good idea, but a little too static for my gaming needs. Players can't be counted on to carry exclusively predetermined items. I mean, they're tooling around a dungeon with backpacks full of goblin heads, blocks of demon-cheese, and pretty much any other frightening garbage that seemed like a good idea to pick up at the time.
Never fear, three-ring binders are here. More specifically, you can print out whatever inventory items you want on this free template from Avery, and have each player store those suckers in one of these inexpensive 30-pocket binder pages.
What's that, you say? "Doesn't the LotFP encumbrance system have exactly 30 slots?" That's right, and you're welcome.
+
= easier organization than an OCD hooker.
The pockets and the template items are all exactly 1.5"x1.5", which is also conveniently the perfect size to hold poker chips. I'm having my players use poker chips to track the number of arrows left in their quivers. How many arrows fit in a quiver? Twenty. Do they make another binder page that holds exactly 20 chips? You're damn straight they do.
I recommend printing tokens out on cardstock to make them more durable than mere paper. I still need to kludge together a blank template that just has a dark border around the edges of each token so that I can print out a bunch of blanks before the game. That way, I can just write random item descriptions directly on tokens mid-game, rather than having to type them up and print them out.
I have to say that I really enjoy the tactile element of handing a token or chip to a player when they purchase gear, and having them hand it back to me when it's been used up. You can even get cutesy with the players by using inventory items printed with custom templates, like this one that looks like it's dripping with blood.
Plus, there's a certain dark glee to be had when the party is five levels deep in the dungeon, and the players look down at their inventory sheets to discover that they're dangerously low on torches.
