Ipads in your Game

I bought an ipad over a month ago, and since then I've been trying to fit this amazing piece of technology into my gaming. Like a laptop, it can improve and enhance many aspects of your tabletop RPG experience, except it's far more convenient (for me, anyway) to set up and use at the game table. 

Allow me to share a few ways that I'm using my ipad to run a better game.

Planning

The built-in Notes and Calendar functions on the ipad are easy to use and always just a few taps away. I use the calendar to track sessions, which is handy during the planning stages and also for the RL details when writing post-adventure synopses for my campaign wiki.

For my latest session, a Pathfinder reboot inviting two new players to my Legacy of Fire game, I used my Notes to quickly reintroduce the campaign events to date, and to keep important reminders about prominent NPCs during play. Simple stuff, but made very convenient with the ipad.

Immersion through Sound Effects

One of my first searches through the app store was to satisfy my desire to provide better game immersion through noise. I didn't find much, but I'm at least somewhat satisfied with the GameMastersCollection application from Toxic Bag Productions. The app is free, and I purchased (for $2.99) the Monsters collection.

The monsters collection is obviously not targeted to any specific game system, and the quality in the sound effects range from cheap-and-cheesy voiceplay to extremely convincing and useable sound effects that have had my players saying "okay, that's pretty cool" and "gawd do I not want to hear that sound again." It definitely makes an impression when coupled with a succinct narrative, and there are many gems in here that I am smiling about busting out in future sessions. Even without much focus, it is probably worth the money if you're looking for an easy way to inject some decent sound effects into your game.

Some of my favourite sounds include Attack of the Flying Things (a pissed-off screeching and flapping swarm), Phantoms (Ghostbustery and evocative), and Sea Walker, which is combo of juicy footfalls and laboured breathing that makes me think of deep ones. Useful, all.

In addition, the ipad's little speakers do a pretty fine job of spreading the sound around the table, and you can save your ipod tracks on it as well (although I prefer a seperate system for background music).

Tracking Initiative

I'm cheating here, because I don't use my ipad for tracking initiative. Not yet, anyway. There are few apps available right now, and those I have found are so feature-poor that there's little incentive to use them over more traditional methods (we use the GameMastery Combat Pad in our game right now).

U20 Studios/Games/Productions?

Which brings me to a bit of an exciting announcement, but a quiet one since it's a little premature.

I have teamed up with a developer friend to create ipad apps to make planning, running, and playing tabletop games easier. Basically, I'm going to take notes on what I wish existed from a GM's point of view, and we are going to make those tool and provide them for all. You should see the first one on the app store in a little over a month, so watch for more announcements on that soon. :)

In Other News

We are nearing the end of the House of the Beast (Legacy of Fire Book 2), and the players seem to be having a great time. I will be doing a full review of the adventure as soon as we have it completed, and I also wanted to touch on the low-level adventure from Paizo, Master of the Fallen Fortress, that I scooped on Free RPG day and was fortunate enough to run my players most of the way through a couple of weeks back. Look for those reviews in the weeks to come.

Game on, and thanks for reading.