DM tools (for laptops), what do you want?

[ericgrau]

I'm working on an Excel macro spreadsheet for DMs with a laptop to automate some things during in-person game sessions. So far I finished a tab for rolling secret skill checks for the whole party (spot, knowledges, etc.). And I'm going to add another tab for rolling initiative, auto-sorting the PCs and monsters by initiative order and tracking HP, AC, DR, saves and SR (plus 2 columns for misc. notes). Instead of saying "everybody roll initiative", you select the tab with the encounter you punched in ahead of time, click a button and say "Steve you're up first."

Then I started thinking, well what else should I add? I want this to be fairly comprehensive for in-game DMing. So I thought, I know I'll ask other people what they want.

I don't mean to replace the tables and so on found on a physical DM screen. I already have that in my cheat sheets and I'd rather be able to look at both at once. An NPC stat & personality or monster generator might be nice, but it's a highly involved project that I don't want to get into quite yet. So what other little tools do you think could be helpful to your gaming sessions?

EDIT. Based on suggestions so far, I need to add:


Round counter + spell duration counter

List saves on skill roller sheet too, in case of out-of-combat secret saves (e.g., will vs. dominate)

Random weather tab, show rules effects of the weather too. Plus option to manually select weather and see rules.

Day tracker & campaign notes on same tab as weather.

Add temp HP to initiative / combat tab.

Monster damage entry and damage roll button in initiative / combat tab

Stopwatch on initiative / combat tab.

Up to 3 tabs so far: secret skill checks, initiative / combat, day / campaign tracking & random daily weather

[Fenryr]

TS for secret rolls? Maybe it's pretty obvious but I don't see it in your text.

Treasure? Special conditions like fog, heavy rain?

[ericgrau]

What's TS? The roller gives the total result for each player - modifier plus roll - and if you set the DC (optional) it even shows PASS/FAIL in green/red.

Ooh, programming in the random weather tables sounds nice. I think I'll add a tab for that.

Dunno how many people would use the random treasure tables during a game session rather than rolling ahead of time. Normally I'd say that's too much work for a small tool since the tables are so long. But as it happens I already made a random treasure generator. I could include that as a tab or as something else by itself for generating treasure before the game session starts.

[Fenryr]

'm sorry. I meant Saving Throw.

I said weather to include penalties like vision or penalty in ranged attacks because of a heavy sandstorm, but your idea sounds good.

[Vandicus]

Something for dispel magic maybe? I suppose its a caster level check just like SR.

[Velaryon]

You know what would be great? An easy way to track the duration of ongoing effects like spells and conditions. Being able to track the exact round, the exact initiative count that the cleric's Divine Power runs out, knowing exactly how long the fighter will be paralyzed from that ghoul, and so on, would be really useful.

[ericgrau]

Ah good idea, I'll include that in the initiative/combat tab. Along with a round counter.

I'll put all 3 saves on the secret skill roller sheet in case of secret will saves to dominate and so on. I didn't think of that. EDIT: Hmm the saves are already on the combat tab; that may often be more appropriate for most secret save rolls. Or maybe I'll put saves on both tabs.

I'll be sure to include the rules effects of weather in the random weather roller, plus the option to manually select weather and see the effects.

I don't want to include auto-rollers for things that the players roll publicly. The secret check roller is for when you want things like 5 knowledge(arcana) checks in an instant without spending 5 minutes asking for rolls. Or if you don't want to tell the players about the roll if everyone fails.

[NNescio]

MapTool (http://www.rptools.net/index.php?page=1-3) and Initiative Tool. (http://www.rptools.net/index.php?page=initiativetool)

The former also supports user-created macros, so you can get add more features in.

Comes with a tutorial (http://lmwcs.com/rptools/wiki/Main_Page) as well. Here's (http://lmwcs.com/rptools/wiki/Introduction_to_Macro_Writing) the basic version for the macro writing guide.

More premade macros an be found in its forums. (http://forums.rptools.net/viewforum.php?f=53) A 'framework' (basically a preloaded set of macros) for 3.5e/3.PF can be found here. (http://forums.rptools.net/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=17706)

Sorry, but I don't want to see you reinventing the wheel.

Edit:
(Note that you don't necessarily have to use the map-making functions of Maptool; it can work as an initiative and miscellaneous tracking tool perfectly fine as well.)

[ericgrau]

To clarify again this is for in-person pen, paper and mini games where the DM brings a laptop, not online. It's also kinda nice to have everything in one place when gaming.

[NNescio]

To clarify this is for in-person pen, paper and mini games where the DM brings a laptop, not online.

Yes, I know. But Maptool doesn't necessarily have to be ran online. Plenty of DMs I know use it to keep track of things or as a virtual tabletop in their 'Pen & Paper' games.

[ericgrau]

It's also a matter of hassle and learning curve. Where's the thing to roll skill checks for all the players?

I expect this to be a fairly quick project. I can probably code everything up in a few hours. Then people can jump in and use it in a few minutes without searching through 7 programs and their tutorials.

It won't do a lot of other things those tools might do and it's not meant to do those things, only provide an aid during a game session to speed things up.

EDIT: Downloaded the initiative tool. It's surprisingly low power. It has 20 menu options yet it doesn't even track HP. And you have to sift through different menus to see different info instead of having it all in front of you at once. Even rolling initiative is a menu option you have to find or memorize the hotkey for. I despise mode switching. What I'm going for is everything in front of you at once, roll initiative button in plain sight, edit HP by clicking on the cell, simple, fast, removing hassle not adding it.

[NNescio]

It's also a matter of hassle and learning curve. Where's the thing to roll skill checks for all the players?

I expect this to be a fairly quick project. I can probably code everything up in a few hours. Then people can jump in and use it in a few minutes without searching through 7 programs and their tutorials.

It won't do a lot of other things those tools might do and it's not meant to do those things, only provide an aid during a game session to speed things up.

EDIT: Downloaded the initiative tool. It's surprisingly low power. It has 20 menu options yet it doesn't even track HP. And you have to sift through different menus to see different info instead of having it all in front of you at once. Even rolling initiative is a menu option you have to find or memorize the hotkey for. I despise mode switching. What I'm going for is everything in front of you at once, roll initiative button in plain sight, edit HP by clicking on the cell, simple, fast, removing hassle not adding it.

Initiative Tool is purely for initiative. It's in some ways a toned down version of Maptool. Maptool can track HP and initiative. Maptool with custom macros can do everything from a single window tab with the minimum amount of buttons you need, and it' far more customizable.

Basically:
1) Download Maptool.
2) Create a 'map' (doesn't need to have any features, really) and program all your custom macros in.
3) Distribute your map and the build version of Maptool you've used to build your map.
4) Other people run maptool, open your map, and all they need to do is to click on several buttons you program into the Macros tab. All the outputs they need are in the 'chatbox'. They don't need any other window except for these two (the macros tab and the chatbox), and the others are freely resizeable or rendered invisible.
3) For more 'complicated' functions (e.g. Party-wide skill checks, which you can't preprogram for them since you can't know the skill modifiers in another DM's game), you can set up an 'array' for them to input data (which it can save), all through the macro interface without any additional windows.

Now, granted, step two can be somewhat more complicated since you'll need to know the macro language, but frankly it's more intuitive than Excel's and better suited for a tabletop game. Once everything is done the end user just needs two downloads: Your 'map' and the build version of maptool you used. Then they only need two windows: the macros tab with all your buttons on it, and the 'chatbox' for outputs. Simple.

(Also, Step Two can be skipped if you are willing to settle for one of the user-created 'frameworks', which is basically their 'map' with all their preprogrammed macros loaded in, 'though those can be less user friendly and loaded with other features that you don't need. Of course, you can choose to modify their macros instead, which is easier than doing everything from scratch. Again, the end user doesn't need to do all of the work that you have done.)

It's also theoretically more accessible since not everybody has Excel while Maptool is freely available.

[Kavurcen]

Open Office can open Excel documents and it's free to anyone. So is Google Docs. Really no reason to make an inferior system just so that people who don't want to go out of their way to get the appropriate software can get it.

Anyway. Did anyone suggest temporary HP yet?

[NNescio]

Open Office can open Excel documents and it's free to anyone. So is Google Docs. Really no reason to make an inferior system just so that people who don't want to go out of their way to get the appropriate software can get it.

Anyway. Did anyone suggest temporary HP yet?

That applies only for spreadsheets. VBA Macros are less compatible. Open Office runs Basic. Excel runs Visual Basic. Different programming languages.

And Google Docs? They use Google Apps Script instead. VBA isn't supported. Natch.

Granted, certain implementations of Open Office like Novell's Noel Power can run VBA macros 'natively', 'though you'll need to compile it yourself, or run through several different distros until you find one which works for the macro you've downloaded. Which is to say, bloody inconvenient.

And really, Maptool is a superior system for tabletop RPGs.

Temporary HP? Already done. Nonlethal damage? Done. Multiple skill and attribute checks? Done. Built in spellbook/spell list/spell slot manager (with options to manually add in more spells not from SRD)? Done. Automated tracking of damage-dealing and healing? Done. Automated application of status effects and conditions from HP loss and certain spells? Done. Line of Sight/Line of Effect/Fog of War implementations? Done, natively. Need to program in various different attack rolls and damage dice for your different NPCs? Done. Automated summoning? Done. Your summons are augmented, and you prefer to roll their HP? The Dev Team community thinks of everything. Need to apply the Celestial or Fiendish template on the go? Also done. Et cetera.

And you can write in anything else you want as well.

@ericgrau: Hey if you are really adamant about not switching over, I can just list out more features it has if you rather implement them through VBA.

[JaronK]

Something I'd like is an easy way to set up multiple repeated rolls. For example, maybe some of the NPCs are doing 1d8 damage, and some are doing 1d6+2, and some are doing 3d6. I'd love it if I could quickly set that up so I could just click a button for any of those, without losing the old option.

JaronK

[ericgrau]

I'm adding these to the list in the first post btw as people suggest them. Feel free to reply to any misinterpretations in that list or add more detail to them.

As for Excel vs. maptools, it boils down to simplicity vs. accessibility. Maptools is basically too big for this sort of thing, and takes time to learn, browse through menus, learn how to program... I'm trying to save DMs time here. I expect some people to guess how to use the spreadsheet just by looking at it, though I'll include instructions too. EDIT: And maptools does a whole lot more of course, running entire campaigns on its own, on both the DM and player side. I don't mean to take this nearly so far.

The drawback is, yes, you need Excel to run macros. I may consider a Google spreadsheet version in the future. But as it's the industry standard I'd recommend MS Office purely for compatibility. It doesn't tend to convert well to other software even without macros.

[NNescio]

Automated Monster Generator, Automated Encounter Generator, Inventory Management Tool, Range Finder, Initiative Timer (If you want to time your players' turns), Automated drawing of crusader maneuvers, Automated Grappling (comes with a chart, if you insist), Automated Evard Hentai Tentacle grappling calculations, Automatic Polymorphs, Automated Recovery(of stats and spells) after resting, Automatic tracking of equipment modifiers (implemented with inventory system), Automated stat damage calculations, Automatic application of negative levels, Automatic Creature Size Modifications, Automatic XP Calculation and Distribution, Automatic tracking of action points, Automatic tracking of item charges...

More macros implemented in MapTool if you need ideas.