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magewish4
2014-10-20, 08:52 AM
Hey all!

I'm doing a UI project and I want to make a 'digital DM screen'. Something that would be one or two screens that can be on a laptop to help keep track of things. What sort of things do you keep on your DM screens, paper or digital? I know I want the party list with important stats and maybe location notes.

The premade DM screens from Wizards seems to come with a bunch of the rules, but I want to focus on things that you might need to remember for the current campaign rather than rules in general.

DISCLAIMER- This is a UI project, I probably won't have a version with a backend + all the programming that involves.

Mastikator
2014-10-20, 09:07 AM
A short list for common spells, abilities and items with attributes and stats for each.

List of personality traits, roles and names for ad-hoc NPCs.

Lists of DCs for rolls you expect the players to make (how hard is it to find food in the wilderness or bribe a guard or convince angels to join your poker tournament, or whatever).

That should be about a screen worth of data.

EccentricCircle
2014-10-20, 11:59 AM
The Mimic Tally.
It's an essential bit of DM kit for tallying how many times the players have been fooled by mimics throughout the campaign.

KnotKnormal
2014-10-20, 12:19 PM
An initiative tracker, with status effects. I never realized how useful they are until I started using them.
NPC List area, big enough for names and major details
DM Campaign quick notes area. for location and party activity
A chart for item, weapon, and armor prices... I've looked through the book too many times to count to find the obscure items that i can't quite remember.
List of common spells
Player Quick notes. To keep track of things like player HP, and spells used. this would also work for the enemys

Good luck on the project.

Honest Tiefling
2014-10-20, 02:11 PM
Can you do tabs, to quickly swap between monster stats and a combat tracker, for instance? A place to put in notes would be great as well. And what system is this for?

ElenionAncalima
2014-10-20, 03:01 PM
I keep a tabbed Excel document with a lot of my quick reference content. It contains:
-Random names for places, people and taverns in case I get caught without one of my generators up.
-Stat blocks of any NPCs currently travelling with the party
-My initiative tracker with prerolled initiative for NPCs and enemies.
-A tab where I set up where I can randomly roll things like perception and sense motive without tipping off players by rolling.
-A tab for items the party sell as well as a column for gold, set up to calculate the amount when split between the party.
-A little CR calculator I made that tells me the approximate CR of an encounter if I enter the CRs of the individual creatures. Like the loot list, it also calculates how much it is worth split between the party.
-A general notes tabs that includes names for things like pets, backstory NPCs or other things the players might come up with.
-A copy of the leveling progression chart so I don't have to look it up every time my players ask "So how much do we need for level 6 again, for the third time that night" ;)

TheThan
2014-10-20, 03:28 PM
Things I would want

Initiative tracker/combat tracker: (hp, spell effects, status effects etc)
Character quick notes: (spell list, skill list and modifiers, saving throws, attack bonuses etc)
Monster quick notes: (same as character quick notes)
Customizable spell index, customizable monster index
Customizable blank sections of the screen for Dms to use for their own purposes

Backend things to consider:

Touch screen support
Cross platform support (windows, linux, mac, android etc)