High Tech DMing solutions

[supermonkeyjoe]

I'm a bit of a technophile, as I assume many other gamers are, and I love reading into all of the new innovative ways to run games and I was wondering if any playgrounders had any particular RPG setups that they are particularly proud of? I'm looking at getting one of those ultrabooks in the new year that has a front and rear facing screen to use as a GM laptop/ Dynamically alterable GM screen.

anything like using an overhead projector for battlemaps?

Using the microsoft Surface table?

Or the Light and Mirror puzzle by Penny Arcade's Gabe?

[DontEatRawHagis]

Using the microsoft Surface table?

That video has been circulating for a while. In fact the surface they use is the size of a coffee table and is about $8000 to buy. It was called the Surface, now called PixelSense.

I could see it used at Convention play, maybe. Guys making it originally called it Spell Quest I believe, they are part of Carnegie Mellon.

[Yukitsu]

I use minecraft to make maps, because I'm crazy.

[Cheers]

We (my brother and I both run as GM's) use our flatscreen TV. Just lay it flat on it's back, hook up your laptop and set up the screen as an extension of your monitor. Using photoshop you can make an absolute amazing battle map and thanks to the layer system of photoshop it's incredibly easy to hide rooms and corridors until the party actually opens the door or see them.
In addition, because you have your laptop open (remember the screen extension) you can use any music program to run background music and with playlists it's easy to change them depending on the scene.

Even improvising isn't all that hard. They blow a hole in one of your walls: select layer and use eraser. They destroy a piece of furniture, select layer and delete. If you have some templates ready you can even play with spell effects and such.

So far this has proven to be an absolute blast and greatly adds to the immersion.

Do note however it takes a lot of time to prepare these maps in photoshop (at least compared to drawing them on eraser board).

Hope this helps.

[Craft (Cheese)]

I've got about 50,000 lines worth of custom scripts saved on my laptop to automatically do all sorts of things that come up in a game session. NPC generators, table rolls, probability calculations for basically every resolution system ever made, NPC behavioral simulators... It's immensely helpful but I'm afraid it's not much to look at.

[TheThan]

Laptops and tablet pcs are a huge help for DMs. You can store your notes, look of rules, produce pics of NPcs, world maps etc and just about anything else without having to drag a library of books along, or print out tons of paper (which gets expensive, heavy and some people don’t like it).

Just keep them out of the hands of the players, they will be used as a distraction.

[GungHo]

Laptop, projector, and online tools for battle maps and token placement.

Major campaign world is in an access database. Originally used MS SQL with VB front end, but Access and forms were more portable for the less technologically-inclined.

[supermonkeyjoe]

Yeah, going paperless is another good one I found, instead of printing endless reams of paper for a session I just sent it all to a kindle, you lose out on being able to compare sheets side by side but that's needed so rarely it's a net benefit overall.

[Greylond]

We tried an overhead projector and didn't like it due to shadows when you reach across it, plus when we play in my apartment the ceiling wasn't high enough to give a good distance for a wide projection. So, one of the guys I game with created a rear projection table. I put up a blog about it here;
http://ubergeekgametable.blogspot.com/

We use MapTools for the mapping.

a couple of people I know, including Jolly Blackburn of KODT fame, uses a LCD monitor that is modified with a wood frame around it to accomplish the same thing.