iPad + RPG: The player’s side

My iPad got its first use at an RPG session in a new D&D 3.5e campaign that’s just started.

The Hypertext SRD works well with Safari.

I’m creating a character record in Numbers. Mostly, it’s just a bunch of tables with manually filled in data like a paper character sheet. I do have a few formulas, but I’m not yet sure how much automation I’ll want. It’s a work-in-progress, but the combat and skill sheets worked well in play. The only time I had to reference my paper notes were for my spells, which I haven’t added to the spreadsheet yet.

I used Notes to take some notes. Bouncing between Safari, Numbers, and Notes wasn’t quite the hassle I expected.

Good Reader is the missing app that should’ve been bundled with the system. I’m trying to load up RPG PDFs I have that I might want to use.

So, was it worth it? Does it add any value?

For me, D&D 3e nigh requires making my own custom character sheet for each PC. I expect having a dynamic one that can help me with arithmetic is going to pay off with 3e as well.

Being able to search the rules (SRD) proved useful a couple of times. I also think being able to have a lot of PDFs with me rather than hardcopies will prove very useful. More on the DM’s side of the screen than the player’s side, however.

The iPad VGA adapter

When using the iPad VGA adapter, you don’t get mirroring of the iPad display. Of the bundled apps, only the Video, YouTube, and Photo can display anything on the external display. Even then, you only get anything when you play a video or start a slideshow. Well, except that videos I downloaded from iTunes or “digital copies” of movies won’t work. The iPad claims the external display is not authorized to show them.

This is one area that is not a magical experience.

Keynote will also use the external display, but only when “playing” the presentation.

The last presentation I did involved slides followed by a demo. The demo used a web browser and an SSH client. On my iPad, I have Keynote, Safari, and iSSH. I have everything I would’ve needed...except that Keynote is the only one of those apps that can use the external display.

“Christian militia”

On NPR the other day, the reporter kept referencing a “Christian militia” that had been planning to kill police officers. It’s fairly clear that such a militia is not Christian. Reporters are careful to use “alleged” and “allegedly” since people are innocent until proven guilty. Too bad that their use of adjectives requires no standard of proof.

Which reminds me of an old blog 1.0 post: “Reporting about Serial Killers” (11 October 2002)

Dr. Welner said that the media should change how they cover serial killers. Instead of words like “cunning” and “sniper”, they should use words like “coward” and “shooter”.

Alice for the iPad

Grubers asks, about Alice for the iPad, “How does the Kindle compete with this?”

This is an app, not a iBook. So this is a question about competing on the platform level.

If I’m Amazon, I don’t want to be in the hardware business. Amazon is a software company that builds a retail platform. If I’m Amazon, I want to write the Kindle app for the iPhone, iPad, Slate, Courier, etc. I want to sell books to people that use other people’s hardware. Amazon created the Kindle hardware because there wasn’t a suitable platform...at least for a certain segment of the market. The iPad has the potential to serve that same market, and Amazon stands to win by supporting the iPad.

It’s with the iBooks app and store that Apple is competing with Amazon.

Change

People do not fear change. Rather, they have a healthy pessimism about it founded on the experience that change is more often simply different rather than better. Since change is seldom free, the “just different” sort of change generates waste.

To mini or not to mini

In my first attempts at playing D&D, I had a piece of poster board gridded off in one-inch squares, dominos to serve as walls, and some of the official AD&D Grenadier minis that my dad had bought me. (Those still make up the bulk of my minis.)

My first groups almost never used minis, though. I remember looking through a friend’s collection, but I don’t actually remember using them.

Until I moved and joined a GURPS group. Its advanced combat system really begs to be used with minis and a hex grid. Since, I’ve used them off and on.

I really like the idea of having a bunch of minis of the proper scale and Dwarven Forge or Hirst Arts dungeons. Or just cardboard heroes, sparks, and cardstock dungeons.

I like the idea, but I don’t like the reality. A lot of stuff to buy, store, tote, and organize. I could probably list more cons as well. In any case, part of my “back to basics” tendencies in recent years has included eschewing minis.

I’ve been wondering though: While playing mini-less works fine for me, perhaps—for some players—the lack of such a visual aid is a significant disadvantage.

So, I’m thinking of giving it another try. Just battlemat and pawns, though, to keep things simple. Also, I don’t want to use them simply as visual aids rather than as a minis game. I still plan to run combat in a more free fashion.

Inspired by GROGNARDIA: Minis and Me

Addicting games & computer engineering

Cracked.com has an article on 5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted. I think this is a bit sensationalistic, but some interesting things to consider.

Now this may seem completely unrelated... From Google’s blog, Helping computers understand language:

An irony of computer science is that tasks humans struggle with can be performed easily by computer programs, but tasks humans can perform effortlessly remain difficult for computers.

I wouldn’t call this “irony”. Rather, I think I’d call it the fundamental truth of computer engineering. Our task as engineers is to enable human and computer to work together. The computer should be doing the parts of the task that computers are good at, and the human should be doing the parts of the task that humans are good at.

The thing that is odd to me: It seems like a lot of games are getting people to do exactly the sorts of tasks that I’ve dedicated my professional life to automating so that people don’t have to.