>>50290149

What about your campaign notes on important people, and places, and whatnot. Do you do all of that on paper?

Inconvenient as in flipping through paper notes and books to find what you need rather than having helpful software tools and searchable PDFs open and on-hand for faster lookup.

GMing is fun, but the stuff that slows down play can be inconvenient.

Where you don't use a computer to help keep everything organized, and quick, and to help you come up with stuff that's hard to do on the fly by hand, how do you keep your game running smoothly without things slowing you down? What do you do when you realize something like: "Shit, I need stats for a 14th level wizard (or expert techno-sorcerer, or other complex and powerful enemy) and I did not foresee this scenario"?

I'm curious what methods of efficiency you've come up with without a PC

FAE? :'D

>mfw he's never known the joy of playing bejeweled or some other simple game while the group bickers about what to do next during a roll20 session.

Bookmarks and notes. I've never run into any problems. Nobody in my group is impatient, so it's not a big deal if something takes a little longer than usual.

I use paper for most games I'm in, with the exception of a pathfinder cleric, mostly because I have a word file with my spell list, and hyper links to my spells thus I can quickly look up what that spell does when I forget.

And its nice to have my sheet on myth-weaver that is easy to edit at any one time and when I find magic weapons the DM can easily send me a note with the description of what that item does as some items have really, reaaaally long lists of what they can do.

But I never use it to do other shit when I'm playing, its not really a problem as the game I'm in is rather engaging so I don't get bored and let my mind wander off.

>FAE
Ahahaha
fair enough. If you're GMing FAE, there's not much you might want to speed up, in terms of lookup and mechanics.

I uh, only TTRPG in meatspace.

Ah. my group is really big on productive-game-time. Any character building and advancement needs to take place between sessions, not after you arrive; anyone with a grab-bag of powers has to have their spells printed with their character sheet so we're not waiting for them flipping back and forth through the book between spells on their turns, people start getting annoyed if a combat turn takes longer than a minute and a half from start to finish, etc. I'm as much to blame for it as the rest of them, and get similarly annoyed about people taking a long time when its someone else GMing.

So when I GM I'm constantly looking for new tricks to keep up my quality of GMing, while cutting down on in-game delays and prep-time.

What kind of messed-up laptop positioning is that?

Personally I have no idea why so many people find it hard to not look at their devices or whatever unless they take it away from them, but it does seem to be a serious problem for most people.

One for a dude who clearly GMs standing up.

Yeah, but that's about the players, not the GM!

>Implying GM's are immune
I had a GM that would constantly get distracted by after hours work E-mails on his phone, often would take ten minutes to reply to one if he got one. Got really annoying honestly since half the time the game's flow would get interrupted and we'd all be waiting on him.

Ugh. That's terrible.

I have never encountered this from the GM.

Not surprising sinxe most of tg doesn't have the kind of job where you get important work emails out of hours.

Software Engineer.

I regularly put my phone in airplane mode when I'm busy (like when I'm GMing).

But yeah, it's still not a job where I get a lot of work calls after hours.

I do know some other software engineers who do get harassed at home thoguh. No thanks. Not if I can at all avoid it.

If I'm GM-ing, nobody tells me what tools to use or not use; electronic or otherwise.

Where are you getting the idea that anyone was doing so?

I made the thread to ask people what they use/don't use and why.

Personally I use a laptop all the time when GMing.

Personally, I've been starting to use my Laptop for GM'ing, since I wasn't able to bring all by splatbooks with me internationally, but given the choice, yeah, I'd be sticking to print.

What I do think I need to do though, it set up audio or audio/video recording. My note-taking is not as fast or clean as I'd like it to be, and being able to backtrack and take notes on what both myself and my players said would be a huge help.

I did not reply to the comments, but if you look there's at least one to the effect of "the game table is an electronics free area, GM included."

I work as an auditor.

I just put my phone on plane mode during game sessions. Not specifically because of my job, but because I am currently focusing on the people I am playing with, so friends, family and work can wait the few hours until I am done.

They know it too, and while my work has issues with it, they can either pay up for making me stand by at all times, or they can go fuck themselves.

>most of tg doesn't have the kind of job where you get important work emails out of hours.
I definitely don't. They don't even have my E-mail address. They only have my phone number so I can get in touch about after-work social stuff. My work stays at work.

Electronics are a pain for distractions, but PDFs are SO USEFUL. I run all my games online currently, and ended up running last night's DnD game while playing Skyrim.

We often record our sessions using Audacity on windows. You seem to need to remember to take a break every >=4h to save it, or you risk the program crashing though.

I would like to rig it up wiht cameras in the future, and edit/podcast the campaigns. Would be fun.

>they can either pay up for making me stand by at all times, or they can go fuck themselves.
Right?

Remind me never to play with you. How am I meant to roleplay with people watching?

Implying your yellow ass would ever be invited

I sometimes livestream our sessions. It's pretty fun.

you mean
>My gaming table is a no electronics zone. That includes the DM.
because that sounds like you getting defensive about someone stating how they run their table

Cameras will kill the vibe at your table unless everyone is a fucking exhibitionist.

However you can buy a perfectly acceptable audio recorder on amazon for like £15 and either attach it to a better mic or buy three and scatter them if you like editing.

I don't, and never have.

Reasons:

I'm a believer in "players roll all the dice". I'm currently running a Shadowrun variant where players roll everything (it's much faster), so I have no need to hide any dice rolls behind a screen. Even when I was running a d20 system before this game (Fantasy Craft is quite good) I just rolled everything in front of the players.

I also believe in mechanical transparency. Sure, the PC doesn't know they have a 60% chance of succeeding at the task at hand, but they probably have an approximate idea of how good they are at the things they're good at. I don't see any reason to hide that information from the player, so I don't need to hide tables or mechanics notes behind a screen. I like my players to be confident about what their characters can do.

There are some things I do hide, but I don't need to put up a physical barrier between me and the players to hide them.

I keep notes about what the NPCs are plotting on a tablet PC that I can easily read from without anyone else at the table seeing what's on it. (Very helpful if I ever get stuck for how to rule on a particular difficulty for a roll; I look at a blank page, gather my thoughts, then give a ruling with apparent authority. It's not important to stat every NPC, it's important to appear to be fair, even if you're making things up on the spot. And you should make things up on the spot, because the alternatives are railroad city or burnout from over-preparing.)

If I want to have the PCs roll something and not tell them whether they've succeeded or not, I have two options. First is to let them say that they're bluffing the guard but not let them roll their bluff until they're at the point where the silent alarm would come into play.
>Stop right there, sir!
Roll bluff, succeed.
>You forgot your coat!

Second is to just let them roll immediately and not tell them what the difficulty is. I try to avoid doing that one, because it goes against mechanical transparency.

I have a laptop but its only there so I can throw character art and scenery up on the projector. I use pen and paper for everything else because its faster.

Is that your table OP? What system and setting are you running out of curiosity?

>What does mechanical transparency have to do with whether you use a laptop or tablet to smooth the GMing process?
You say you don't and never have, but then mention a tablet PC.

>Why does a GM screen have anything to do with rolling in secret?
A GM Screen is valuable for all the handy tables and quick reference material it nets me at a glance, and if I were to lay them flat on the table it would take a bunch of extra table space and I'd have to shuffle though stacks of paper or something to get to them.

>And why does it feel like you're judging me based on a bunch of absurd assumptions?
I roll in the open, I don't fudge rolls, and I use firm DC guidelines which the PCs are well aware of before the game to ensure I don't accidentally screw over anyone by unfairly setting the target numbers.
I also try to avoid making up things on the spot (creature stats in particular) and instead lean on random generators and various pre-built generic NPCs which I can grab as appropriate.

Rather than prep for a thousand highly specific things, I try to prep things with a good deal of reusability. for instance, I'll prep a faction with a loadout of a bunch of generic NPCs with tables of random variations I can throw on them, so rather than needing 8 wizards, I'll have an abstract of a wizard, a handful of different customizations including spell loadouts, and some quick guides for scaling the wizard up or down as needed.

I have in the past (though I no longer have them unfortunately due to a harddrive crash) made software generators to give me what I need with a couple selections and the click of a button, generated on the fly.

It's not. Its a random photo from google. Sorry.

But the book on the table in that pic is shadowrun.

I have had similar setups (including when running shadowrun), but with the laptop flat on the table.

Depends on the system I'm using. All my notes are handwritten so I don't need a computer for that. if the system is complicated or expansive I use a computer so I can have easy bookmarks, multiple books, and ctrl+F. If the system is simple I don't bother.

My group does play in front of my tv though, which is hooked up to my PC. I use it to play background noise and show them pictures/ maps.

>30 minutes of planning, bickering, etc
>The best thing they could come up with is to let the druid polymorph himself into a beautiful orc and seduce the bbeg.

Not everyone makes rolls in the open

No because as other people have said pdfs are irritating to use as quick reference documents.

And also because I never have a table to play at and I don't want to sit around with a laptop on my actual lap.

>I uh, only TTRPG in meatspace.

You're lucky, unfortunately, I'm not in the position to play with people in the meatspace.

In my case, it was "20 minutes of planning, bickering, etc. over whether or not a door is trapped just because I phrased it a certain way."

1) I use books. Easier to reference, avoids distraction, don't need a power supply. There's a reason Welcome to Nightvale used the sentence "We've received reports that, all throughout Nightvale, books have stopped working", as the absurd and bizarre nature of such a statement makes it creepy and humorous.

2) I don't use a screen. Screens leads to fudging. I tend to crank up the difficulty in my campaigns, such that I must avoid any appearance of fudging.

I bought a massive dining room table specifically so that I could fit a laptop, a book or two, and papers behind my screen. Paper has advantages. Laptop has advantages. So just use both.

>Not surprising sinxe most of tg doesn't have the kind of job where you get important work emails out of hours.
I'm a structual engineer. I just live in a country where bothering coworkers and subordinates on the weekends is considered rude and something you only do in emergencies. Hell isn't it illegal in some European countries to email work related stuff on the weekends - unless it's an emergency? I think it was Italy where I heard about this

But user, you're not taking a simplistic and incendiary view and calling anyone who disagrees with you a retard. I think you're missing the point.

I use to agree with this. But in recent years, wanna now why I've given up?

Too. Slow.

Yep. I've found it way easier to have my stuff ready ahead of time, on paper, know by heart, or yes even a phone, then bother with a Laptop.
I've very proficient with Tech, but computers annoy me with how slow they are even the second it takes to load a pdf. Ironically I find paper "loads" faster. and flip card can be given as treasure once monster are defeated.

Also then the advent of Smartphones, but they are a combination of small and light and not obscuring you way in combat, compared to slowness of them.

No, because I want to be able to read the tables on the GM screen. The laptop becomes an extra panel.

>That pic. Triggered. Hope that's not really yours OP

>Screen + Laptop
You are doing it wrong, and failed this first jump.
>"But mah special wooden(?) screen
Screens are to prevent people looking at your notes or rolls. You know, if you play with people you don't trust. Generally screens are for chumps. Secondly if everything was on your PC, none of these would be concerns in the first place.

All those fucking dice but you have a PC that can use dice rollers in front of you.
>"But- but I still like the tactile feel of dice."
Ok
A: why are you using a PC and not 100% paper if tactile is a issue.
B: Just buy single SET of dice, maybe even one of the d6 cubes for big spells. The amount of Dice in that pic!? Use a dice roller or killer yourself.

>STILL using paper while he has a laptop.
Ugh.

Utter failure.

>Tablets or Phones
You can also be doing you own abysmal method better.

>Faster to use a book
Ctrl+F. Though that doesn't work if the pdf isn't text. Using a tablet is boss, though, I can confirm this as a tablet-owning GM.

>Screens are to prevent people looking at your notes or rolls.
They're also a collection of important tables and things you need to reference often.

>Reference things
-Your own notes.
-On your PC
-Screen in Pic doesn't appear to have references on it.
-Also I've yet to use a screen where the references on it didn't suck ass unless I made it myself. And if I made it myself? See point 1.

>tfw I DM with only my laptop
yes that means dice roll programs too

As a DM I've used a tablet because I had a few pdf's with homebrew material.
It would have been ridiculously expensive to print these out in their entirety.

Plus if we were playing pathfinder I could search something on the Pfsrd a lot faster than flipping through books.

When I DM now I don't use a tablet. I run Castles and Crusades so I don't look at the books too much unless its the monster manual.

All the players have tablets, me my Laptop all on Roll20.

All the time savings of online/computer tools but the fun of being in the same room and whatnot.

We also do physical dice for things that really matter, got a sense of real tension to it.

Nope.

I don't own a laptop and I'm perfectly capable of using a pen and paper.

I don't play very complicated games that require tons of niche rules or complex math, and I practice PbtA-style "play to see what happens" so I avoid planning too much. If there are things I need to remember, I write them down on paper. I do not understand why I would need a laptop, ever.

I use my laptop exclusively to run the soundtrack for my games during campaigns. I love the hobby but sitting silently around the table and rolling dice is dumb and boring. Would much rather have the swooping tones of Howard or Elfman helping the players imagine stuff.

My laptop is fuckhuge and barely fits behind the screen tho. It pisses me off.

This is a far better screen then your stupid punkass could ever make. Go fuck yourself.

The game I'm running has a lot of minute micromanaging so I do need my laptop. For example, the PCs are in charge of a small town and control most of the things happening within said town. Spreadsheets about Trade, Facilities, and Townspeople I put on GSheets so everyone has access to information at any time, even when we're not playing. I also keep stats of NPCs and Underlings the party has on the same GSheet so they can check that as well.

Another reason I use my laptop is to get PDFs of books I don't physically own. When you're running one of the 40k RPGs, the amount of books they've cranked out is just insane and it would be unreasonable to buy each one.

Instead of the laptop being behind the screen though, I use it as a sort of extension to my screen so it's sort of to the side.

Other than that, most of my maps, notes, and scribblings are in a separate notebook for easy access.