I'm the GM. I'm the only one with an electronic play aid at the table (my Galaxy Note 3) to play the 20th century fox spot light video, and sound track. I have a bunch of official star wars music categorized by the situation it's appropriate for so I switch folders, and pick a song in it play and leave it be until the end of the encounter (sometimes I forget to switch songs between encounters). Except for one player (so far), all of them are new to RPG's. That one player said "wow, a sound track is such a little thing but it adds so much to the experience, it really gives it the star wars feel." Other than that, paper pencils, and physical dice (I have 4 sets). I have the star wars dice app which is awesome and would in principle allow me to run a game on the spot (without other materials), but I've been primarily using the d4, d6, d8, d10, d12 (to get a feel for the statistics in my own homebrew system, i.e. to verify that the observed statistics match what I calculated [i got my PhD doing uncertainty quantification so writing throw away programs to calculate the stats is fairly easy for me, but my training as an engineer leads me to test the math/sims with empirical trials <meaning very large numbers of rolls>, and I can do that so much faster with the star wars dice app than physical dice], and explore alternative strategies to using the destiny pool, which in my system is a d4 through d12, that players can swap same size dice into/out of with every roll. The star wars dice app is the only dice app I've seen that lets me emulate the destiny pool, i.e. as a set of not selected dice on the "table"... only the selected dice get re-rolled, and swapping dice out of/into the destiny pool is just a matter of selecting/deselecting dice)

but back to the point at hand, I'm pretty old school, paper pencil and dice all the way (index cards to track initiative and NPC wounds/strain within an encounter)

Unless someone can explain to me like I'm a five year old how a laptop is faster, better, more space saving, and improves the overall social experience of the session for the player than just having the character sheet, a pencil, and a dice pool - I say no tech. To this day, no one has managed to accomplish this.

Unless someone can explain to me like I'm a five year old how a laptop is faster, better, more space saving, and improves the overall social experience of the session for the player than just having the character sheet, a pencil, and a dice pool - I say no tech. To this day, no one has managed to accomplish this.

Don't use a laptop. use tablets. Use a program loke one note to organize your GM notes. This is faster and more accurate than hand written notes. No more shuffling paper trying to find the note you want. Stuff will always be in the same place. They are searchable. But again use a tablet to do this not a notebook. And more space saving because it is one item on the table.

Tablets for character sheets. No more wasting ink on reprinting character sheets every game. The ability to pass notes with out altering the meta by passing notes to the GM or other players.

My GM outlaws all electronics at the gaming table... except for himself and me. They can have phones and stuff but they can't take them out and can only answer for parents.

I wish we were able to do the same.

My experience is that any use of any electronic devices at the table, at least by anyone other than the GM, is a recipe for … disappointment, if not disaster. But theoretically, we’re all adults, and you’d think that we should be allowed to make our own decisions.

Printing character sheets - gaaahh. We apparently ran out of some color of ink (or the cartridge wasn't working properly) when I printed mine for this last session. I ended up with a character sheet mostly in the manly shade of pink.

It worked out though. Turned out that the missing color must have been blue, because most of my green dice in the skill displays ended up yellow!

Printing character sheets - gaaahh. We apparently ran out of some color of ink (or the cartridge wasn't working properly) when I printed mine for this last session. I ended up with a character sheet mostly in the manly shade of pink.

Magenta, most likely. In the CMYK color scheme for printing, M = Magenta.

It worked out though. Turned out that the missing color must have been blue, because most of my green dice in the skill displays ended up yellow!

Confirmed. Cyan + Yellow = Green.

Unless someone can explain to me like I'm a five year old how a laptop is faster, better, more space saving, and improves the overall social experience of the session for the player than just having the character sheet, a pencil, and a dice pool - I say no tech. To this day, no one has managed to accomplish this.

When you have a character with lots of options that alter your bonuses or penalties and need to keep track of it all, then programs like PCGen really help with that and keep things going at the table with players being less forgetful of all that changes when doing ability A, or what skills get hit by penalty B.

For example, a character that has Favored Enemy, Rapid Shot, Point Blank Shot, Manyshot, Deadly Aim, Favored Terrain, Sneak Attack, has taken a negative level, damage to Dex, while under the effect of a Bless, Magic Fang, etc... Then gets hit with Restoration...

I do pretty detailed prep work before a session, and I have all my notes and NPCs in Obsidian Portal.

I use GM-only Adventure Logs and Wiki pages to organize a session.

I'll do a GM-only Adventure Log which says something like:

"Session 10

Landing on Kalandra

Meeting with Dac Arlos

Ambush by Stormtroopers

Escape on Gondolas"

Each of those entries would be links to a Wiki page where I've made notes about who and what might happen. I use OggDude's GM Tools to save a Stat Block image for each of the NPCs they might encounter, and I embed those Stat Block images in the Wiki page.

Here's an example from a recent session: https://explorers-on-the-edge.obsidianportal.com/wiki_pages/throne-room-of-jaren-laa

This way when I'm running the campaign, I have the iPad with the Adventure Log in a browser, then I open each Wiki page in a new tab when an encounter is called for.

I find this works great for me, as I can keep all my notes in one place (and I have the styles to make it easy to use SWRP dice symbols) and I don't have to print anything out.

Question for you -- I was checking out your Obsidian Portal page and am impressed with the way you set up the adventure notes, the wiki, etc. My question is, did you use any particular tool to help generate the boxes for text to read to players? I figured out you can do the dice sets via the data editor on OggDude's Tools, but even thumbing through the help he included I couldn't see anything about those in particular. Trying to streamline this, prep as much as I can before I start with my players.

Hi, januswhiteknight.

Thanks for checking out my Obsidian Portal!

I've added a bunch of custom styles to my Obsidian Portal to make it look as much as possible like the Edge of the Empire rulebooks. I tried to match the text styles as well as the dice symbols.

Here's how I do the text blocks:

https://explorers-on-the-edge.obsidianportal.com/wikis/style-guide

Here's a thread about it:

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/114000-eote-styles-for-obsidian-portal/

Feel free to check out and borrow any of it if you think it'd suit you!

Hi, januswhiteknight.

Thanks for checking out my Obsidian Portal!

I've added a bunch of custom styles to my Obsidian Portal to make it look as much as possible like the Edge of the Empire rulebooks. I tried to match the text styles as well as the dice symbols.

Here's how I do the text blocks:

https://explorers-on-the-edge.obsidianportal.com/wikis/style-guide

Here's a thread about it:

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/114000-eote-styles-for-obsidian-portal/

Feel free to check out and borrow any of it if you think it'd suit you!

Hell yeah. Thanks a lot -- that's going to make my life a lot easier. Much appreciated!

Phones are frowned upon in my group (though it hasnt been said out loud). Most of our players have print out character sheets, but I have been toying with the idea of getting a tablet specifically for the Star Wars game. A tablet with the all the books in PDF, character sheets...you know, to have an actual data pad at the table. Seems like it would be perfect for the setting. Just my thughts.

Does anybody have play list suggestions. IE good play lists for different situations?

as one of our group lives in another province we've opted to run our sessions on roll20. So my laptop sits infront of me for gm duty and map manipulation. And another computer run by the players i.e. moving tokens and such. we all have the dice apps and it works well for us. again as one of our group is out of province it required some way of including her. other than small technical issues we've been running our games like this for a while. i don't find it distracts too much but then we've always run it this way and works.

Sorry for the Thread necromancy, but I was wondering if any one out there has any new tech support ideas for table top gaming?

Salcor

It’s not clear to me what you mean by “tech support ideas for table top gaming”.

Could you elaborate?

Any ideas one using tech at the gaming table.

Salcor

Any ideas one using tech at the gaming table.

IMO, if everyone’s at the same table, then most tech should probably be turned off and/or stowed.

There are some game aids highlighted in the “Compiled Resources List” thread at https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/85616-compiled-resources-list/ but those are optional, and should only be used by the GM if they actually help with the atmosphere of the game.

Any ideas one using tech at the gaming table.

IMO, if everyone’s at the same table, then most tech should probably be turned off and/or stowed.

There are some game aids highlighted in the “Compiled Resources List” thread at https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/85616-compiled-resources-list/ but those are optional, and should only be used by the GM if they actually help with the atmosphere of the game.

That is a little narrow minded.

That is a little narrow minded.

I’m sorry if you don’t like my answer, but with regards to modern technology, I don’t see much that players can bring to the table that will help with the atmosphere of the game. Sure, if you’ve forgotten your dice, then you can use the dice app. And if you’ve forgotten your character sheet, you can use an electronic version of it. But neither of those are an enhancement over the physical thing they’re taking the place of, although they are better than nothing.

With regards to enhancing the atmosphere of the game with modern technology, I think that’s pretty much entirely up to the GM. Some GMs may be better at doing that than others, with sound boards, digital maps, etc…. But unless I’m missing something, I don’t see how the players can help very much in this area.

Please, feel free to prove me wrong. But when it comes to doing RPG’s, I think that there is good reason why FFG focusses on the game itself and a few printed sheets. With the way this game is written in a narrative style, many so-called “aids” would be more likely to actually be a hindrance than a help.

Do you honestly think that it would improve things if everyone around the table pulled out their respective laptops and everyone played on Roll20 or some other shared online service, even though they’re all sitting there at the same physical table?

If not, then what kind of modern aids did you have in mind that players could bring to the table that would actually help the atmosphere?

Don’t just be negative. Give us some positive examples of what you think could be an improvement.

Already done earlier in the thread. Things like being able to chat with other players with out interrupting. Or being able to pass notes to the GM with out giving away the fact they are passing notes. Not having to print a new sheet every game. But then i would recommend reading the whole thread.

Also today we use tablets not laptops. Which behave rather like clipboards...which have been used at gaming tables for a long time.

Also today we use tablets not laptops. Which behave rather like clipboards...which have been used at gaming tables for a long time.

If they were dedicated iPads (or other tablets), and they could only be used for things appropriate to the table, then I might agree with you. But all such electronic devices I’ve seen have way too many options for being distractions from the game, with their web browsers, games, and other programs that tend to be loaded.

Besides, we already have way too many cases where everyone at a table has their head buried in their respective phone or other electronic device, and they’re not interacting with any of the parts of the real world out there. I don’t think it would be conducive to the game to replicate that kind of atmosphere at the gaming table.

But maybe that’s just me. YMMV.

I was under the impression that FFG focused less on digital and electronic stuff because they don't own the digital rights.

If your players are immersed more by the electronic device in front of them then your game, then your game may have a problem that has nothing to do with the devices themselves. Make the game itself more interesting then the device.

Electronic playaids can help play just like paper playaids can, when used appropriately.

I don't allow Digital Devices, except phone with dice app.

Had one group that had 4 tablets, None of them owned the book. Everyone had the book on a tablet. Needless to say i ended the group due to philosophical differences.

If i'm going to build and buy the library so you can play , the least you can do is go get the F-ing BOOK! and support the company making the game.. if that's to much to ask because its too expensive,

then playing a Role playing game should not be on your priority and you need to be doing something else with your spare time like working!

Wow there is a lot of strong opinions on this subject.

So at the moment at the gaming table I use my laptop to assist with running. I use realmworks, Oggdude's program, adobe, and syrinscape.

I allow my players to us the FFG dice roller, and I try to have an adult conversion with my players about focusing on the gaming not on the device. However there are some things I would like to try, to enhance the feeling especially since Star Wars is a "High Tech" game. For example client chat to send messages to players. I am also thinking of coordinating with the player to place an app on their device that turns it into a second screen to I can push pictures and videos directly to their device.

Salcor