Hey Man, well this is Babylon

I’ve always been a big proponent of the incorporation of technology into the planning and execution of tabletop role-playing. Since my earliest days of GMing, I’ve incorporated music into my games, usually through stereos, computers, or (more recently) portable MP3 players, and I’ve occasionally been known to use a handheld voice-changer to create dramatic NPC voices. I’ve frequently found that electronic visuals can help as well, be they images keyed up on a laptop screen, transparent maps on an overhead projector (note to self: get one of these), or slide-show atmospheric visuals on a HDTV. Most recently, I’ve been pondering methods to entirely digitize my game-planning process.

First off, at least a few people are likely to wonder why someone would want to do this in the first place. After all, Pencil and Paper have been the good ol’ trusty standby since the dawn of the hobby, and are in fact the core components of the very medium itself. Gaming is supposed to consist of dice, notebooks, a mountain of gaming texts, and pencils, right? I find a few drawbacks to this format, however. As technology has evolved – and as society has in turn evolved to focus upon that technology – changes in lifestyles have seen people spending increasing chunks of time in front of computers. Not only that, but the gaming library itself has seen a dramatic shift towards the digital horizon, as more and more game companies are putting digital copies of their books available for download online, with some of them being online exclusive altogether. Even some entire gaming groups themselves have moved to entirely-digital game “tables,” using interfaces such as OpenRPG, the D&D Insider, and Skype. As my own game library drastically shrinks in physical volume, and as my laptop becomes an ever-more-crucial tool for me as a GM, I find that I likewise want to minimize the amount of paper notes I port around with me, keeping my trusty gaming satchel nice and compact. If I could have it my way, my bag would consist of nothing more than a laptop, a dice bag (I just gotta have that tangible impetus), a deck of cards, and some always-useful counting tokens.

After toying around with a handful of applications for my own planning purposes, I realized that others just might have a lot of the same questions and curiosities in this matter as I. I am now working on putting together a series of good review posts which focus on integrating a variety of different “advanced” software packages into a GM’s pre-game session-planning process. There are numerous “common” applications out there which have been regularly used by the gaming community for some time, such as MS Word & Excel (and their OpenOffice equivalents) and a plethora of simple text-based note-taking applications (Notepad, EditPlus, Textpad, etc). However, there also exists an array of even more esoteric programs that I believe could provide additional enhancement to the game-prepping process, if applied in creative ways. Mind-mapping applications, such as MindManager, XMind, and Bubbl.us, can add multi-tiered tree-based idea branching to the basic act of note-taking. Newer web-based applications such as Wikis and the rather unique Google Wave could take that power online, allowing adaptable pre-structuring of in-game encounters that can then be shared and discussed with your fellow players.

Many of these latter applications (or variants thereof) have been out there in the business world for a long time now, and have also been used by artists and designers to simultaneously streamline and enhance their creative and planning processes. I intend on using a handful of them (meaning: the free ones) and analyzing them with the Gamer first and foremost in mind. My idea here is to find a simple and free online “entry-level” adventure module, and then approach the planning of that module using these chosen applications. While my intention is to use each one separately from beginning-to-end, I will also be analyzing each one for the bigger picture of full interoperability; meaning that while my focus will be on comparing and contrasting the applications, I understand that some folks out there might find a good deal of use out of combining them for different elements.

My current target applications are a handful of the free ones: XMind, Bubbl.us, Google Wave, and Obsidian Portal. I’ve used the commercial variants a bit as well, and will be providing notes, comparisons, and links to them in my conclusions. If any of you have any recommendations on others to try and review, send them my way.

Perhaps when this is done, I will expand this series to test out and highlight other technologies as well, such as music (MP3 players vs PC media libraries), note-taking programs (OneNote, EditPlus, etc), and more.

The new treaty re-affranchised Piotr from the years of imprisonment following his plane being downed behind enemy lines. Having not seen beyond his filth-ridden cells in a decade, the effulgence of the sunlit world outside brought him to his knees, tears streaming his face… but he cried not for the sun.

Upon his death, years later, he clutched half a broken necklace – his war souvenir – and gasped a stranger’s name.

The only visitors to his grave were his wife and a tall, teary-eyed old man with a foreign accent, who said only that they had been friends during the war.