What tools can you not live without when GMing around the table?
What tools can you not live without when GMing around the table?
(Posts for both GMs and players in online games to come later.)
What tools can you not live without when GMing around the table?
(Posts for both GMs and players in online games to come later.)
I tab back and forth between One Note, which holds my notes; a browser on Archives of Nethys, and Pathbuilder 2e's "Encounters" feature.
Pathbuilder Encounters is probably not the best most full-featured encounter management tool out there, but it automatically syncs with my players' Pathbuilder characters, which I find brilliant because I can see all their stats and character sheets. Lets me see the difficulty of encounters as I add monsters, as well as automatically roll all their initiatives, manage HP, etc.
Biggest negatives are that there's no way to enter custom or third-party monsters (at least that I know of), and that changing initiative order (e.g. when knocked unconscious) is an awkward manual process.
I use Trilium for my notes (it's similar to Obsidian MD, but open source, and WYSIWYG), pf2easy for quick references, and custom soundboards and Bluetooth speaker for ambience.
I picked up some "gold" fantasy coins to use a physical representations of hero points, some silver ones for focus points, and have printed off my own spell cards using pf2easy's spellbook and some cheap card stock. I had been using coins for spell slots for a bit, too, but a less generic option was required after a few levels.
The Advanced GM screen has been a great resource during sessions, too.
I don't currently have a laptop, so what I find invaluable might change once I get one.