For reasons I can’t even begin to understand, an almost two-year-old post about how I play Pen and Paper Dungeons and Dragons on my iPad is the top hit page on this site. A lot has changed in my workflow, so I am providing an updated post.
MANAGING MY CHARACTERS
With the release of D&DBeyond, Wizard’s online compendium, they also issued Cease and Desist orders to a lot of the sites that provided character builder services. While it was possible to upload configuration files that had D&D source material, it became too much of a pain in the ass for me to manage. Instead, I figured for short money I could buy direct from Wizards the material I needed and just manage my characters on their web page.
I have been very impressed with the online portal. It’s damn easy to quickly create and update a character. A few times I have been at a con and suddenly needed a level one character in about 5-10 minutes had a workable character for the play session. Updating them when I get new gear or a new level is also very easy.
USING THE IPAD IN PLAY SESSIONS
Gone, obviously, is the Numbers sheet I was using as a hacked-together character sheet. Also the 3rd-party PDFs are gone. I instead use the portal manage my character.
Luckily, the places I play D&D have decent WiFi. With the 12.9” iPad I can view the entire web page for the character manager. From there I can adjust hit points and check off used abilities. It’s also easy to invoke mechanisms like short and long rests and the web page will automatically reset used abilities. There is also an added bonus that having the iPad laying flat on the table lets other players see I am actually using it to play the game, and not Minecraft. I also makes seeing dice rolls easy without a laptop screen in front of me.
The one area I am not thrilled with is the PDF export. For non-spell casting characters it’s fine. However, the amount of information it exports about spells is lacking. It doesn’t tell me that effects, damage, and other crucial information. This isn’t the end of the world since I just keep that PDFs in case the WiFi is crappy. There is a companion app that I can use to look up information. Unfortunately it doesn’t handle characters yet. The PDF is just a backup in case the WiFi craps out. I sync them to my iPad but I have’t needed to use them in a session yet.
I have used this system in roughly 6 games, mostly at conventions. It is working well and for about $30 I solved a lot of character management problems. Hopefully they will implement a character manager to the iPad app. The only issue I have is battery life since I am hammering the WiFi connection. I do keep a small battery charger in my bag, though.
Mark Crump 