So in my last post, and yes, admittedly it has been a couple of weeks... I reviewed prepping for a game session with NBOS software The Keep.
I have now had the chance to run 2 games from behind my laptop using The Keep, and can share my experience and advice angle.
First, having all of the information in one place was FAN-TASTIC. No shuffling of papers, no needing to look things up, it was all just right there. That said, if you don't put EVERYTHING in there, expect to still do some looking up and web surfing to find what you want. This can mean that you might have to prep a little more to make the absolute most of out of the keep. If you leave something out, that something might become important and require you to do some on the spot research, which is something we would all love to avoid.
That stuff aside, the best perk in the keep for my group was a little part of The Keep called the GM screen. This lets you hook another monitor up to your laptop, and whenever you click on an image in the keep, it can be projected only to the second screen. This allowed me to constantly be showing our group what they were fighting, I was also able to show a map in a PFS game when we fell way behind on time so that we could move things a long faster. My players love the GM screen.
I'd be happy to answer any further questions, so ask away, and I still recommend The Keep!
Showing posts with label Review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Review. Show all posts
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Thursday, January 17, 2013
A review of "The Keep" part 1
I am constantly trying to improve and evolve how I GM my games. I genuinely enjoy the time it takes to prepare a game, so it doesn't become tedious. I have become increasingly fond of using my laptop to help GM, and in light of that, this week I purchased a piece of software called "The Keep" from nbos. (I purchased mine on Paizo, it was a couple dollars cheaper.) Below is my review.
Price: A bit steep actually. Coming in at around 30 dollars. This seems pretty in line with similar products though. I would have much preferred paying about 10 bucks less. But that's not to say that I think 30 is overpriced, but it is an expense that certainly is trivial, at least not to me.
First Impressions: So I paid the seemingly high cost, installed the software to my flashdrive (cool feature, discussed below) and started the program. As soon as it loaded, and I looked at the interface for the first time, I thought to myself "well... this sucks, what a waste of money." The interface isn't flashy, there's no pop up that says "Start here" there really isn't anything that comes up right away to tell you what to do or how to make the best use of program. So, I did what anyone would do, I just started playing with the buttons and seeing what happens...
10 minutes later: I get it now, despite not being initially intuitive once I started playing with the program its functionality became much clearer. You create a new entry, for me, this was to create "Carrion Crown," the adventure path my group is currently playing, then you give that entry 'children.' Each child that I gave to carrion crown became rooms in the dungeon. Then I could give those rooms children to post monster pictures, stat blocks, read aloud text for the room, all the knowledge DCs, skill checks, etc.
My old system was to use a word processor that contained all of the information for a room, all of the stat blocks for monsters in a room, and anything else I would need to know during gameplay. The problem with this approach was that my documents would get long, and cumbersome. I would end up with files like "SoG Prep" and "More SoG Prep" and "Prep for SoG," just because I didn't want huge text files that were unpractical to print, and hard to use quickly from the laptop.
The Keep takes away the need for this, with each room in the dungeon being it's own child, I can use the navigation panel to go anywhere I want. I have completely cut out the need for using a word processor to help prep the game, I can do everything right there in The Keep.
Things I like: I love that I can install the program to a flash drive. I can work on prep now when I have downtime at work, and not have to do any conversions (Word at work, Open Office at home), emailing files to myself, uploading to dropbox, etc. I can keep my flashdrive with me, and run The Keep from there.
The GM screen. How functional this becomes for me, is yet unknown. The GM screen feature allows you to have a second screen project an image, while you run the keep from the laptop. This would allow you to show monster portraits or maps to the group, while you see everything else behind the scenes. I haven't ran a game using The Keep yet, I'm still prepping, so I don't know well this work. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to use it to show maps, without showing the entire map. The Keep allows you to move an image around so that you can only show parts of it, but this seems clunky to try and keep parts of the map hidden. I might use an image editing program to cut up my map, and show the parts to the group as they become revealed.
Built in PDF reading. I have a subscription to Paizo's Adventure Path, as such, I get a PDF of every book for free. Having a built in integration of PDFs to The Keep makes using these PDFs incredibly easy. I can copy/paste, I can click between rooms of the dungeon and the room in the original PDF, etc. I keep the bookmarks tab open in the PDF reader, and this makes quick navigation around what you need even easier.
What I'm Unsure about...
The Dice roller is not overly simple, there is a lot of clicking and weird things to do to say, roll a d20 +5. That simple command would require: 1 click on the d20 dice, 1 click on the 1d20 button, 1 click on the add button, 1 click on the number range to add to, and a final click on the number 5. By that time, I've done the math in my head. I think I am going to be using Combat Manager with The Keep in order to handle rolls and combat. The Keep wants to have everything a GM would need in one place, and it comes pretty close, but I'm unsure that its dice roller will be efficient enough to use during game time.
As I hinted above, I'm unsure about the GM Screen. I like it, but I don't know that it will do everything that I would really like it to do. Ideally, I could have my map, and I could have a fog of war type function that would let me reveal parts of the map as it is explored. I think NBOS offers another piece of software that can do this, but it also has a cost, and I am not ready to give them more money yet.
I'm not sure how it is going to work during the game, but I will post part two of this review after it is giving its test drive on Sunday. I don't anticipate problems, and I think I will like it, but I don't want to assume too much yet.
What I don't like:
The cost. Its only 30 bucks, but then again, it is 30 bucks! 19.99 and I wouldn't have an issue at all with the cost, I also fear that the price tag will scare people away who could probably benefit by having a pretty good piece of software added to their arsenal.
The "uh..." moment that I had when I first loaded it. A tutorial, a "start here", or even a built in campaign would have been helpful so that I would have a clue where to start. First impressions are important, and this one sucked.
The 'other programs' that you can integrate with The Keep. NBOS produces a character sheet creator, and a random table generator that can integrate with The Keep. I have played, albeit briefly, with these other two programs, and they are intimidating. They rely on a lot of coding, a lot of manual reading and referencing, and are very unfriendly to a new and casual user.
Overall:
I do like The Keep. A lot. It can do a lot of things, and I constantly get new ideas to get even more functionality out of it. I would certainly recommend it, if you have the cash to drop on it. Don't let its first impression scare you away, it's worth a second look and worth taking some time to play with and figure out.
What software do you use to GM? Are you using The Keep and have more ideas, further input? Comment below!
Price: A bit steep actually. Coming in at around 30 dollars. This seems pretty in line with similar products though. I would have much preferred paying about 10 bucks less. But that's not to say that I think 30 is overpriced, but it is an expense that certainly is trivial, at least not to me.
First Impressions: So I paid the seemingly high cost, installed the software to my flashdrive (cool feature, discussed below) and started the program. As soon as it loaded, and I looked at the interface for the first time, I thought to myself "well... this sucks, what a waste of money." The interface isn't flashy, there's no pop up that says "Start here" there really isn't anything that comes up right away to tell you what to do or how to make the best use of program. So, I did what anyone would do, I just started playing with the buttons and seeing what happens...
10 minutes later: I get it now, despite not being initially intuitive once I started playing with the program its functionality became much clearer. You create a new entry, for me, this was to create "Carrion Crown," the adventure path my group is currently playing, then you give that entry 'children.' Each child that I gave to carrion crown became rooms in the dungeon. Then I could give those rooms children to post monster pictures, stat blocks, read aloud text for the room, all the knowledge DCs, skill checks, etc.
My old system was to use a word processor that contained all of the information for a room, all of the stat blocks for monsters in a room, and anything else I would need to know during gameplay. The problem with this approach was that my documents would get long, and cumbersome. I would end up with files like "SoG Prep" and "More SoG Prep" and "Prep for SoG," just because I didn't want huge text files that were unpractical to print, and hard to use quickly from the laptop.
The Keep takes away the need for this, with each room in the dungeon being it's own child, I can use the navigation panel to go anywhere I want. I have completely cut out the need for using a word processor to help prep the game, I can do everything right there in The Keep.
Things I like: I love that I can install the program to a flash drive. I can work on prep now when I have downtime at work, and not have to do any conversions (Word at work, Open Office at home), emailing files to myself, uploading to dropbox, etc. I can keep my flashdrive with me, and run The Keep from there.
The GM screen. How functional this becomes for me, is yet unknown. The GM screen feature allows you to have a second screen project an image, while you run the keep from the laptop. This would allow you to show monster portraits or maps to the group, while you see everything else behind the scenes. I haven't ran a game using The Keep yet, I'm still prepping, so I don't know well this work. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to use it to show maps, without showing the entire map. The Keep allows you to move an image around so that you can only show parts of it, but this seems clunky to try and keep parts of the map hidden. I might use an image editing program to cut up my map, and show the parts to the group as they become revealed.
Built in PDF reading. I have a subscription to Paizo's Adventure Path, as such, I get a PDF of every book for free. Having a built in integration of PDFs to The Keep makes using these PDFs incredibly easy. I can copy/paste, I can click between rooms of the dungeon and the room in the original PDF, etc. I keep the bookmarks tab open in the PDF reader, and this makes quick navigation around what you need even easier.
What I'm Unsure about...
The Dice roller is not overly simple, there is a lot of clicking and weird things to do to say, roll a d20 +5. That simple command would require: 1 click on the d20 dice, 1 click on the 1d20 button, 1 click on the add button, 1 click on the number range to add to, and a final click on the number 5. By that time, I've done the math in my head. I think I am going to be using Combat Manager with The Keep in order to handle rolls and combat. The Keep wants to have everything a GM would need in one place, and it comes pretty close, but I'm unsure that its dice roller will be efficient enough to use during game time.
As I hinted above, I'm unsure about the GM Screen. I like it, but I don't know that it will do everything that I would really like it to do. Ideally, I could have my map, and I could have a fog of war type function that would let me reveal parts of the map as it is explored. I think NBOS offers another piece of software that can do this, but it also has a cost, and I am not ready to give them more money yet.
I'm not sure how it is going to work during the game, but I will post part two of this review after it is giving its test drive on Sunday. I don't anticipate problems, and I think I will like it, but I don't want to assume too much yet.
What I don't like:
The cost. Its only 30 bucks, but then again, it is 30 bucks! 19.99 and I wouldn't have an issue at all with the cost, I also fear that the price tag will scare people away who could probably benefit by having a pretty good piece of software added to their arsenal.
The "uh..." moment that I had when I first loaded it. A tutorial, a "start here", or even a built in campaign would have been helpful so that I would have a clue where to start. First impressions are important, and this one sucked.
The 'other programs' that you can integrate with The Keep. NBOS produces a character sheet creator, and a random table generator that can integrate with The Keep. I have played, albeit briefly, with these other two programs, and they are intimidating. They rely on a lot of coding, a lot of manual reading and referencing, and are very unfriendly to a new and casual user.
Overall:
I do like The Keep. A lot. It can do a lot of things, and I constantly get new ideas to get even more functionality out of it. I would certainly recommend it, if you have the cash to drop on it. Don't let its first impression scare you away, it's worth a second look and worth taking some time to play with and figure out.
What software do you use to GM? Are you using The Keep and have more ideas, further input? Comment below!
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
A review of "Pathfinder Society Scenario #2-11: The Penumbral Accords"
Note: This review is made entirely from the player side of the table. I have not 'seen behind the screen,' so there will not be much information from that perspective.
There are also very big spoilers, so if you are planning on playing this scenario, and want to be surprised, you should probably not read much further.
Overview: The Blackros family entered into a slave trading agreement with some 'bad guys' from the shadow plane. Now that agreement entails giving over a couple of their own daughters, so the Blackros family wants the agreement to be broken. The pathfinders are hired to go into the museum at night, and break the agreement and save the daughters.
Combats: The combats were pretty good, though our particular group had a harder time with the golem than we did with the "boss" at the end. The DR possessed by this golem made the fight take longer than it probably should have. The raptor that we encountered at the very beginning of the encounter can also hit pretty hard. It one shotted our party's eidolon, and it has quite a few natural attacks. Fortunately, once we got some hits in on it, it didn't take long to get down. The alchemist knocked our cleric unconscious, but our bard was able to save the day in recovering him. So, at the end of the day, the combats were good. They were challenging but not impossible, dangerous, but probably not pushing the TPK risk. Of course, our GM may have been fudging some rolls, but I didn't perceive this from where I was sitting.
Role Playing: There are some great opportunities to role play, and there are some moral decisions that have to bed made along the way. The group encounters several slaves along their journey in the museum and these could really be played out if that's how your group likes to play.
Faction Missions: Since this is a season 2 scenario, the newer factions will have to share missions with one of the original factions. That's OK but something to be aware of. We had 3 people all doing the Taldor mission. There is also some tension between a couple of the missions. The Cheliax mission requires silence of one particular slave, whereas one of the other factions requires getting a slave to tell 'his story.' This made for some RP tension between a couple of our characters. If your group can handle that maturely, then it can be fun, otherwise it could be a bit of a problem.
Time/Prep: Our GM had maps made ahead of time, but they didn't seem super complex. There are a couple of mechanics from classes that a GM would have to be familiar with, the monk's ki, the alchemist, construct traits, low light fighting, and balance on slippery surfaces. The entire scenario also only took our group 3 hours to get through. I do not know if there was an optional encounter that was skipped or not, I didn't get a look at things from that end.
Overall: I had a great time playing this mission out. There is a little bit of a go to room, kill the bad guys, go to next room, kill the bad guys, but our GM did a good job of playing these out and not making them tedious. The missions were fun, and made for some good RP options in our group. The difficulty was challenging but never felt impossible.
I would recommend giving this one a play through, it was a good time as a player.
There are also very big spoilers, so if you are planning on playing this scenario, and want to be surprised, you should probably not read much further.
Overview: The Blackros family entered into a slave trading agreement with some 'bad guys' from the shadow plane. Now that agreement entails giving over a couple of their own daughters, so the Blackros family wants the agreement to be broken. The pathfinders are hired to go into the museum at night, and break the agreement and save the daughters.
Combats: The combats were pretty good, though our particular group had a harder time with the golem than we did with the "boss" at the end. The DR possessed by this golem made the fight take longer than it probably should have. The raptor that we encountered at the very beginning of the encounter can also hit pretty hard. It one shotted our party's eidolon, and it has quite a few natural attacks. Fortunately, once we got some hits in on it, it didn't take long to get down. The alchemist knocked our cleric unconscious, but our bard was able to save the day in recovering him. So, at the end of the day, the combats were good. They were challenging but not impossible, dangerous, but probably not pushing the TPK risk. Of course, our GM may have been fudging some rolls, but I didn't perceive this from where I was sitting.
Role Playing: There are some great opportunities to role play, and there are some moral decisions that have to bed made along the way. The group encounters several slaves along their journey in the museum and these could really be played out if that's how your group likes to play.
Faction Missions: Since this is a season 2 scenario, the newer factions will have to share missions with one of the original factions. That's OK but something to be aware of. We had 3 people all doing the Taldor mission. There is also some tension between a couple of the missions. The Cheliax mission requires silence of one particular slave, whereas one of the other factions requires getting a slave to tell 'his story.' This made for some RP tension between a couple of our characters. If your group can handle that maturely, then it can be fun, otherwise it could be a bit of a problem.
Time/Prep: Our GM had maps made ahead of time, but they didn't seem super complex. There are a couple of mechanics from classes that a GM would have to be familiar with, the monk's ki, the alchemist, construct traits, low light fighting, and balance on slippery surfaces. The entire scenario also only took our group 3 hours to get through. I do not know if there was an optional encounter that was skipped or not, I didn't get a look at things from that end.
Overall: I had a great time playing this mission out. There is a little bit of a go to room, kill the bad guys, go to next room, kill the bad guys, but our GM did a good job of playing these out and not making them tedious. The missions were fun, and made for some good RP options in our group. The difficulty was challenging but never felt impossible.
I would recommend giving this one a play through, it was a good time as a player.
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