I love this great tool, still in alpha. It makes it really easy to pull together monsters for encounters. You can also use it for PCs, but I think the ease with which I can add a monster from the compendium really is what makes this tool so useful for me. You can see on the screen shot, they are like cards, that I can move around. So easy, and so useful!
UPDATE: Gaming Tonic has a quick write up about this tool, as well as a couple others. Thanks to Gaming Tonic for the link!
Filed under Role Playing, Technology
My brother’s 3G iphone recently bit the big one, and he picked up a new iphone and asked me for some of the advice on iphone apps to get. Here’s the best ones that I know about. Let me know in the comments any other apps that you recommend!
As a note, I’ve included a ($) for those apps that cost.
Webapps
These are just plain webapps that work fine. I find these are better than any app that I’ve downloaded from the internet.
Google Reader: Google’s RSS reader. It ain’t pretty, but it gets the job done, and I can access it from any computer or device, which is nice!
Google Tasks: Google tasks is google’s little known gem. It’s a to do list, without many frills, but it works! Normally you can only access it from gmail or google calendar, but here’s a link that allows you to access only the tasks. It’s called Tasks Canvas.
iPlay4E: I love this site, just upload you’re 4e character, and you can use it from your phone. It even interacts with D&D compendium.
Books
Stanza: Stanza is my favorite ebook reader on the the iPhone, mainly because it’s free, and has a great interface to download books from the Gutenberg Project. I’ve been slowly working my way through some classics, as well as reading a bunch of Cory Doctorow’s work that he has made available through the Gutenberg Project.
iBooks: I like how easy it is to add stuff to my phone with iBooks. I read a bunch of RPG books on PDF using this, and haven’t had many problems
Goodreader: ($) I have to admit, I don’t have this one installed on my iPhone, because of the cost and the fact that iBooks works ok for me, but a lot of people really love goodreader as a pdf reader.
Music and Radio
Pandora: Everyone probably already knows about it, but this is my preferred free radio/music streaming service. My favorite radio stations right now include Dinosaur Jr, Townes Van Sant and Mumford and Sons.
Shazam: ($) This is that app that Apple advertised the heck out of, since you can just have it listen to a snippet of a song, and then it’ll tell you what the song is. Pretty awesome.
MPR Radio: The local NPR station up in Minnesota has an amazing music station called the Current, which plays great music. I really miss it down here in Nashville.
KUT 90.5: This is the Austin version of the Current. Also plays some great music.
Social and Blogging
WordPress: A great way to update your wordpress blog.
Evernote: I like Evernote a lot as a way to keep notes.
Facebook: Of course everyone needs facebook on their iPhone.
Tweetdeck: The best twitter app that I’ve seen.
Games
Samurai: ($) I love me some Reiner Knizia board games and this is one of the best ones out there, plus it allows multiplayer over the internet.
Scrabble: ($) I think this might be free now. Who doesn’t love scrabble? I actually enjoy scrabble over the internet, rather than in person, because I don’t have to wait for them to play.
Lemonade Stand: ($) Just a fun game about running a Lemonade Stand. Who doesn’t want to run their own lemonade stand.
Roleplaying
Still haven’t found much that I really find valuable here. I guess I just don’t think of dice rolling apps as that useful. Anyone has any suggestions?
Filed under Technology
North of Nowhere 