Starting last week I’m running a Hollow Earth Expedition game using the iPad instead of my laptop.  I did this because I’m mostly expecting to be traveling to and from the session via motorcycle, and minimizing the amount of crap you lug with you is advisable on a bike.  For the first night, I did bring all the books and GM screen with me, although I have the books in electronic format on the iPad.  Tonight, I think I’m just taking the GM screen and iPad.

For the experiment I am running Kdan Mobile’s PDF  Reader for the game books, adventure notes and major NPC character sheets (typed up in WordPerfect X3 on my laptop, then pdf’d.)  For the dice roller I’m using Diceshaker (for the iPhone, as well — it allows you to shake the device to roll.)  Diceshaker allows you to set up multiple dice for rolling — like, say 20d2 for HEX, or any configuration of dice rolled together, just pick the die set and hit reroll.  Or shake the device.  For simplicity, I put the app icons next to each other for quick swapping between notes and dice.

The first night went smoothly — swapping between NPC sheets and notes was simple enough and fairly quick.  I didn’t have to look into any of the books, so I can’t speak to how easy that would be.  The HEX PDFs are well set up with a table of contents to jump to areas of the books (unlike the Dr. Who PDFs — argh!), so I suspect it won’t be a problem.  If I know the critters they’ll run into, I could put up bookmarks, as well, to get me to the pertinent info…

Swapping to the dice is a bit more time consuming than having a die program up next to the WP window, but ordinarily I “take the average” for Hollow Earth critters and mooks, only major villains get rolls.  Also, I occasionally like to have players roll for the baddies — it’s fun as they get to bust on each other for good rolls on the villains.  The lag between the notes to dice, though, is a second or two.  Negligible.

The game venue has a wifi connection, so I can look up things I need quickly on the internet if I need.  Pictures of gear — like the Latham 47.02 seaplane were quick to find and easy to show the folks on the iPad screen thanks to the pinch/zoom of the multi-touch screen.

Overall, I found the experience a lot easier than I expected it to be, and carrying two pounds (the iPad, screen, and sundries), vs. the 15 or so pounds for books, screen, laptop, and the box of spent cartirdges I use as style point markers makes is a very tempting way to manage the games.  The real test will be next week, when I try to run a BSG campaign, where I’ve normally got multiple files for fleet ships, major NPCs, and the mission plan up in different tabs in WordPerfect on the laptop.