Pendabrok's page

My players are just about finished with Burnt Offerings, and have enjoyed the usage of my iPad as the battlemap. I've seen a few different applications of the iPad in this manner, but none of them really met my desires as a GM.

This is what I do:

I have Splashtop XDisplay on my iPad - this program allows you to use your iPad as a second display via your wireless network.

I have Adobe PhotoShop on my laptop, and with it have adjusted the maps included in the AP (PDFs), and enhanced their grids. Each map is a PSD, and within it I have layers for "Fog of War" across unseen rooms, and "token" layers for the PCs and NPCs.

I leave PhotoShop's tools and menus on my laptop screen, and drag the file over to my iPad display. A minor zoom-adjust allows it to fill the iPad's screen.

I am now able to dynamically adjust PC visibility - such as in dark areas, including the ability to add extra vision to characters with darkvision (via sight range rings around each PC). My players don't have to lean over/move around the table to adjust their character, all of that is done from my end. They just say where they want to move, and I move them. Having multiple cats, this has saved us a few times where we would have had tokens flying everywhere from a well-aimed kitty jump.

I can have all of my PDFs (I don't have all the books in physical copies) open and available to me, as well as various other web resources, while still controlling the display on the iPad remotely with my mouse and keyboard.

If you have PhotoShop - or probably anything that can view/manipulate PSD files - and an iPad you can do this. It's been really great for us.

I have the maps from the Glassworks to Thistletop Level 2 all made, and would be more than happy to upload them somewhere if people are interested in trying this method. I'll be continuing to produce maps as we continue the campaign.

EDIT: I posted this here because I'm doing this for the RotRL campaign... but, thinking about it now, it might do better in a different part of the forum :\

I'm a new GM, running my first campaign. Two of the players that are going to be joining our 3-party team just showed me their characters.

The rolling system is (4d6, drop 1s) x 7, allocate 6 highest results.

The average point-buy score for this is around 38. Your average roll is 14.

These are their stats:

Str 16
Dex 15
Con 17
Int 14+2
Wis 18
Cha 15

Str 17
Dex 16
Con 14+2
Int 17
Wis 15
Cha 18

I immediately saw these as highly improbable and became somewhat suspicious. I know these two, played with one while the other was the DM. I trust them... but those stats are just ridiculous, right?

I've asked them to reroll/adjust their states to be more in line with the rest of the group (which has point scores from 37 to 41 - compared to their 59 and 65)

I did my best to avoid using the world "improbable" but I don't know how subtle I necessarily was that I found their stats dubious. This was all handled via text.

Thoughts? Am I being stupid, or is this a legit response?