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Howdy fellow Play-by-Post,
are you a 21st century gamer with an android mobile?
This guide is intended for everyone who finds themselves composing a lot of their posts from their phones and on-the-go.
I know 'we' are a decent proportion of all PbP gamers on this board, so I figured it would be time to create a thread to discuss solution to some of the challenges one faces when doing PbP from mobiles.
From my point of view there are two major challenges and one time consuming annoyance in mobile PbP:
1. Lost posts. This is the single most frustrating thing for mobile PbP by far. Whether it is because paizo.com decides to go full-Goblin (never go full goblin) and omnomnoms your 3000 character posts you just 'submitted' or you simply ran into one of those pesky black holes where there is no internet available without noticing and you just sent that post into the nothingness. With a lot of luck® your mobile browser may recover your post. But probably not. Everyone knows the pain, I am sure.
2. Post Formatting & Dice-Rolls. I am a software-dev, so I am no stranger to bbCodes and formatting. While on a device with a decent keyboard that is. But on a mobile ... it is just a pain in the behind (and fingers). Whether it is simply "Talking with your group" or , these expressions take ages to type on a mobile.
3. Copy-Pasting. As a result of 1) and 2), I have long since started typing up my posts in a note-taking app on the phone to prevent post losses and to store&use dice macros, e.g. for my attacks, the combat initiative order / round overview (when GMing). The trouble is ... copy&pasting on mobile is annoying. Especially if you have long posts and have to copy back and forth multiple times (because dice rolls have to be resolved in the browser).
After a lot of cursing I think I managed to establish a nice composition of two apps on my android mobile to overcome nearly all of those challenges.
Intrigued?
Good.
Then, if you don't mind, please follow me down the rabbit hole :-)
The first app is called Pure Writer:
There are many note-taking apps available. I am currently using an app called Pure Writer. It is a very nifty editor with several very useful options that are not hidden behind a paywall.
The one feature that made me use this app, is a two-tap Copy-All function.
You edit your post, open the editor menu with one tap and select "Copy the Content" with a second tap. Et voìla, all of your post is copied to the clipboard! Open your browser and paste it on paizo!
Done.
This app alone will prevent post losses (and even provides local recovery, useful if you use it for GMing and want to have a look what you posted three rounds before - offline) and will severely speed up copy-pasting your offline-composed posts to your browser.
The second app I am strongly recommending is Typing Hero:
With that one, we are going full-caster guys.
This app is pure awesome and will speed up mobile PnP A LOT and comes totally free as well!
What it does?
It allows you to create&store an unlimited amount of text macros which will be triggered by a keyword you can freely choose.
Okay, let me explain with an example. One of the most commonly used bbCodes is the "Talking" combo of bold text and quotes. Let us create a macro for that!
1. Creating a new Typing Hero macro:
Open the app, press the neat blue plus (add) button.
2. Selecting a key:
In the upper text field, you can enter any text you want to use for the keyword associated with the macro. Whenever Typing hero detects you typing a keyword, it offers you to replace that keyword with the stored macro text (see next step). So you want to use a keyword you would not normally type and that you can easily remember.
For our PbP talking, lets go with the keyword .say
Notice the leading dot. This nifty prefix will prevent typing hero to pop up everytime you type 'say' but it makes remembering the keyword easy as cake. I start all my typing hero macros with a dot (see example section further down).
3. Entering the macro text:
Now that we have a keyword, we only need to add the actual macro text. This is the text that typing hero will insert instead of the keyword we set up before.
For our talking macro, we will enter the bbCode for "Talking"".
So basically {b}"Talking"{/b} but with these [] brackets instead the {} ones.
And we're done!
Now, whenever you type the keyword .say in a supported* app typing hero will* detect the keyword and replace it with your macro text!
* (see restrictions further down)
Awesome, isn't it?!
For increases usability, open typing hero options and enable the first option ('Fitting Macros highlight' or something like that). If enabled, a pop-up will appear if you type the beginning of a keyword, allowing you to have typing hero insert the macro immediately, without even having to finish typing your entire keyword!
Go forth and add all the macros you need and use them in conjunction with Pure Writer for maximum effect.
(using my Zen Archer 'Amari' in the examples)
- Attack routines:
.amariAttack =>
.amariFlurry => (2 attack Zen Flurry of Bows)
.amariKiFlurry => (2 attack Zen Flurry plus an extra attack from spending a Ki point)
.amariRiskyKiFlurry => (as the above but with risky strike for reduced atk and increased damage)
- Initiative rolls: for characters or the entire group (either to support the GM by speeding up your game or because you are the GM and roll ini for the group)
.amariInit =>
.group2Init => (lots of init rolls)
- Saveing throws: (again, for characters or your entire group => very useful for gming!
.amariFort / .amariRefl / .amariWill => saving throws
.group2FortSaves => (all of the groups fort saves)
- Round Summary: my preferred way to organize battle for the groups I GM for
.group2RoundSummary => (round summary including round number, initiative order, status effects, resolved actions, ...)
Qestions/Answers:
- Hey, but why don't use typing hero directly in the browser?
Well, for one, you would still face big-pain problem 1). And for another ... Typing hero does sadly not work with all apps (as it depends on the standard android text input to work, so all apps which replace the default android input with a custom one will not work). This includes browsers and most 'big' notebook apps like (oneNote and evernote). But it DOES work with Pure Writer. Yes, it took me a lot of time to find a working combination, but here we are.
- Hey, awesome, but why does my Typing Hero only works some of the time?
Welcome the cool world of aggressive android power saving. You got two options, either to track down all the energy saving options in your android version and allow background activity of Typing Hero (varies wildly between OS version and manufacturer). Or, you simply start the typing her app before starting to compose your post in Pure Writer to ensure it is active while typing.
That's awesome. Thank you for working on this.