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Player Aids of the Technical Persuasion - Laptop and PDA Player Aids
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There are plenty of player aids for download all over the website. Most of the aids are pdfs of score sheets, or 1-page rule summaries. Some games, though, are just crying out for some high-powered aid-i-fication: use a computer to help figure out the oh-so-complicated scoring, etc. This list is for those good electronic player aids. My laptop is always close to my game room, so it's always available. I've written several Excel spreadsheets that I find pretty helpful, so I'll start with some of those. Please add games (and include the link to the relevent file) for automated (i.e., not printable score sheets or rule summaries) player aids. Sorted ALPHABETICALLY
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The items in this GeekList are ordered alphabetically by title
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Posted On: 2007-01-22 10:53:40
Edited On: 2007-01-22 10:53:40
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This game screams for help calculating the best run and other things |
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Posted On: 2005-07-28 12:11:46
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Baker St is a fun game that suffers IMO from it's paper Cluebook.
So, without reading the clues, I scanned them and ran an OCR on the scans, and using automated techniques separated each clue onto a separate page in Word, and then created a PDF file from it.
We set up the game next to our computer (a laptop is better), and when clue #27 is called for, we just look at page 27! I added an extra page at the end that has no clue - park the file on that page between turns to avoid inadvertant viewing.
Works fine, although having each clue on a card placed on the board would be preferable but begs the question of who is going to make it (and hence see the clues).
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/fileinfo.php?fileid=3492/ |
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Posted On: 2006-11-17 09:35:45
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Posted On: 2006-11-17 09:35:45
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CoconutBoy was kind enough to whip up a java program that deals out location cards for you. The game unfortunately is designed where every time you visit a location you need to shuffle one of ten decks. This is way too fiddly and chews the cards up quickly. Now it's just one click, awesome!
http://www.freepiecoupon.com/arkham.html |
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Posted On: 2005-07-27 20:05:47
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All serious chess geeks have at least one chess clock. The Chronos clock is the creme de la geek. It even looks geeky. A vast plethora of timing methods are offered, for chess, Go, shogi, or nearly any two-player game. You can even generate a "random 960" position, as shown here. Three horizontal bars indicate the queen, and two bars indicate the king. |
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Posted On: 2005-07-29 06:18:01
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What a great game! But it does take for EVER to play! One thing adding play time is the need to constantly recalculate what your cards are worth, and what new civ advances cost you. This spreadsheet does all that. It also includes a basic rules summary ... is this a TAPA? Sure, why not?!
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/fileinfo.php?fileid=9037 |
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Posted On: 2006-11-17 09:35:45
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Scoring Aid
At the end of each hand, tally players' hand points normally; enter into the spreadsheet. Victory points are calculated automagically with all the funky scoring rules except one: if all players score < 100 hand points and 2 players tie. In that case, you must enter dummy hand point values so that the third player gets 2 VP (e.g., 50 for the 2 tied players, 57 for the third player).
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/fileinfo.php?fileid=22775 |
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Posted On: 2007-03-12 09:40:26
Edited on: 2007-03-12 09:41:24
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What I am not-so-humbly calling a TAPA - totally awesome player aid. And by TAPA, I mean "overly complicated". This includes the round summary in someone else's Excel file (no name on file), but a whole lot of other stuff to automate tracking all the little bits of information you need to track for this great game. It's actually NOT that easy to use ... not sure if that's because the game is complicated or because I need to work on the spreadsheet more. Probably the latter. Still, it does all kinds of stuff for you.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/fileinfo.php?fileid=11912
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Posted On: 2006-11-17 09:35:45
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There are lots of initially neutral factions, which together comprise about a third of the forces in the game. Two players vie for control of these factions with "diplomacy points." Disputes over who controls what are resolved by a bidding system. With two programmable calculators which can communicate via infrared, players can keep track of their DP allocations using less table space, and any temptation to cheat is removed. Of course it would be much better to play with opponents who don't cheat. |
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Posted On: 2005-07-29 06:32:45
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Posted On: 2006-12-08 16:00:51
