Player Aids of the Technical Persuasion - Laptop and PDA Player Aids
Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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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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Michael Garrett
United States
Omaha
Nebraska
Purity of Essence.
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This game screams for help calculating the best run and other things
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Li'l Ronnie Post
United States
Seattle
Washington
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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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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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Replaces a lot of the look-up tables. You can either roll the dice and enter the number rolled, use Excel's random number generator, or use the built-in deck of dice for all the die rolls.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/viewfile.php3?fileid=14928
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Neil Carr
United States
Barre
Vermont
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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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David Bush
United States
Lexington
Virginia
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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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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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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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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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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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David Bush
United States
Lexington
Virginia
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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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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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A virtual player board in Excel. Now you can play along even if you run out of player boards! It also works on PDAs (e.g., Using ExcelToGo on a Palm).
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/fileinfo/28333
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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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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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Alain Baum
Luxembourg
Grevenmacher
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Mah Jongg as a game is fairly simple, but the scoring is mind-boggling. So I wrote a little program where you just enter your final hands; the program calculates all scores and even displays a scoring graph over several rounds. I even included a minimal Winamp command center.
I would post it here; but Mah Jongg is a heavily customizable game and has more options and house rules than you can shake a stick at. Since I hard-coded "our" house rules into the program, it wouldn't be much use to other people (and I honestly can't be bothered to rewrite it and make it customizable) 
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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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Game Log
Several files are included:
1. A set of files for HanDBase ( www.ddhsoftware.com), which can be used on the desktop (PC), PDA, and various smartphones. These are used to keep track of your games owned/rated (you can export the data from your collection on BGG to these files, and also games played.
2. An Excel file. You can use this independently if you like, or in conjunction with #1. It allows you to do 2 things: a) record your games played; b) add games to a geeklist (e.g., for a report of games played).
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/fileinfo.php?fileid=25138
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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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Geek List Creator (Updater) Aid
This is an Excel file that allows you to automatically add games to a GeekList. First, you must create the list here on BGG. In Excel (the Excel file is just an export of your game collection; comes populated with my own games), tag the games you want to add to your GL with a positive number . Sort by your tag -- the macro will add items to your GL in order from top to bottom of the page. The macro adds each item in turn, populating the comments area with the BGG description, then with your own comments; customize as you see fit, add the item to the GL, then move on to the next item in the spreadsheet.
This will eventually be rolled into the next update of my Game Logging files.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/fileinfo.php?fileid=21423
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25mrt wargaming EOD-IX, Eindhoven, NL
Netherlands
NOT
Holland
25/3 NL Eindhoven Wargaming day. Click my 'game group organizer' microbadge for details
25/3 NL Eindhoven Wargaming day. Click my 'game group organizer' microbadge for details
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Just added this one - and pretty proud of it:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/fileinfo.php?fileid=11938
With this, you can throw away the CRT and Terrain chart. Just total the number of army or corps point in attacking and defending space, fill one line and Excel translates it (for PBemM) into the correct notation and gives you the odds for winning, losing, average losses inflicted etc.
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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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For the HanDBase database, which runs on Palms, PPCs, and several smartphones.
Calculates work values based on cards/improvements.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/fileinfo.php?fileid=12975
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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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A score calculator, again in Excel. The game is very straightforward, as is the scoring. Except, of course, for the math-impaired.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/fileinfo.php?fileid=17489
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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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Excel version of a dice deck. You can choose how many decks to include, and whether to reshuffle randomly or only after all the virtual cards have been drawn. A chart shows the numbers rolled/drawn (should approach a bell curve over time), and also FYI the expected odds for beating a challenge roll (basic odds, NOT adjusted for cards already drawn).
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/fileinfo.php?fileid=14768
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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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Excel version of a dice deck. You can choose how many decks to include, and whether to reshuffle randomly or only after using all "cards".
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/fileinfo.php?fileid=14258
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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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This is a simple little game, although the scoring is a bit ... fiddly? You'd have to be a real geeky geek to use this player aid:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/viewfile.php3?fileid=12011
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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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Excel version of a dice deck. You can choose how many decks to include, and whether to reshuffle randomly or only after using all "cards". Excel version of a dice deck. You can choose how many decks to include, and whether to reshuffle randomly or only after using all "cards". A big red '7' appears if you roll a 7 (reminder for unit loss).
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/fileinfo.php?fileid=14259
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Des Moines
Iowa
Hillsborough
North Carolina
You're right, at least some of the time ... but then you've gotta remember this is for GEEKS (of the techno persuasion). Plus, other times (e.g., Civilization, and maybe 1830 I'm told) it would be a real time-saver, like Justin said.
Barre
Vermont
Longueuil
Quebec