Tuesday, December 27, 2011

The iPad

Thanks to Kelly Anne, and my family I got a iPad for Christmas. It was literally my only present but what a present it is. The two things I want to use the iPad is for entertainment (Netflix, etc) and to use to organize my notes at the table.

First off I recommend reading this excellent thread on digital readers over on the SJ Games Forums. PDF releases are a big part of the GURPS Product lines now and with the advent of e-book readers and tablets people are interested in how to effectively use them. Then there is this page on Enworld with a good list of useful RPG utilities for these devices.

I am excited about using the iPad as my experience with computers suggests that touchscreens combined with the right software are the way to go.

I bought Goodreader to handle PDFs on the iPad. It has a tabbed interface for multiple PDFs and a handy customizable bookmark list. It also nice that I can organize everything into folders.  So on the second day of owning the iPad, I downloaded my copies of GURP Core campaign book (has all the rules) and my copy of Swords and Wizardry and spent some time bookmarking them.

GURPS Core Rules Campaigns

Swords and Wizardry

The bookmarks are chosen on the basis on my experience on what I looked up the most during a session. I will working on the Swords and Wizardry Monster Book and a couple more of my GURPS pdfs. One nice thing about the Core Book on other GURPS PDFs is that they have a nice table of contents already built in.

10 comments:

jgbrowning said...

Do PDFs with bookmarks show up as having bookmarks when using the iPad?

Necropraxis said...

In addition to being the best PDF reader I have used on the iPad (mostly because of how smart it is about maintaining zooming and choosing the correct viewing area when moving between pages), Goodreader also has a very cool feature which allows it to sync content from external services. For example, I have it sync to the "RPG" folder in my Dropbox account, which means that I can organize my gaming PDFs using the filesystem on my computer and then let the sync process take care of everything else.

@Joseph

It depends on the PDF reader. In my experience though, the answer is yes, bookmarks show up.

Unknown said...

Goodreader is awesome! My favorite feature is being able to set custom margins, so I can cut out all the extra white space around the text. I suspect you're doing that via the smart zoom, I actually set the margins manually.

Robert Conley said...

@Joseph - Yes PDFs with bookmarks show up as having bookmarks. SJ Games GURPS PDFs are very good in that regard.

justin aquino said...

Goodreader is AWESOME!
It can rename files, it can play music, you can draw on the PDFs, you can do so much for only $5.

As a Linux User, I can access my
files despite the lack of support.

And since SJG PDFs have no DRMs, they are easy to use.

Tenkar said...

add my vote to the GoodReader list. I've tried many, and none come close.

I use DropBox to move my files to Goodreader. It's free and works seamlessly

The Happy Whisk said...

What a fun gift. Go KellyAnne & Kids.

Brian I said...

Enjoy! I'm sure you'll get great use out of it. Goodreader is a favorite of mine - I have a ton of RPGs loaded up on it.

matt said...

I have had my iPad for a year now (also a gift from the wife and kids) and have absolutely loved owning it. I have read books, collected gaming PDFs, drawn maps, used it as a reference at the game table, and even written some gaming products on it. There are a few things I do not like about it (most notably the new iOS version is causing all manner of problems on my gen 1 pad), but for the most part, it is well worth it.

Anonymous said...

I just got an iPad too and was wondering how to RPG it up, thanks for the tips and links!