Hey everyone! I’ve been using DevonThink for a few years now and love it! I’ve been using it predominantly for note taking and archiving of files, emails, etc for work.
I pseudo-recently discovered the power it can have for tabletop role playing games. Now that I’m exploring other systems besides D&D, I can almost always get source books in PDF format which I import into DEVONthink. I can link directly to rules or tables, excerpts, monster stats etc in the pdfs. I’ve created a number of templates for adventure creation, individual game session notes, NPC character bios. I’m looking to start doing some world building in DT soon as well.
Anyone else using DT for their tabletop games and have tips, tricks or clever use cases they’d like to share? Thanks in advance!
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We do for sure. Search these forums for rpg and I know I’ve had a support ticket or three over the years with people using DEVONthink and DEVONthink To Go that way.
I use DT to index large collections of PDFs for Classic Traveller and Twilight 2000 V4.
As I haven’t played for many years, I don’t have much to share in the way of tips unfortunately.
I occasionally like to do ‘thought experiments’ with the design rules, and I find DT very useful for trawling the materials as a topic can often be spread across multiple books and editions.
The really old materials are just scans, so the OCR function of the Pro edition makes them accessible and searchable.
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Hey!
DT is really great for this use case! I am rpg-ing since 1990. Since using DT I use this great tool for supporting me in my storytelling with my groups. I am now having about 40 GB of books and other stuff in DT.
With its terrific search engine you can nearly find every obscure reference you can think of, which is really fantastic. You have a rules question? Start the search and you will surely find it!
But I use DT and its capabilities in an another way. For each system I play, I have groups where I put source material like pictures, sounds or other stuff:
When I write adventures or use pre-written ones I make a group for each story I play with one of my groups. In this group I create subgroups for each act which belongs to the story. I then use the ability of DT to replicate pictures and put them in the section I want to use the picture in a specific part of the story. Need a picture of a night club with dancing guests? The pounding music you will play when the group reaches this place? Replicate all the files from you media source group, so you have them handy and can show the right picture of the grisly streets of Arkham to your players at the right time:
This way I can reuse each and every picture in other stories which happens quite often. And I have the possibility to check in which story I used the picture before and for what exactly (in the Info Inspector you can see all the replicates you put the picture in). This is quite great for telling stories which build upon each other and present the players with already known places or people. Nothing is better to make a gaming world feel really “alive”!
With the ability to use Wikilinks you can even have documents where you can link specific story hooks directly to the matching picture of the correct person or place if you need them on the fly.
And of course players will come up with everything you never really thought of. With these documents you have a lifebuoy so you can remember exactly which NPC meant what to the players and where they meet and how they looked like!
Hope this helps!
Best
Matthias
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