2009/11/20 stephan.beal <sgbeal@...>
> A few minutes ago i downloaded an app for my Nintendo DSi called "My
Notebook". It cost 200 DSi Points ($2) via the online store, and just showed up
for download today.

I downloaded it last night actually. My daughter got a kick out of it
for a good while last night.

> It supports different paper styles, and one of them is classic grid paper.
That means you can draw your dungeons (or map out a current one) on the DSi.
Take it with you to your gaming sessions, and you've always got a handy mapping
tool. You can save your doodles, of course, and the notebook appears to support
at least 20 pages (each one DSi-screen in size).

I get the idea of it and the demo video the creators have shows people
playing "squares" using it, I personally wouldn't use it mapping
dungeons. I still find the stylus too inaccurate, it's finicky drawing
in those squares. You also can't export your map and it's limited to
32 pages. TBH we use the inside of a pizza box for drawing out maps
and directing combat and after we're finished I can take a quick snap
of it using my mobile (or the camera on the DSi) for future ref. I
think it might be handy for "sheets of rage" (as we call them), a
throw-away place to track how many points, wounds, etc your character
has this session.

I also have an (aging) Palm PDA that also has a stylus input and a
simple drawing application that mirrored yellow-stickies. I find the
screen, which is similar to the DS, is simply too small to dungeon
mapping or combat maps. But I did find that using an excel spreadsheet
to track a character's resources and automatically work out modifiers
for some games incredible useful. I'm sure iphone/itouchs have the
same functionality.

It does beg the question though, what devices are really using for
gaming? Laptops suck when gaming but tablet PCs and e-readers could be
incredibly useful. I'm looking forward to the Microsoft Courier. My
first reaction to it was how I could use it for gaming, using the copy
and paste to create makeshift combat maps and dungeons and using as a
e-reader where you can scribble notes on your RPG books (without
damaging) or copy and paste bits of it into the current combat map...

Mark
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