High tech HeroQuest

[Von Necron]

I've been experimenting with putting cards and stuff on my smart phone. Have not play tested and am not finished. I've got some photo apps and pdf apps on my phone that allow me to put home made quests on my phone and my heroes spell cards are saved in their own smart phone folders. They can keep the spell, skill, artifact or whatever cards in their folders and save them to their camera rolls before quests. Then delete them from camera roll as they use them. The idea is that when not playing they can still check out their characters stats. They can check out my master inventory and spell college from a PDF they have saved and if they want to buy something they can text me the purchase and I can deduct it from their accounts. Still working on it. If they like it ill let you guys know.

[Ethica]

Excellent idea. I look forward to your follow up report.

[Goblin-King]

I have often thought about making a digital character sheet. I don't have a smartphone though, and I can't program for it, so it would be for a pc/laptop, which is why I've never did it. The normal character sheet is more handy than a pc after all
However...
My thought is that it's still "just" a (hopefully friendly) game. Gold, equipment, treasure... I would let the players administrate that themselves. No need to "text the GM" in my opinion.
I imagine a small program/app that had all the equipment and spells etc included. Then the players could just click/unclick what they find/buy/sell.
An option could be to include an actual shop in the program/app. When a player buy or sell stuff their gold stash is automatically regulated.

Thing is though... It would have to be really well made, fast and easy to use to actually beat the cards and character sheets! After all, the game isn't that complicated

edit:

I've started playing Space Crusade by the way. Anyone familiar with that game knows how "handy" the scanners are! A big hunk of plastic that does three things: Monitors your commanders HP, your negative score (dead marines) and which marines if any have targeters. It's freaking big! Like 20 x 10 x 5 cm!!!
That thing deserve an app more than HQ!

[Von Necron]

Goblin King, I like your idea and would eventually want them to be able to administer their own stuff. For now though I'm not techy enough to make a smart phone app for them. However I will email them my homemade master armory and skill/spell college. I just need them to notify me of purchases so I can make digital cards of their equipment to send to them. Thank you.

Here is where I'm at. I had time yesterday to push this. My friends and I downloaded a free app called 'Photo album and photo editing'. http://itun.es/us/q2iND.i

In this app we made folders for inventory, skills/spells and character stats, and beistary.
I went a step forward and made folders for all my GM stuff.

Then something happened. After exploring apps I came to the conclusion that with several different Free apps we could play our own phone text version of HeroQuest.

I'm still working on the first idea but here is what I got for the second

Album app mentioned above, Fuedz Dice app and Hex Map Pro. With these apps I can do the above plus make quests that I can take screen shots of and text them to my buddies. Then at their leisure they respond with their decisions. I calculate the rolls and send back outcomes and my moves.

My friend and I are going to start play testing it today. For play testing their is only one hero for simplicity's sake. He will be a swordsman like the mercenary henchman. Ill post again tomorrow.

[Von Necron]

Play tested the phone game. Gave up on it. My buddies did enjoy having their skills and spells inventories and armory availibe to them all the time. Now just to find time to play.
The best part of this was the skill cards though. It can be a pain to make the cards print the cards get them doublesided and all that. On the smart phone it was easy though. I just made the cards on the computer and emailed them to myself then text messaged them to my buddy. His own deck was in his phone and he can simply swipe from one to the next.