So, I'm about 6 sessions deep into Curse of Strahd, and now that DDB is fully released, I thought I'd give it a go. Now I will prefix this by saying, most of the issues I had, as far as I can tell, are all things that are being worked on. Really looking forward to the future updates.
Character Builder and Campaign Management: Getting the players to port their characters over was a relatively painless process. A little bit of hand holding was needed for the newbies, and a bit of direction for the veterans, but nothing major. My only "gripe" was that in backgrounds, it lets you choose any proficiency right off the bat (not like a "choose custom" option) and that because it's down the end, as has been mentioned before, usually someone already chooses abilities that overlap. Otherwise, character sheet printing was made super easy (bar the existing complaints of font size being too small, and descriptions, as well as maybe moving equipment somewhere else.)
Running the game Not having to page flip books was AWESOME, An encounter builder wouldn't have gone astray, but it was a single combat kinda session so it wasn't too bad. I'm still getting a feel for it, but I had a bunch of tabs open, one with a monster I was using, one with spells so I could search them quickly if needed, one with the page of barovian names.
I think a cool think might be to add a customisable sidebar/dm screen that overlays on top of the adventure. Pretty sure I saw something similar in the wishlist thread. But basically have a Spell searcher tab, a monster searcher tab, a whatever you drag here tab, etc etc as a sidebar that expanded when clicked. That would have smoothed things out a little.
TL;DR It was a good experience, players liked the ease of managing their characters, we all still use paper sheets, but being able to reference the math etc was awesome, made levelling up much easier etc etc. Few teething issues, But I as the DM will continue to prep with a notebook and the hardback, run the game with my notebook and laptop, and the players will continue to use paper, occasionally referencing their phones.
So, I'm about 6 sessions deep into Curse of Strahd, and now that DDB is fully released, I thought I'd give it a go. Now I will prefix this by saying, most of the issues I had, as far as I can tell, are all things that are being worked on. Really looking forward to the future updates.
Character Builder and Campaign Management:
Getting the players to port their characters over was a relatively painless process. A little bit of hand holding was needed for the newbies, and a bit of direction for the veterans, but nothing major.
My only "gripe" was that in backgrounds, it lets you choose any proficiency right off the bat (not like a "choose custom" option) and that because it's down the end, as has been mentioned before, usually someone already chooses abilities that overlap.
Otherwise, character sheet printing was made super easy (bar the existing complaints of font size being too small, and descriptions, as well as maybe moving equipment somewhere else.)
Running the game
Not having to page flip books was AWESOME, An encounter builder wouldn't have gone astray, but it was a single combat kinda session so it wasn't too bad. I'm still getting a feel for it, but I had a bunch of tabs open, one with a monster I was using, one with spells so I could search them quickly if needed, one with the page of barovian names.
I think a cool think might be to add a customisable sidebar/dm screen that overlays on top of the adventure. Pretty sure I saw something similar in the wishlist thread. But basically have a Spell searcher tab, a monster searcher tab, a whatever you drag here tab, etc etc as a sidebar that expanded when clicked. That would have smoothed things out a little.
TL;DR
It was a good experience, players liked the ease of managing their characters, we all still use paper sheets, but being able to reference the math etc was awesome, made levelling up much easier etc etc. Few teething issues, But I as the DM will continue to prep with a notebook and the hardback, run the game with my notebook and laptop, and the players will continue to use paper, occasionally referencing their phones.
I would agree with you. I used it for HotDQ the other night. It was pretty easy to maneuver around and the info was nice to have there.
Id like to be able to take notes in for the campaign.
its a super useful tool for sure.