The Future is Now.

[ochoin]

The classic image of a table, filled with figures & terrain, & surrounded by wargamers with rule books & QRS in hand is as old as the hobby. I'm taking a leap.

I have put PDFs of 3 of the rule sets I use onto my IPAD: General D'armee (Napoleonics), Field of Glory (Ancients), The Men Who Would Be Kings (Colonial).

I'm hoping this will be more efficient & take less space than conventional methods.

Your view?

donald

[irishserb]

My own preference is for paper, but we tend to have only one copy of the rules present during a game. I'd say, give it try a couple of times, see if it works out to be neater/more efficient. If not, nothing lost. If it works, then gaming just got a little bit better.

[Etranger]

Its handy if the e-rules etc have a searchable index. Otherwise you're in for a lot of scrolling

[subedai]

Its handy if the e-rules etc have a searchable index. Otherwise you're in for a lot of scrolling

And of course all those sweeping hand movements could be misinterpreted as something else.

It was the comment I was thinking of as I read down. One set of rules is great, QRS sheets are also great but I try to keep all such impedimenta off the table completely when I am playing.

[ninja636]

Its handy if the e-rules etc have a searchable index. Otherwise you're in for a lot of scrolling

That.

I can flick to page 33 of a paper book faster than I can on an iPad. And the entire page is there too, no scrolling up or down to read from top to bottom of the page.

An iPad is about the smallest screen you can go, anything smartphone sized is a right pain in the arse. I know what I'm on about here, all of our company's technical manuals are device based. Saves a lot of paper, but trying to make sense of a complicated schematic on a small screen is a bit of a ballache.

And where do you put the thing when you're not reading from it? On the table in easy reach, just like you do a paper rule book

Yrs

A Luddite

[ochoin]

At work, screens of various sorts are my metier. Certainly the 3 rule sets I've downloaded are well known to me & finding the odd arcane interpretation mostly will be the stuff of seconds.
Also my eye sight remains very good.

The whole thing may be a bust but it cost nothing, took minutes & is worth a go. What can I lose apart from an IPad, hurled across the room in frustration?

Now clutter.....that's worth a thread in itself.

donald

[Stavka]

I have two iPads and a smartphone, and when I'm not actually teaching, I'm spending much of the rest of the time in front of a computer screen- so I'm certainly no Luddite.

The older of the two iPads usually stays at home where we have unlimited WiFi, and is used largely for hobby purposes; iBooks, bookmarked resources, pictures, and my downloaded PDF rules.

But from personal experience during games, I agree with Etranger; if there is no searchable index, I'm better off with a book and a ream of Post-its. Much faster to refer to in the heat of battle.

Furthermore everyone in the game can pick up and thumb through a book at any time. Whereas with my iPad, I'm usually left being the one who has to do the rule consulting, as not everyone would be familiar with using one. Besides, I need to enter the password from time to time just to access it, and I'm not sharing that info.

Then there's having to remember to charge it the night before- which I sometimes forget to do, so that it then needs to be tethered to an inconveniently placed power source during the game.

And the iPad is about the same size, say, as my hardcopy of Bolt Action; as the Kawasaki aficionado mentioned, it takes up just as much table space.