Both Japanese and Western role-playing games share the same ancestry and this harkens all the way back to playing Dungeon & Dragons on a table top with a dungeon master, funny-sided dice, and little painted models. And yet the inspiration behind Crimson Shroud is even older. Small world! To be clear, I don’t own those images or anything like that, and I thought it was amusing to see someone else using what I created.Even if you don’t recognise his name the artwork is certainly reminiscent of Vagrant Story et al. Amusingly, I believe the creator of DM Minion and Player Minion ended up using some of the MapTool token art that I created for my web site as their icons. I personally use MapTool to do all of this, of course (plus building and editing monsters), and if I weren’t using MapTool I’d probably go back to the free DnD4eCM rather than pay for DM Minion, but if I really wanted to use the iPad I might go for DM Minion. My verdict: If you really want to use an iPad or another tablet to track your combat, DM Minion can do the job if you’re willing to jump through the hoops to get it all set up. It’s not so user-friendly that it blows me away with its simplicity, but it does what it needs to do. It’s pretty easy to track initiative (including delayed actions and readied actions), track monster HP, track conditions (including the variety of times that they can end), add new combatants to the fight, track which monster powers have been used, etc. I’m guessing that there are some technological limitations on the iPad that make this impossible or something like that, but the extra steps involved with getting monsters into DM Minion are a major pain.Īs for functionality, DM Minion seems to do what it promises. With Power2ool you can directly import monsters into the program rather than going through the export to PC – import to web site steps (let alone the import to web site – then use in app step). I compare this to the fantastic (and free) Power2ool site (which is not built for running combat, to be clear), which integrates directly with the DDI Compendium to allow direct monster import Power2ool does it right. Within the DM Minion app, import the PCs / monsters from your Goathead account.monster files from the DDI tools to your computer Create characters/monsters in the DDI tools (Character Builder and Adventure Tools – Monster Builder).Once you’ve imported them to your Goathead account, you can access them in DM Minion. The highly non-intuitive thing that you have to learn with DM Minion is that it’s not really a stand-alone app you use it in conjunction with a free account on the Goathead Software web site. Using it takes a little learning, but the Quick Guide helps. It comes with a 17 page Quick Guide PDF to help you navigate the program. One of its killer functions is that you can import characters and monsters from the D&D Insider tools… more on that in a minute.ĭownloading the app was easy enough. Several other free tools are out there for this purpose already ( MasterPlan and D&D 4e Combat Manager are two that I’m familiar with, and I know there are others), but DM Minion is a paid app (I believe its list price was $4.99, though as I said I was given a free review copy). It’s intended to help you keep track of initiative, hit points, conditions and monster power usage. The basic idea of the app is that it lets you run combat efficiently. I spend most of my time on the DM side of the screen, so I would be focusing on DM Minion. I had recently received an iPad as a gift from my awesome wife, so I was in a position to be able to try out these kind of apps in a format that makes sense. Yes, I’ve hit the big time now, folks free stuff is coming my way thanks to my influence (note: tongue firmly in cheek here). In this case, the free stuff consisted of their tools for D&D 4th Edition: DM Minion and Player Minion. A few weeks ago, around the same time that I was approached by BannersOnTheCheap with the offer of free stuff in exchange for a review, I was also approached by Goathead Software with an offer of free stuff in exchange for a review.
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