Okay, I'm going to come clean. I'm stumped on what I want to do with the bartenders idea, so I'm working them before I post them.However, I realized last night that I have a LOT of stuff RPG-wise on my iPad. I was looking over it and realized just HOW useful a tool for players and GMs it can be.
Let's see... Here is my iPad's RPG tool menu/folder. We can start off with some of the stuff I haven't discussed before. Battle Maps has been talked about before, so we'll skip it.
Starting off with OFFICIAL goodies from Paizo (one of my favorite publishers as you can tell by now, and an example I think MORE game publishers should look into)The Critical Hit/Fumble Decks are 10.99 each (currently they are 'as found' since Paizo hasn't reprinted the run I think). The iCrit and iFailure apps are the SAME things and set up by the publisher themselves. You (or the GM) can simply pick out the category, tap the app and get instant results. Another plus.. they are like 1.99 each.
Then there is the PF Reference App. It's sort of an indexed version of the Pathfinder Reference Document you can get online. The advantages are that you got a bookmarked, indexed and searchable version that doesn't require online access. It's updatable by in App purchases, and while cheap, some folks might not be too interested in putting the money aside for something you can get for free. If you have web access (and who doesn't have wi-fi these days?), you can do the same right from the website without paying a penny.
Then there is all those PDFs you can get from folks like Drivethrurpg (my drug fix of choice online) but Paizo is another good PDF source. You can put all your game manuals, sourcebooks, maps, and other PDFs in iBooks and even organize them.
Starting off, it's fairly each to load. You just open your folder, click and drag into iTunes and synch to your iPad (or iPhone/iPod if you like to squint).
After you synch, it's easy enough to organize the PDFs (and even epubs) by collection as you can see from the example that I put up from my own.
Pluses: I can click on things at a touch, sort by category and carry LOTS of books with a small lightweight tablet.
Cons: Well for one, not all PDFs are created equal. Some won't work properly in iBooks, mostly personally created PDFs from various websites. Almost ALL commercial pdfs work right and those that don't are typically updated quickly. As of right now I have ONE adventures path map pack that will NOT display on the iPad, but it has some fairly rare options that aren't typically used. (Like the ability to switch between GM and Player maps with a click) and I expect that as iBooks get the occasional update it will eventually be able to display them.
Other grouses include not being able to use the table of contents (when available), search, and highlight PDFs. You can bookmark it though, so that is something. In BIG books, I typically bookmark each chapter start.
All in all, iBooks tends to be the best of the PDF viewing options that I have seen on the iPad among the PDF viewers that I've seen/used. The fact that is the most STABLE of them is another factor. A lot of the others tend to be unstable, crash prone or outright SLOW. Ungodly slow in some cases.
I would LOVE to have the folks at Abode to put together their own app but I think they are on strike or something. I am sure the folks who created the PDF format would be the best at making an app that could most easily use all the features of the format.
And lastly for the moment.
The Black Library app is put out by the folks at Black Libary, who do a LOT of books set in the Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40K settings. This covers a HUGE variety of games from RPGs like Warhammer Fantasy RP, Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, Deathwatch and the upcoming Black Crusade. The other side is the world famous tabletop Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40k tactical games.
Black Libary does fiction that ties into ANY of these. I've seen all sorts of things in the app's store and while their 'samples' section isn't too broad, they have LOTS of books on hand. I'd personally love to be able to download old White Dwarf Mags but this is a nice thing anyway since it lets you get fiction set in the genre and setting. (Fun note: The Warhammer fiction on Amazon's Kindle store seems to be mostly plagarized fiction stolen from fan sites. Be warned.)I would like to see stuff like this come up. The Kindle (and other book vendors like B&N and Nook Apps) recently lost the ability to shop within the App. While not a big issue, this sort of thing would be nice to see.
One of the perks of the iPad is the relatively cheap cost of the apps (most expensive app I've seen in the store is something on the order of 200 bucks, but it was a medical app.) There are lots of 'sheet aps' to hold characters, and a few of them look interesting but I haven't bought them because they don't tie to a system out there that I use a lot. The big trick is to learn how to do your 'search-fu' in the App store since they can be located under a variety of options. Games, Productivity, Books and so on. 'RPG' and such doesn't lead them and you can get a LOT of stuff that doesn't apply.
