Idle thoughts before I go to bed: a smartphone app that lets you list the names of your PCs, and tells you how long…

Idle thoughts before I go to bed: a smartphone app that lets you list the names of your PCs, and tells you how long…

Idle thoughts before I go to bed: a smartphone app that lets you list the names of your PCs, and tells you how long since you have asked that player a question (including, of course, “what do you do?). Tap their name whenever you do to reset the timer. It could either be a count of the minutes, or a more relative counter that ticks up whenever you tap someone else’s name.

If I had a computer capable of making apps for my iPhone (thanks for that, Apple. I’m sure limiting who is allowed to make content for ecosystem was a brilliant idea in the long run [/sarcasm]), I’d do it for myself and try it out, but for now it remains as just a random idea in my head, after noticing how often I tend to take longer than I should to get back to a particular character, especially if they have a particularly quiet player.

Thoughts about the idea? Your own person solutions to the same problem? Am I just crazy and addicted to wanting to use my smartphone for everything?

18 thoughts on “Idle thoughts before I go to bed: a smartphone app that lets you list the names of your PCs, and tells you how long…”

  1. hmmmm… this idea & Oliver Graf’s POC got me thinking about trying my hand at this. Maybe a bit different approach.

    – I might be alone in this, but the definitive quality of the timer just seems like a proxy for initiative. DW’s turn order feels more vague.

    – Ballpark here, but what would you guys think is a reasonable amount of time to “ignore” a player?

  2. That’s definitely interesting! 🙂

    What about from a player’s perspective? Would you want to be engaged every 3min? 5min?

    How long could you be idle before you start to get bored?

  3. This could be made extremely easily as a web app. I’ll present the idea to the GM of my group and if it’s something she’d like I’ll probably go ahead and make it!

  4. Okay… so here’s the idea behind the ones we made tonight. a clock or timer is too close to an actual initiative order, so we went with something less accurate.

    In our version(s) the characters move from green (engaged) to red (idle)…

    – Add players by Name

    – The colour cycles from green, through yellow, to red every 5min.

    – Number denotes number of times the player was engaged.

    – Every time a character is clicked/tapped, their color resets to green, and all other characters are set 20sec. closer to red!

    So here’s the first one courtesy of Anthony Pilger 

    http://niboowin.github.io/playertracker/index.html

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