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?
Not just how long ago, but also how many total.
This is an idea well worth pursuing.
Switch to Android. 🙂
This sounds easily done in HTML and JavaScript. And with a bit research you can put extra features in (that will work on both Android and iPhone).
I made a FAQ App for the card game Nightfall that way:Â http://t.ktk.de/BGG/NF/nffaq.html
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Well, that happens when you post such stuff!
Just a POC…Â http://t.ktk.de/BGG/dw/tracker.html
Missing features:
– configurable names
– buttons sorted by time
– nice stylesheet
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Added sorting and a bit formatting.
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?
Maybe like two or three clicks per other PC?
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?
OMFG I WANT TO MAKE THIS – Step 1, dust off that Objective C book sitting on my shelf…
I recently started learning JavaScript just so I could do this kind of stuff! Inspiring.
This is a 30-minute mockup to show how I saw it in my head:Â
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B44pJYUVgNfYek9sSy10MEs1bzA/edit?usp=sharing
The numbers on the right are how many presses since you’ve pressed that name (growing physically larger as they increase), and the color gradually shifts from green to red over some amount of time. Maybe, say, 10 or 15 minutes.
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!
Cool Colter Hanna! I put together something similar:Â https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2QKnAZ-ukM_RHpMVUh3UllGSHc/edit?usp=sharing
There’s a couple of us that took it on as a challenge to built it for the web in less than 60min… stay tuned!
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 PilgerÂ
http://niboowin.github.io/playertracker/index.html
One more; created by Gino.
http://ginof.com/apps/player_tracker/
Both these guys built these web apps from “scratch” in about 2.5 hrs… more than the 1hr challenge but still!
I liked Gino F’s app, but wanted to see the time and change the style to have solid colors instead of gradients across the screen. I also made a minor correction to the add character + button.
https://github.com/ConstableBrew/DWPlayerTracker/