Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Old-School IOS App?

I want some Old-School D&D apps for my iPhone. Is that so wrong? I do a lot of blog postings and other assorted D&D-type work on my iPhone, because, well, it just works well for me.

Reading most PDFs, however, does not work very well. It's not awful, and I'm sure it's a lot nicer on an iPad or Kindle Fire, but I've got this little smart phone.

There are apps for searching the Type-IV D&D Compendium, and for the Pathfinder and D&D 3.5 System Reference Documents. While these do have certain, limited uses for me, what I really would like to see (and would happily pay, say, ten bucks or so for) is OSRIC, or Swords & Wizardry, or LotFP, or any other of the other retroclones, in an easily accessible, searchable app. Specifically, Monsters, Spells, Magic Items and such.

A constantly updating compilation of the countless numerous random charts that get published on all these old-school blogs would be easily worth another ten bucks.

Maybe this niche is too small, but it seems to me if its good enough for the modern publications of the game, surely there is enough DIY know-how floating around in the OSR to put together a few decent apps that we can use. Anyone up to the task? Or is there an app out there I'm missing?

Note: I wrote this article last night and then, like magic, found an app called Old-School DM. Its main function is combat tracker, dice roller, and monster manual. It's being regularly updated. I've yet to use it at the table, but once I do I'll have a proper review up here.

1 comment:

  1. Great idea and good wish. But I'd like throw some Android apps would be cool too. Like you I found apps for Pathfinder, Type IV and generic which sort of work. But reference documents would be awesome.

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