Kickstarter

Hey everyone!

Last weekend myself (as the DM) and a number of others used Track Initiative in a live D&D game! This game was very helpful in that it illustrated what worked well, and what still needed some fine tuning.

As the DM, I loved how simple it was to use in game. I applied some effects when it came up, removed participants when they were defeated and re-arranged the order when need be. The setup pre-game was pretty simple, taking less than 10 minutes to input the players, the stats I needed to see and the mobs for the encounter I had planned.

I was running Track Initiaitve (as the DM) on my iPad at the table, but I had the tracker open behind me on my computer monitor (as a Viewer). It was fun to turn around and see (on my monitor) the Player/Mob selection change, right after hitting "Next" on my iPad.

This trial run also allowed us to see some things we needed to update. One example was that when you add mobs, you select a mob you built and then choose a quantity. Once you get to the tracker, it creates one listing for each mob with an incremented number next to the name. For example, I had "Orc" and I chose to add "4", so in the tracker I had "Orc 1", "Orc 2" etc. This worked great - "Orc 3" was killed and was removed from the tracker. However, when I put the #3 token back into the encounter as a new Orc it worked fine on the battlemat (at the table), but in Track Initiative we needed to be able to bring in a new "Orc 3" which wasn't possible. So, one of the things we quickly learned was we need to indicate that a mob is "defeated" rather than remove them from the tracker entirely, that way they can be re-introduced into the encounter as a new mob (and then placed in the appropriate order) without having to create a new number for them. This is important as many tokens are numbered, and we (as DM/GM's) tend to re-use the numbers of previously fallen mobs, etc. Additionally, we want to be able to look back at past trackers and see all participants in an encounter - not just the PC's, as they defeated the encounter.

Anyway, it was a great run and went very well for being in such an early stage. We hope you are as excited as we are to see this application launch. If you have already helped us with funding I would like to thank you again - we really appreciate it! If not, please consider doing so, but also know that we are trying to get the word out about Track Initiative, so any sharing of this project with others who might be interested would be very much appreciated as well!

Thanks again everyone!

Mike "Weem"

Hello Everyone!

This has been a very fast two weeks! We are officially at the halfway point, and while we are not yet halfway funded (as of the time of this post), we are VERY close to that mark and are very appreciative for the support so far - so thanks for that ;)

I would also like to take this opportunity to share some screenshots with you, as well as some additional information related to them! We wanted to wait until we had some more things fixed and tweaked, but I'm not much of one for "rules", so here they are now!

Please keep in mind we're not yet to Alpha (we should be there next week) so some things here are not yet polished...

1. Mob Selection/Creation. "Mob" in this sense refers to any non-players...

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2. Mob Updating. From the above screen, the following screen is what you see when you select a Mob...

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3. Tracker. The screen below is what we call the "Tracker" and it is... well, the initiative/turn tracker. The "Round" in this case is just an example. You can see the person whose turn it currently is, is highlighted blue.Mobs has a red bar on the left and you can see the Goblin and Skeleton have effects on them...

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4. Tracker Re-ordering. From the above screen, you can select "Options" and then "Re-order" which will allow you to drag and drop the participants into any order you would like. You can see the Goblin is currently being dragged down from the second to third position, which shifts "Nicole" into the second position from the third. Her and the Goblin have quickly swapped places!

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5. Tracker Notifications. After "Nicole" was moved to the second position (previous screenshot) we applied a "Poisoned" effect to her. We then clicked "Next Turn" at which point the following notification pops up as a reminder of the effect. If more had been applied, they would all appear here. If some were set as "End of Turn" they would appear under the "Start of Turn" effects.

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This window (above) is especially great for players, making sure they don't forget an effect. If a duration is set for the effect, it will automatically be removed at the appropriate time, but at any time, the DM can remove any effect.The DM sees these notifications by default.

A DM can share a unique URL that leads to their Tracker with ANYONE. Everyone viewing the Tracker (that is not the DM) is considered a "Viewer" (even if they are actually Players in the game).

Viewers can select any participant and choose to see their popup notifications. In this way, a Viewer that happens to be a player can simply select their character and have it remind them of applied effects each "round". The cool thing is that an effect can be ANYTHING! For example... have a player that always forgets to roll their Saves at the end of their turn? Simply create a "Roll Saves" effect (could be named anything) and apply it to the Player for "End of Turn"!

It can be hard to get your Players to even read an email about the game they play in not to mention trying to get them all to create accounts for various tools - so we didn't want them to even have to make an account. Instead, they simply visit the URL of the current tracker - that's it!

Thanks again everyone for the support!

If you have helped us fund already, we want to thank you again - we really appreciate it. If you haven't, please consider that (of course), but additionally we really appreciate people sharing our project with others ;)

If you have questions, please feel free to contact me here or on Twitter @theweem.

Thanks,

Mike "Weem"