It should come as no surprise that I’m a geeky Dungeon Mistress. A laptop is an essential tool at the gaming table, holding pdf copies of all my D&D books (so I can hand my Player’s Handbook off to the player who doesn’t have one), important tables, summaries and statblocks (so I don’t have to dig through three different books just to get through an encounter), my campaign and session notes (because printing all those notes means having an unwieldy amount of paper at the table), maps and illustrations (because ink is too expensive to print every image I want to show my players once or twice). My laptop is my DM screen, my notebook, and my sanity saver.

While a laptop is handy to have at the table, it’s not the most comfortable tool when preparing a session. I’d much rather use my monster desktop computer with full-size keyboard, proper mouse and 22” screen. However, using my desktop computer means I have to transfer all my files to my laptop before each session, and transfer them all back after each session, and make sure I don’t accidentally edit files on both computers before transferring. All this is very cumbersome, and can easily fail—especially at the weakest point in the chain: The human.

Enter the ultimate tools for geeky DMs like myself: Dropbox and Evernote.

In short, Evernote is a free-form note-taking application, while Dropbox is a service for online storage and sharing of files. Both will sync data between multiple computers. Both are free. Both are excellent DM tools, and even using just one of them will provide major boosts to your Sanity checks.

Evernote

At it’s most basic level, Evernote is the electronic equivalent of an endless roll of sticky notes. You grab a note, jot down whatever you need to remember, stick it, and grab another. You can use plain text, images, clip something from the web, or shove a whole pdf in there. This sounds horribly messy at first, but Evernote lets you tag every note to give it a context or category, and if that isn’t enough, there is a search function. You can search through everything you’ve put into Evernote—including the contents of that pdf, and the text in that hand-written note you scanned!

Text and screenshot clippers in the desktop client makes it easy to save ideas and inspiration when you come across it. The web clipper makes it easy to grab content on the web, even if you don’t have the desktop client installed—a link to the page you’re grabbing from will be saved with the note, so you can easily find it again later if you need to.

Personally, I would call Evernote the perfect idea folder. It’s easy to put all sorts of things in, and easy to find them again. It’s like having a spare brain, and it has perfect memory. Evernote has a thousand uses outside of DM-ing as well, and some of them are mentioned in the Evernote blog.

On the practical side: Desktop clients of Evernote are available for Windows and OS X. Linux users have to make do with the rather more cumbersome web interface. Gadget geeks will approve of the clients for iPhone and Windows Mobile.

Get Evernote!

Dropbox

While Evernote is basically a souped-up notebook, Dropbox is the swiss army chainsaw of file syncing.

Dropbox exists as a folder on your computer(s). Anything and everything you put in this folder will be automagically uploaded to an online drive and synced between all your computers by the extremely lightweight and unobtrusive Dropbox client. Share a folder with your friends (aka players!) and everything you put in that folder will be synced between your and their computers! Put a file in the Public folder, and you can share it with anyone. Put photos in the Photos folder, and it creates a web gallery for you. It’s so simple and so quick it seems like nothing less than magic.

Even better; the magic doesn’t stop there. Once a file is put in Dropbox, it’s safe. Did you delete a file by accident? No problem, Dropbox can restore it for you! Did you suddenly find you desperately need a copy of that file the way it was two weeks ago? No problem, Dropbox can restore that version for you!

Where Evernote is perfect for your loose ideas and brainstorming, Dropbox is perfect for your finished product. Keep session logs, maps, illustrations and character sheets in a folder shared with your players. Keep your pdf rulebooks, notes and maps for upcoming sessions in a private folder. Everything you need will be there, when you need it, without thinking about it at all.

On the practical side: The Dropbox client is available for Windows, OS X and Linux. Your files are also available through the web interface. Free accounts can have up to 2 GB of files, but using the link below will give you (and me!) an extra 250 MB when you sign up.

Get Dropbox!