Freemind as an RPG tool
A couple of weeks back I asked for some feedback as to what I could do to improve of Dice and Dragons and one of the suggestions was for links to software tools so I thought I would start off with Freemind.
Freemind is a mind mapping tool (you can read about mind mapping here) which I use for all my brainstorming and also for organizing the various electronic materials I use for gaming. Now I realize that most everyone uses a directory structure for organizing things on their computers but that’s not always optimal (at least for me.)
Take for instance a character; you want to have their stats available (in my case an Open Office Calc Spreadsheet), maybe access to their specific feats, skill and spells (SRD or text files) and possibly other materials that are nicely organized into the appropriate areas of your hard drive – but their not all together in a single location so you either need to have all those files open or remember where they all are. If you’re running Freemind you can create a ‘map’ of the materials you need and access them all from there.
The really nice thing about Freemind is that it is written in Java making it fairly easy to use on all platforms. Keep in mind though, that it does write your preferences to the host machine so if you’re using multiple computers you’ll need to take a copy of them with you if you feel you absolutely need them.
Take a minute and download and checkout Freemind as going forward I’ll be including more tips, tricks and suggestions on how to use this tool in your gaming.
May your dice roll well.