The Portable Gamer – Tip #2 – Use a USB Drive

While role-playing games are pen and paper most gamers are now turning to the computer to assist them with running their campaigns and tracking their characters. To that end I would recommend that you pick up a USB drive.

Why? There are a variety of reasons for going this route, first off it allows you to take your notes and materials with you and use them regardless of the computer – a real blessing if you’re like me and have a company laptop and want to keep work and gaming separate, or if you work on more than one machine. In addition if you forget your character sheet or notes more than likely your host will be able to print out a copy for you (provided you remember the USB drive – add it to your checklist – see make a list) as most everyone has a USB port on their computers now.

The other nice thing about USB drives is now there are a variety of applications specifically designed to be run from them so you don’t need them installed on every computer you work on. I mentioned a few days ago about using Evernote for my character’s spell list (see Evernote for your spell list) well that’s one such example. The application itself is installed on my USB drive along with the data which means as long as I can connect it to a computer I can use it.

In fact I use a number of applications in this manner most of them for gaming related activities but I’ll save that for another post (or two).

May your dice roll well.