What would you put in a GM's screen?

[ludomaniac]

I am the proud owner of a Masterscreen Quad (not made anymore, unfortunately), and I intend to make up some inserts for the Dresden files RPG.  My question to you all is this: if you were designing a four-panel GM screen for the Dresden Files RPG, what would you put on it?

I know the FATE ladder will be there, but otherwise I'm open to suggestions.

[Deadmanwalking]

Check out YS p. 410-411, that's most of it right there.

[prophet224]

Yeah, I started thinking about what to put on a screen, then I had an epiphany.  I thought, 'Wait, this is being produced BY gamers!'  Then I looked in the back and lo and behold, there was most of the info you should need.  Ahhh... competence and foresight... what a wonderful thing!  Yay Evil Hat.

[Crion]

I actually brought up something similar to this with new player handouts, and everyone so far brought up a good point that most of the information you'll need is right there on those two pages.

Whenever I do custom GM screens (whether notes on posterboard or two binders clipped together with notes), I tend to make sure I have fast references and page numbers for things I use often.
So, for Dresden, I'll probably put in cheatsheet notes for magic (page #s for each type, standard rules and whatever else is relevant), perhaps a few Consequences to guide me if needed, and I usually leave a blank "section" for most games so I can post what is precisely relevant to a specific game session (map, list of NPCs, specific powers, situations, etc) or toss some extra general notes (or even a storyboard; did that with a time-traveling OWoD game).

Additionally, I'll probably have a sheet of some sort tucked away for PC Aspects. This way, I can just look up and see them all instead of sifting through a notebook for that one page. . .

Hope that helped. Enjoy the game!

[CableRouter]

I'm using an electronic GMs screen (TiddlyWiki running on a netbook), but my GM stuff currently has (in addition to the pages in the back of YS)
Ladder columns for lifting, breaking things, resource costs.
Skill List with summaries of all the trappings
Running conflicts, with listings of what skills are used for Initiative and the non-standard attacks and defenses (Such as using Conviction instead of Discipline if someone is trying to undermine your faith).
Spellcasting summary

[theDwarf]

With a 4-quad I would seriously consider adding the resource table and other tables in that section as well.

[Nyarlathotep5150]

   Actually. Even better. They posted YS pgs 410-411 on the downloads page of the Dresden RPG site.

   http://www.dresdenfilesrpg.com/downloads/

Its the quick reference sheet.
   I hope they eventually make a Dresden Screen though. It would make a nice edition to the set.

[TheMouse]

GM screens are a remnant of a bygone era during which GMs could not trust their players and felt that they needed to hide behind something. We should move away from the distrust and into a time in which we can trust our players enough that we don't need to hide behind a screen.

[Nyarlathotep5150]

Not in my experience. A GM screen is a useful way to have all the tables, notes and rules you usually forget, right in front of you for ease of reference.
  GM Screens reduce the time spent rifling through books and make the game flow better. I have never seen a screen that worked more as a system of distrust, than as a convenient tool for rules notes, and speeding up the game.

[JustinS]

If I was running a game, I'd want:

Player aspects, powers, possibly peak skills.

City aspects and key locations.

Major NPC aspects, powers, possibly peak skills.

[CableRouter]

GM screens are a remnant of a bygone era during which GMs could not trust their players and felt that they needed to hide behind something. We should move away from the distrust and into a time in which we can trust our players enough that we don't need to hide behind a screen.

I've got a player who reads normal printed text upside down from 4 feet away.  Just looking at my dice he'd be reading anything I've got in front of me without even meaning to.

[Crion]

I've got a player who reads normal printed text upside down from 4 feet away.  Just looking at my dice he'd be reading anything I've got in front of me without even meaning to.

This does tend to be the case with most players, and the last thing you want to do is to show the party how you're "cheating" on their behalf by not having the mooks with machine guns cut through them, or having your major story-driven villain get taken out in one blow due to a bad roll.

GM screens are a remnant of a bygone era during which GMs could not trust their players and felt that they needed to hide behind something. We should move away from the distrust and into a time in which we can trust our players enough that we don't need to hide behind a screen.

I'm in the camp of "story drives the game," so fudging dice (HA!) tends to be reasonably common. Although, with Fate, concessions do seem to make things interesting. . .

Besides, I do like being able to have a few notes hidden away that make party members sit on edge as I move though with things ^_^

[Andinel]

I'm using an electronic GMs screen (TiddlyWiki running on a netbook), but my GM stuff currently has (in addition to the pages in the back of YS)
Ladder columns for lifting, breaking things, resource costs.
Skill List with summaries of all the trappings
Running conflicts, with listings of what skills are used for Initiative and the non-standard attacks and defenses (Such as using Conviction instead of Discipline if someone is trying to undermine your faith).
Spellcasting summary

Any way I could get your TiddlyWiki code to use for myself? It seems like something really useful to have.

[CableRouter]

Any way I could get your TiddlyWiki code to use for myself? It seems like something really useful to have.

Absolutely.

To give credit where credit is due, I started with the DFRPG wiki put together by huntsfromshadow here on the forums.
http://www.dfrpgnotebook.wolfdream.net/  Without seeing this I'd never have even heard of Tiddlywiki.

Personally, I'm big on plain text, rather than all kinds of scripted input boxes, I tend to want to put all kinds of other stuff in
there so I prefer the flexibility of a plain page, so I yanked the formatted inputs out and put in plain text replacements.  Then
I coded in a graphical FUDGE dice roller, a random name generator, the autolisters for NPCs, Faces, threats ect. and then put
in all the GM screen stuff.  From looking at the way I coded the NPC pages, you can easily set up and populate your own lists.

My base code can be found at http://offramp.endofinternet.net/DFRPG-New.zip I've gone a tad beyond the single file, there
is a directory of dice images you need in the same directory as the Wiki for the die roller to work.

For those who haven't used Tiddlywiki before, grab it and take a look, it's an entire wiki in a single HTML file.  The "docs" so to
speak can be found at http://tiddlywiki.org/wiki/Main_Page.

I've also got pdf form versions of the character sheets with the text font being the same one from the books, I'm also a big
fan of an electronic character sheet at the table to go with my electronic wiki, electronic books and electronic dice.
http://offramp.endofinternet.net/Character-Sheets.pdf

One of these days I'm going to get around to putting all this in my sig.

[Jeckel]

Wow, very awesome work CableRouter, that looks fantastic.