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GMing with Multiple Laptop Screens
Many people, like myself, now use laptops at the gaming table to hold notes, charts, world information, access the internet for resources, hold and modify (or generate) NPC character sheets, keep PDFs of any books needed (for quick and unobserved reference) and a thousand other things. All in all, this proved a good decision and resource, but it posed some additional problems I hadn’t encountered before.
I think I am not alone in experiencing what I call Narrator Paranoia, that irrational fear that if you leave the table for a few minutes to get a drink, go to the bathroom or take a quick smoke break, players will take the chance to look through notes and folders. When my notes were primarily physical and spread out through numerous notebooks, binders, and rulebooks, it was easy to tell if anyone had been through it while I was gone. There was too much (and it was often too messy) for my players to be able to reassemble it sufficiently that I wouldn’t notice the change. With computer files, this is far easier.
The other new problem I encountered was the issue of showing players a map, excerpt, or some other piece of information that I had not printed out: I could only show them on the computer. I was afraid that while looking at said item, they would accidentally see that I had certain files open, which could give away information: the simple act of a player seeing that a map is labeled “Lich Lair 3 of 13″ can completely change the way players look at an adventure.
The solution to these problems came to me when I switched to Linux in the form of Virtual Desktops, a feature which allows users to have multiple desktops operating simultaneously and separately. This creates the possibility of switching to a blank desktop quickly, having only open solely for players to see legitimate material, or even a desktop with false information to mislead snoopy players.
If you happen to already have Linux or Mac on your laptop, you should have access to this feature already. If you’re a Windows user, I suggest “VirtuaWin,” a free program which allows you to have up to nine virtual desktops operating at once. You can find the program at http://virtuawin.sourceforge.net/
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