Google Slides as a resource

[sjbrown]

I’ve played around with “Character Keepers” in Google Sheets, but for my game, I thought I’d try to put everything in Google Slides instead. See it here

I went this direction because:

• the tab-switching of Google Sheets doesn’t show you where other players are making changes
• Slides text is big and easy-to-read by default
• Specifically for my game, which uses cards, it’s easier to just copy a card image and paste multiple cards onto a Slide

Has anyone else used Slides? What are your experiences? Any tips? Any things to watch out for?

[technoskald]

This is super interesting! Can you elaborate a little on how Slides improves the second point?

I think this is also probably good for things where you want to add an image (NPC, map, whatever) - just add a new slide and paste it in when the time comes.

[sjbrown]

Sure! Here are two screenshots (Sheets versus Slides) for comparison. It doesn’t quite do it justice because I squeezed my browser window smaller for the sake of the screenshot. You can imagine if my browser were full-size, the font size would scale up. In the Slides view, it’s notable that even in the “preview” on the left side, I can see other players’ activity - it highlights their color, etc.

[technoskald]

Oh, excellent! I did not realize that Slides would show other editors’ activity in the preview pane on the left. That does indeed make a huge difference. This may have less automation easily available relative to Sheets, but the presentation is indeed superior from my POV.

[Evan_Buchholz]

Never thought to use slides but it makes so much sense. Looking to working in Slides for some projects in the near future.

[meseby]

I have my own google slide game but it is pretty short
here it is https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vTWkLhIq7CZVwsB6fDtrSKnHQW_GpVc7oYCIpaWrW-IK4Z3-p-whzkC7C9IMer40WG50Qy5oKsgtBX_/pub?start=true&loop=false&delayms=1000

[Nickwedig]

I have used Google Slides for layout on several game projects, and it worked reasonably well. It doesn’t have all the features of a real layout program, but it’s good enough for most basic layout projects. And it’s easier to use and available on any computer for free and auto-syncs across systems, which InDesign and Affinity don’t do.

(If anyone realized my games were made in Slides, they didn’t say anything about it to me.)

[Wilhelm]

We have a common slide stack shared by the whole group. Everyone keeps their PC in there and we have common notes about played scenes, maps, encountered NPCs, clues and everything else there. Everyone can have the deck open on their computer while we play, and the GM shares the screen so that there’s a common understanding of where “here” is when we discuss some common thing.