Dungeon Master Musings: Building a digital table yourself

A lot of people have been asking me how to set up their own digital RPG tables the way I have.  I'm going to do a brief series on how I've done this, and may even do a little vlogging around it as well, if I can find the time.

The first question we need to answer is "What is a digital RPG table?"  There's actually a lot of different ways of doing it, but what they have in common is this:  Instead of using graph paper and grids that you put in front of your players to indicate what sort of environment they're in, you use some sort of computer display to show your maps digitally.

Implementations of this range from the simple to the seriously awesome.  I've seen setups where people have used an LCD TV as their digital table. Others use projectors, and some awesome folks use touch screen displays for some seriously wicked arrangements.  Just google "digital rpg table" for all sorts of different arrangements.  Definitely a lot of wonderful stuff out there to ogle.

My setup was specifically designed to be inexpensive, easy to use, easy to setup, and very portable.  I don't have a dedicated gaming room, so we need to be able to quickly and easily set it up and tear it down, while still getting the fidelity we need.

Originally we were going to use miniatures on the projected table, but we found that it was even better to use digital icons controlled by bluetooth mice.

What you need

Here are the components that I used in my setup.  I'll go over each one, why it was needed, and things I considered about it.  Please note that this is merely about how to reproduce a setup similar to what I have.  Creative folks should be able to riff on these to create their own setups. Don't take anything I say as expert advice. It's just what one person did, with enough information to hopefully do it yourself.

1. A small, tripod mountable projector
2. A VERY tall camera tripod.
3. A whiteboard
4. A computer with at least 8GB of RAM (Preferably 2)
5. A source of maps, or tools to make maps
6. A map sharing application

There are a variety of options on each one.  My setup wound up costing me about $750, excluding the laptops that I already owned.  However, you can do a similar setup for even cheaper, if you're willing to skimp on your projector quality.  I'd say you could do this for less than $500 easily.

Let's look at each component, what your options are, and what to consider when buying it.

The Projector

The projector is probably one of the first places to start to set up your own digital table.  It's going to be the most expensive component, and the hardest to pick correctly.  We purchased the LG PA77U for about $650, and it fits our needs NICELY.

Lots of wires, but it works great.

One of the first questions to ask yourself is whether this is going to be a dedicated projector or not.  For us, we happen to have a large empty wall in our front room, and decided that our projector would double as a movie projector for big get togethers and movie nights.  (Or for playing video games on the BIIIG screen.)

It's all about options!

If your projector can double as a movie projector, then by all means, go all out and get one with 1080p or 4K and whatever other whiz-bang features you want it to have.  But if you're just using it for D&D, you'll want to consider what sort of resolution you really need to display.  If you're on a tight budget, you can get a really cheap projector for as little as $120, like this tiny little guy.  We decided to go with 720p.

Of course, this is only the first consideration you have.  The next thing to consider is brightness of the projector.  This is measured in lumens  You want something that is going to be bright enough to see during your normal gaming time, in your normal gaming space.  Are you playing in an area with a lot of natural light during the day?  You're going to need a relatively high brightness to see anything.  Playing in a dark, enclosed basement?  You could probably cut back on the lumens quite a bit.  For reference, my projector is 700 lumens, and it works in all but the brightest circumstances for D&D.  I have trouble seeing it during the day with the lights all the way up, but otherwise, it's fine.  It's too dim for movie watching during the day, though.

The last thing to consider is throw distance.  This is the range of distances that you can actually project at.  You'll want something that can project an image pretty close up.  The PA77U projects between 3 to 10 feet, which is perfect for what I'm doing with it.

Once you've decided on these qualities, you need to make sure whatever projectors you're looking at support manual keystone, which is what allows you to project at an angle, but still have a rectangle and not some weird other thing.  You also need to make sure it is light enough to work with a normal camera tripod, which means looking for so called "portable projectors."  Check out projector central for researching your various options.

Camera Tripod

Most people don't have the time, knowhow, or space to be able to make their own permanent projector mount, so the solution I arrived at was getting a really tall camera tripod.  We got this one for about $60.

It towers over us during the game.

Simple truth about projectors:  The further they area away from their target, the larger an area the image covers.  Another truth, when you're dealing with a surface you're putting minis on or pointing at, the more angle there is, the more shadow you cast across the image.

Ideally, to solve these problems, you'd mount your projector right above the playing surface.  Of course, this is probably not going to work in most places, so a good portable solution is a tripod.

The key here is to get as high a tripod as you can get.  In our case, we went with 80 inches tall, and that seems to do the job for us.  We have very little shadow when we project down to the table, and get an image that fills our whiteboard.

You'll want to make sure that whatever you get is strong enough to hold your projector.  We went for overkill in our case, getting a tripod that could hold a projector several times heavier than our little 3 pound friend.

Whiteboard

To actually project, you need a white surface to project onto, and what better solution is there than a whiteboard?  We went with this one from the Board Dudes for $23.  I think we picked it up at Office Max or something.

Your white board is a vital piece of the puzzle, as it essentially becomes the map area.  As you can see, our projector image fills the entire white board.  The great part of using a white board is that you can draw on it, put miniatures on it, and more.  So often, we would get so immersed into using the white board that we'd forget that it was actually not a TV screen either.  We'd drop something on it and yelp in fear that we just broke the TV, then laugh as we remembered it was just a cheap whiteboard.

The main thing to consider here is the size of your whiteboard relative to your projector and tripod positioning.  Different projectors project different image sizes at different throw distances, so you'll have to check this yourself when you do it.  We were super lucky in that the project image matched the whiteboard so perfectly with these heights.  If you get your own setup, make sure you research the size you'll be throwing onto to make sure it's going to make sense.  Otherwise, you may wind up with a really huge or tiny image that doesn't fit well on the white board.

One last thing: The black bezel on the whiteboard was really helpful for hiding the menu bar that shows up when MapTool is full screen.  Thus, despite it still projecting that menu bar (seen in the left side of the image,) it felt less like an application and more like a map by hiding that menu bar.

Computer

You need to drive the images from something.  I personally use two laptops: My personal laptop and my work laptop.  There are advantages to this that I'll discuss in a moment.  Considering that I have them already, the added cost was nil.

DM's laptop

Player laptop

In terms of application performance, MapTool, at least, can run twice on a single computer, making it relatively easy to drive both the DM view and player view from a single machine.  As long as you have enough RAM, you shouldn't have any issue whatsoever.  I'd recommend at least 8GB.  That said, having two computers makes life a lot easier and gets you a few extra options that I'll go over in a moment.

The DM needs to have access to the computer that's hosting the application, so that they can get the DM's view that shows all of the rooms and provides tools for revealing various parts of the environment that the players are in.  I'll cover the tools and their capabilities in a bit.

If you use a second laptop for the players, this enables the option of adding one or more bluetooth mice to the setup that work with that second machine.  With this, the players can then look around and move their tokens by themselves without requiring DM intervention to do so.  Also, since your secondary laptop will be on the same side as the projector, the player on that side can look at the laptop screen instead of the table if necessary, since otherwise some of their view will be upside down.

Source of Maps/Map Creation Tools

I'm about to blow your mind.  Ready for this?  To project maps onto a digital table, you're going to need digital maps.  I know.  Wild.  Personally, I use the GIMP for all of my image creation needs, since it's free and I know how to use it.

There are actually a wide variety of sources of maps, where you don't have to create your own.  Some publishers, such as Paizo publishing, actually sell PDF versions of the maps they include with their modules, which can be repurposed for your own campaign or used directly for their modules.  There's also tons of map making communities on Google+ and other forums, where people liberally share their map creations.  Steal like crazy, and you'll reduce any workload you actually need to have.

If you do want to create your own maps, you could always just be simple and just draw black lines on a grid.  That's simple enough.  But if you're doing that, why not just draw on the whiteboard directly?  Instead, you probably want to create relatively pretty maps.  Before you jump into your map creation software of your choice, there are several map creation programs out there, like Campaign Cartographer, that give you a great set of tiles and objects to easily import into a map.

Of course, most of those tools cost money, and frankly, you don't need all their features.  Between sites like rpgmapshare.com and the various image libraries provided with MapTool, Roll20, and others, you can cobble together your own little tiles and object library in very little time.

For actually composing the images, both GIMP and Adobe Photoshop are great programs for producing these images.  Specific details of how to build maps with these programs is best left for a future blog post where I'll go to that in depth, but with a little bit of practice, anyone should be able to  create maps very quickly with either of these tools.

Map sharing application

There's a lot of different ways to get your map application shared to your players.  My personal favorite is MapTool, a delightfully free tool that is easy to start with, but has a lot of depth and possibilities.

MapTool is one of the tools created in the RPTools suite created by the RPTools team.  It's free, and I really like the way it makes it easy to set up visual blocking layers and reveal portions of the map to players.  However, it's just one of several tools available.  Roll20, Fantasy Grounds, and many other applications all serve the same purpose as MapTool.  They're all pretty similar, with different sets of features and capabilities, different levels of glamour and polish... But what makes MapTool stand out to me is the simplicity it provides for doing digital table play.

You see, all of these applications are designed with the primary goal of connecting players remotely across the internet.  The idea is that they are not in person, and need to use a tool like these to connect to each other.  But of all of the ones I've investigated, MapTool is the only one that explicitly acknowledges the in-person digital table use case, and provides some options for making it easy to use.

I recommend trying them all and experimenting with the various options they provide.  You can even get most of them to do some level of scripting, where they automatically calculate hits, AC, track HP or initiative, etc.  Covering all of these is yet another blog post, which I won't go into here. :)

Conclusion

So that's my setup, and how I do things.  In future blog posts, I'll go over my setup for map generation and share my XCF files and my process for quickly pulling a map together for a game.  (You can check out my template file here, if you're interested, or check out this completed map for some ideas as well.)  I'll also go over MapTool, how I use it, and some of the features that are available.

Both of these topics are covered in depth elsewhere on the net, so I'll just be adding to the pile, but definitely go check it out.

Geek Chic Experience Part 3: Using it

Spoilers:  I got a Geek Chic Table recently.  Here's my experiences of getting one.  In this post, we'll cover the first times we've used it and what that was like.


Jessie was the first person to sit down at the table while the guy was delivering it.

Jessie proudly sits at the new table

I join her to pose for our first picture. :)

The distance from bottom to the top of the table was 31", which gave us about 25" of clearance under the table.  It's tight with our 17.5" chairs, but even with all of our fat thighs, I'm the only one that's having any trouble with it.  So the valet turned out to be right about the height:  It's better to make the table tighter around the leg than to have the top be too high.

Everyone was nervous about eating on the table at first, but in reality, one of the nice things about the table is how resistant it is to dirt, spills, etc.  You don't even need to use a coaster!  Here's our first person sitting down to eat.

Pretty quickly after that, we got into gaming:

Our first game. This picture is amazing.

Playing on the aubergine velvet is an exquisite experience.  Somehow it feels... better... than an ordinary table.  Everything feels like it has its place.  It is a luxurious, clean experience.  The velvet holds the pieces in place and feels nice to touch as you pick up pieces and move them around.

The spaciousness of the table really came in handy for larger games like Lords of Waterdeep and 7 Wonders.  For the first time, it felt like we could actually fit all the players around the table to play without getting overcrowded.

Lords of Waterdeep felt great on the table

In 7 Wonders, we actually had 3 people to a single side of the table, for a total of 7 players.  It was the biggest game of 7 wonders we've ever played, and everyone had sufficient room to play.

Three people gathered on one side of the table.

Once again, the velvet held the cards in place extremely well, and dealing cards out was a dream.  Unfortunately, while cleaning the velvet, we had a minor accident where we scratched it.  It's actually very fragile and can easily be scratched, but smudging it out made the scratches nigh invisible.  It's also only 3% of the total cost of the table, so not too big of a deal.

Our general experience is that the velvet is just *really nice* to play all games on, and we play games on it whenever we can.  However, when something special is needed, we switch to "hardcore mode," where we go down to the acrylic layer.  We did it for playing Power Grid, drawing gaming information on the table, and used it with the space insert for X-wing, shown below:

A giant, 3 way, 6 player game of X-wing.

The X-wing game felt amazing on there, but we experienced a lot of glare on the acrylic.  We discovered later that the delivery folks installed the acrylic with the wrong side face up, and once we flipped it, the glare diminished rapidly.

Speaking of glare, a few days later, I got to finally run my first D&D campaign on the new table:

All decked out in preparation for the players.

For D&D, we used the leaf desks and leaf guards to shrink the inner area and expand the desk space on top of the table.  My players reported having considerably more room than in the past, and enjoyed the easy sight lines down to the projected map.  The map projection was pretty good on the acrylic, but from some angles there was a weird shimmery rainbow effect, due to the anti-glare coating.  However, none of my players complained.  Overall, they felt it was a significant improvement over the old table.  They said they felt "spoiled."

My new DM station

My new DM setup was a lot different than my old one.  Instead of using my old side tables, I was able to put everything directly on the table in front of me.  It took some getting used to, but ultimately resulted in an improved experience for me.  Everything was in a much more convenient spot than it used to be, and I was able to look up and reference information more easily.

Overall, the table delivers on its promise of providing a premium, luxurious gaming experience.  I always knew it would be nice, but I never imagined it would be as nice as it is.  The gaming space helps transport you to the other worlds and experiences that the various games take you to. There's a sort of "geek gamer" equivalent of the "Las Vegas Poker" experience when you're playing at a nice table in a nice casino.  It just feels betters.  More fun.  More immersive.  Just... nicer.

Plus, it really helps to be able to pause a game mid-way and eat without disrupting the things you're doing.  Keeping cups off the table protects game components, and enables us to focus more on the game itself.  Somehow, I feel encouraged to even drink more water than I used to while playing, because it's so convenient to have a cup holder at your side instead of trying to play a game while not knocking over a cup.

It's been a wonderful journey, and a very long wait, and it is finally here.  I am very happy. :)

Geek Chic Experience Part 2: Delivery

Spoilers:  I got a Geek Chic Table recently.  Here's my experiences of getting one.  In this post, we'll cover the day it was delivered.

Saturday, August 22 was our last D&D game on our old table

Our full setup on the old table.

Using the white board for the last time.

 As our party was finishing fighting some troglodytes, we got the call.  They were going to be able to deliver the table THAT night.  In fact, they'd be arriving in an hour.  We finished up our adventure for the night and quickly cleared the area for the delivery.

So empty!

We sat there, some of the players leveling their characters, when there was the knock at the door.  THEY'RE HERE!!!!

The table goes over there

The delivery guys brought everything in and were incredible friendly, personable, and careful.

We posed with the table still on its side.

Then the guy went through all of the different pieces of the table, showing us how each piece attached.  We even got to help install stuff.  The first things to install were the white board and non-glare acrylic. (They installed the acrylic upside down, but we figured it out later.)

 Next up were the various grids and printings under the acrylic, as well as the fabric layer.  We got the space printing specifically for X-wing, Federation Commander, and similar games.  You can lay a hex   map over it so that you can play Fedcom easily, or leave it off for X-wing type games.

Then the guy showed us how to put in the leaves to turn it into a dining table.

Next came the accessories.  We got a LOT of accessories.

Specifically, we got 6 each of the counter holders, bins and cup holders.  As well as the tables for the sides without drawers.

We tested the drawers, too.

Finally, we got inner "leaf guards/desks" for having larger table top area along with an inner play space.

One of the really awesome things about this is that the guy literally ran through every piece of the table to make sure it fit and worked correctly.  Not a thing was missed.  As he went through things, he explained everything.  How to clean it. How to avoid damage.  How to use it.  Everything.  I have never experienced anyone being THAT thorough about anything before.  Super professional.

In the next part, I'll tell you all about our first experiences using the table in all of its forms.

Geek Chic Experience Part 1: Ordering and Waiting

Spoilers:  I got a Geek Chic Table this weekend.  Here's my experiences of getting one.  In this part, we talk about what it was like to order it and wait for it.

Playing Memoir '44 Eastern Front

It all began early 2014.  At that time, my partner and I were in a really good financial situation and wanted to "splurge" on something to enhance our favorite hobby together:  board games.  I googled for "Geek Board Game Table" and discovered Geek Chic.  In late April, we decided to put down a deposit on an Emissary table and waited for our "valet" to contact us. Just a few weeks later, Beth from Geek Chic contacted us to start walking through our decisions.

The valet experience was fantastic.  Over the next month, she gathered all sorts of information from us.  How big the room was.  How big our games were.  How big we were.  What games we play.  etc. etc. etc.  They had little pamphlets and flyers for every decision we might make.  What type of felt we wanted.  What type of wood. The design of the leaves. The various accessories.  Everything was incredibly well presented and laid out, and all of our questions were answered with surprising clarity.

Between June and September, we sort of dropped out of communication with Geek Chic, due to getting married and such, but as soon as we got back, we started talking to them again.  We were supposed to go into production in October, but were delayed until December, which gave us a little extra breathing room to finalize everything.  We had our final design done on November 11, 2014.

The rest of the experience wasn't as smooth as the beginning.  We were frequently told by Geek chic that we would get communications at such and such time, but then they wouldn't contact us at all.  After a few weeks, I'd email them and finally get a response.  There were definitely some communication issues, some of which may have been on my side, but a few were definitely on theirs. To their credit, when I emailed them about these delays in communication, they'd usually have a good explanation.  It was just disappointing after such a wonderful valet experience to have such a mediocre customer experience during the manufacturing phase.  I could detail all of it, but it's not necessary.  I wouldn't say it was a *bad* experience.  Just mediocre.

All that said, the table was finally finished on August 4, 2015 and Geek Chic sent us a bunch of pictures of the table in its pre-shipped form.

A few weeks ahead, we were given a call that the table would be delivered between Saturday, August 22 and Monday, August 24, probably on Sunday, August 23, 2015.

In the next part, I'll go over the delivery day experience!

Outer Wilds

Contribute to the OuterWilds Campaign

Outer Wilds is my favorite game of all time, and it hasn't even been released yet.

Back a few years ago, a small group of college students put together a tiny demo of a game for a school project.  It was an ambitious, but incredible project that resonated with the hearts of people everywhere.  This year, the leader (or only member?) of that team joined a real software development company, and his first project as part of that team is to turn this little project into a fully featured game.

If I were to say what makes this game so great, it is that it is the first game I have ever seen that takes the dream, fantasy, and wonder of space flight, as seen through the lens of science fiction, and distills it into an immensely fun and playable experience.

The game is essentially a game of exploration and discovery.  A wide and wonderful solar system lay before you, and you can explore it at your whim.  After a brief introduction to the world you're joining, and to how to maneuver and navigate in this environment, you are thrown to the winds of space in your very own space ship.  You travel to and from distant planets throughout your solar system, discovering what is happening and unveiling a deep and fundamental mystery as you go.

This isn't a game of getting achievements, or racking up points.  There's no laser guns or beam weapons.  What danger there is is found predominantly in the environment itself.  Don't land too hard or you'll damage your ship or break your leg.  Don't turn on autopilot so that it takes you through the sun.  There's no inventory.  No complex events.  Nothing you'd normally see in a game.  Just you and an environment to explore, and what an environment it is.

Flying in this game is magical.  It is effortless and free, unbound by the realities of space.  A fantastic rendition of travel through the stars that manages to hold to just enough reality to fulfill your imagination of what space might be like without making things hard, like you might find in Kerbal Space Program.  This is the Neverending Story of space flight, riding your luck dragon through the cosmos, feeling the wind in your hair in an entirely unrealistic, and yet delightful experience.  One of my favorite things to do is to get out of my ship and just coast along, watching the planets go by.

The version that has been resleased so far is unfinished.  Seeking answers to some of the mysteries present in the game simply wind up at a dead end.  A void where *something* should be.  A space that feels like it should be more meaningful than it winds up being.  They are looking for funding to help finish the game and release it for all to enjoy, with all of these gaps and dead ends filled in.  The world we have explored so far will be completed, and the story will go on without leaving us hungry and wanting for more as it has in the past.

I strongly recommend you check out the alpha, freely available online, and if you like it, go to the link above and give them $20 or so.  The world will be a better place for it. :)

Oh, and here's their AWESOME pitch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DL5bEI5siwE

Nutech: Amazon Echo is DAMNED useful

Hey there.  After I finish selling you this bridge I have for sale, I'm going to sell you a $170 tube that has Siri in it and plays music.

I have no screen and minimal physical control inputs.

Like, right?  You hear about this thing, and it just sounds like another dumb tech gadget that people buy to show off how techy and geeky their life is.  When Amazon Prime offered me an opportunity to buy it at half the price, I thought I'd check it out, being the UX geek that I am, but I figured it would be quite a dud and I'd be giving it away to someone else pretty quickly.  Boy, was I wrong.

Review

What has blown my mind, though, is just how useful this pringles can can be, especially given the fact that this is only the earliest of releases for this thing.  In our household, we use it fairly frequently.  More than ever before, our house is filled with music, and basic kitchen tasks are a lot more convenient.  It's great.

Okay, so what's the big deal?  First of all, the primary purpose of the Echo is to be a speaker.  It's a reasonably good wireless music player that you can put anywhere in your house and get good audio out of.  Even at our noisiest in the house, the volume and sound are just fine.  I'm sure audiophiles, bass junkies, and volume ravers will find it lacking, but for us, who just want a little background music while we do other things, this thing is perfect.

Alexa, define overkill.

Since the vocal interface is so easy to use, it's extremely convenient to turn it on and get music going.  Controlling it with your voice is also absurdly convenient.  I'm finally starting to dig into areas of my music library that I haven't touched in ages.  For a while there, music was just becoming something to listen to while working, and now it's coming back into my life, thanks to the Echo.  There's just so much more music around, and I love it.

Our kitchen and media/family room are right next to each other, so we put the Echo in there, making it accessible to the kitchen, and that's turned out to be an incredible choice.  Whenever someone cooks, they use the Echo timer, because it's just so much easier to ask Alexa (The name of the voice software) to set the timer than to figure it out on the microwave/oven.  Additionally, the "buzzer" on the Echo timer is so much louder and clearer, and you can hear it throughout the house, unlike the crappy buzzer on the oven.  Echo is also great for quick quantity conversions, switching effortlessly between cups and teaspoons or whatever, without having to do a lot of math.

Children are going to grow up without kitchen calculators
and this is the end of the world.

We live in a communal house of 5 adults, and sharing communal shopping lists and TODO lists can be hard, but with Echo, it's a lot more convenient than writing it on a whiteboard to forget later.  Just ask Alexa to remember it, and it gets added to the app for anyone to access and review.  Very easy.

Finally, the integration with Hue lighting has been a huge boon to us.  We use Hue lights in our media room, and Alexa makes it absurdly convenient to turn the lights on and off.  These days, we barely even touch the light switches, because we just ask alexa to turn the lights on and off, or to set their dim level.  It's surprisingly convenient and useful.

The real reason we love Alexa

A day in the life

So here's a common day of using Alexa.  We love the thing so much, we got a second one for our bedroom to control the Hue lights and music in there, so it's in the rooms of our house that we use the most.

Alexa wakes us up with an alarm, when it is time to go to work. "Alexa, stop alarm" we tell her, and the alarm is silenced.  After a few minutes of groggily waking up, we turn on the lights without leaving bed, "Alexa, turn on Master Bedroom."

While I grab my phone and start checking my emails and such, my wife starts getting dressed and checks the weather to see if it is cool enough to wear her new vest: "Alexa, what is the temperature today?"  Alexa gives her a full weather report, and she cheerfully goes and dons the vest she's been dying to wear.

After she leaves, I sit down at my desk and start to work.  I just recently purchased a bunch of music by Lindsey Stirling on iTunes, and imported it to the Amazon Music account, so I ask Alexa to start playing it. "Alexa, play music by Lindsey Stirling."  The volume starts out a little low, so I ask her "Alexa, turn it up."  It's still a little low. "Alexa, turn it up." Whoops.  Too much, "Alexa, turn it down."

I had actual discovered Lindsey Stirling because a friend had come over and wanted to try out the Echo, and asked Alexa to create a Pandora station around Lindsey Stirling.  That station has quickly become one of my favorite stations to turn on whenever I'm looking for music, so I finally broke down and bought it.  You can actually buy music straight through the Echo, but we haven't done that much yet.

Around dinner time, I head downstairs to bake some cookies.  "Alexa, turn off Master Bedroom."  While cooking, I need to use 1/4 cup of chocolate in my recipe, but all of my 1/4 cups are dirty.  Instead of cleaning one, I ask Alexa to do a quick conversion "Alexa, how many tablespoons are in a quarter cup?"  After making the dough, I put it in the fridge and set an alarm to give it enough time to chill. "Alexa, set an alarm for 9pm."

After that, we head out to dinner.  Upon arriving back, my wife heads to the family room to play some Minecraft.  "Alexa, turn on Family Room"  I head to the kitchen and start putting the cookie dough on trays to put in the oven.  After each one, I set a timer with Alexa, "Alexa, set timer for 10 minutes."  While they cook, I do other household chores, or go work on my D&D campaign on my computer.  The loud timer alarm always gets my attention no problem, and I head right over to the oven to take the cookies out.

After the cookies are done, I put some video game music on to help me think about D&D stuff until bed, "Alexa, play my video game music station on Pandora."  Several hours later, it's time for bed.  Before heading up, I make sure the lights are on upstairs, "Alexa, turn on Master Bedroom."  Then we head up.   The lights are a little bright, so we dim them. "Alexa, set Master Bedroom to 30 percent."  Jessie sets an alarm for the morning, "Alexa, set an alarm for 7:30am."  Once we are ready for bed, we turn the lights off, "Alexa, turn off Master Bedroom."

We close out the night listening to some soothing nature music from Amazon Prime Music. "Alexa, play Nature sounds for sleep on Prime Music."  And we drift off to sleep to the sounds of rain and thunder.