Greetings...
I've been a way for a while, and I am very happy with the continuing discussion in this thread.
I noticed the talk about making some type of interface with DDI, and I think that this idea is great... for those that use DDI.
Does this mean that the stand-alone projects are going to cease? I am still hoping for updates including Martial Powers (and all the other wonderful products about to be released), and am hoping that I won't have to get a subscription to DDI just to be able to print out powercards.
(Of course, I use so many house rules that DDI would just be a waste of time for character creation at this point, too.)
Thanks.
Until that time...
We're (or at least *I*) am talking about two different projects. They are both posted on this long-ass thread because they both pertain to power cards.
The first project is an attempt to standardize the GAME file used for all (or at least most) of the 4E cards. This would allow us to do the following:
* All MSE 4E cards could share the same data. This means that anyone that made a card template would automatically get the benefit of all the latest cards. It also means that anyone adding new cards (from a Dragon or an ENWorld project) would automatically be adding them into the collective shared pool.
* It also means that, if you decided you didn't like a template, you could switch to a different one and not lose any of your data (hopefully).
It should be noted that this project has nothing whatsoever to do with DnDI.
The OTHER project we've been talking about is the DnDI project. This project basically allows a character created in DnDI to be downloaded, tweaked, printed on whatever PDF's you like, and then allows you to print whatever (customized) MSE Power cards you'd like for that character.
Consider it a new back-end for the DnDI project that incorporates all the work the people at the custom character sheets threads and the people in the custom power cards threads together into one project.
For THIS project, you'll need DnDI. Which, IIRC, is supposed to allow 'custom' data to be entered on the sheet at some near point in the future.
Hope that clears things up a bit.
-- Hirahito