D&D 5E Dungeonscape no more?

[TDarien]

I think the big reason it failed is WotC dragging their feet on pricing. I suspect Trapdoor fully expected to have revenue from iOS in-app purchases well before now. From what I understand the iOS app was ready for submission to Apple well over a month ago. This lack of revenue began causing personnel problems. My hunch is that their web developer quit about 2-3 weeks ago because he wasn't getting paid (I heard rumors somewhere about something like this). That put Trapdoor in a little bit of a tricky spot, and cause them to miss progress milestones on the Web/Android side, which caused WotC to pull the plug.

This is pure conjecture, mind.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

For my money, electronic D&D tools should take a giant step away from trying to apply the rules.
A tool like this would be vastly easier to build and maintain.

What you speak above is the plain truth.

Years ago I had created an RPG (mostly played only among friends) and a programmer friend wanted to create an online version. I had to fight him all the way (pretty much until we gave up) because he wanted it to enforce rules and have all these bells and whistles that were not only unnecessary, but they made the program NOT WORK most of the time.

Trying to make it do everything leads to development hell, and never results in a usable program anyway.

Edit to comment on the actual news:

This news is unfortunate, as I like the folk at Trapdoor, if not the project (I had hopes for it, but lost interest quickly in the Beta). But it follows typical WotC, so I'm not surprised. Disappointed, though.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

If it doesn't do the rules for me I'll just stick to a fillable PDF sheet. Definitely not going to pay for a tool that lacks much use IMO.

 

[Dausuul]

It seems as though the app uses the Basic rules as to try and avoid any sort of legal notice. From what I've seen and used, it's very expandable, and I've already added, modified, and indexed several of my own monsters as well as the basic rules.

The Basic Rules are still under copyright. Just because they're available for free doesn't mean you can do whatever you want with them.

My point is this: this app is very functional and looks good. It was (apparently) made by one person in his free time. So it strikes me as very odd that a team of 2-5 professional programmers working on this for 20ish hours or more a week wouldn't be able to make a similar but much more expansive product.

As someone who does software development for a living, I can tell you Umbran is right that an enterprise product is a whole different beast. It isn't a matter of just slapping some extra pieces on.

But, most of the challenges of scaling up software are well-known, and a lot of people have wrestled with them. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. If you have a small-scale prototype, a few smart and experienced devs, good management (this one is vital), and money to pay them, you should be able to build an enterprise-scale version. You will, in the process, have to pretty much rewrite your prototype from scratch. But the act of building the prototype will have forced you to think through most of the issues specific to your project and figure out solutions. More importantly, it will give you a concrete objective and help you resist scope creep: "Our product needs to do this."

 

[Hand of Evil]

It was called Master Tools...That has been bugging me all day!

http://ww2.wizards.com/Company/Misc/Index.aspx?doc=pr_20020521a

 

[Wolfskin]

I just canceled my DMG pre-order. If and when WotC delivers water-marked PDFs, I'll be back. Until then, it's Pathfinder.

I'm curious: why did you pre-order the DMG if WotC was explicitly not going to sell PDFs anytime soon and DungeonScape was going to be a paid service? You could just have bought access without having the physical book.

It's not perfect, but that's kind-of what an Index is.

Yeah, it's worth noting that WotC's indexes tend to be pretty good, at least compared to other game companies. You can find pretty much anything in the book by looking at the index, and it just takes seconds.

 

[Tormyr]

A-freakin-men.

It's not just Silverlight, though. IMO, the approach taken by both WotC and Trapdoor on D&D technologies is fundamentally wrongheaded. Both of them tried to program in all the rules of the game; to have the computer not just keep track of your character/campaign data, but also apply the rules to that data. For example, the character generator walks you through the process of creating a character, making sure you only take skills you're entitled to, feats you're allowed, et cetera, et cetera. And then it crunches all the numbers for you as well.

Why is this wrongheaded? Three reasons:

• The software is much more complex, because it has to have the entire rulebook programmed into it.
• Any time new rules come out, or old rules are revised, you have to overhaul the software to accommodate the changes.
• And the real killer: D&D is played differently at every table. People make house rules. People make homebrewed stuff. The more your application "knows" about the rules, the less useful it is to anyone who doesn't play the game strictly by RAW. (And in 5E with its focus on rulings over rules, even playing strictly by RAW doesn't guarantee that a group will interpret the rules the same way the app designers do.)

For my money, electronic D&D tools should take a giant step away from trying to apply the rules. Instead, they should focus on providing easy access to the data (spells, skills, feats, class abilities, and so forth), and letting you quickly pull that data together in a useful way. I'm envisioning a tool where you start with a blank character sheet. You enter "Elf" in the Race section, and a little window pops up: "Import Race Abilities?" with options "High Elf," "Wild Elf," "Drow Elf," and "Do Not Import." If you click on one of the race options, it pulls in all the special abilities for your selected race, and puts them in the appropriate box on your sheet. Then you can go in and modify them however you like. If you click "Do Not Import," it just leaves everything like it is.

A tool like this would be vastly easier to build and maintain, and it would also do a far better job of supporting house rules and homebrewed options. There would still be a few areas where you'd do automatic calculation (e.g., skill bonuses); but even there, the option should exist to turn off autocalc and enter the numbers by hand.

In either case, the application has to know all of the rules. The difference is how strictly they are applied. If it were me, I would probably have the character builder wizard apply everything and then give the user the opportunity to make changes, highlighting the things that are not standard.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

If it doesn't do the rules for me I'll just stick to a fillable PDF sheet. Definitely not going to pay for a tool that lacks much use IMO.

We're talking about it not ENFORCING rules, not a lack of it SHOWING the rules. I suspect you'd actually like what we're talking about, if only because it could cause the project to actually finish for once.

 

[SilverfireSage]

The Basic Rules are still under copyright. Just because they're available for free doesn't mean you can do whatever you want with them.

Oh I realize that, I was hoping my initial sentence led an ambiguity about their reasoning. I didn't make the app so I don't know.

As someone who does software development for a living, I can tell you Umbran is right that an enterprise product is a whole different beast. It isn't a matter of just slapping some extra pieces on.

But, most of the challenges of scaling up software are well-known, and a lot of people have wrestled with them. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. If you have a small-scale prototype, a few smart and experienced devs, good management (this one is vital), and money to pay them, you should be able to build an enterprise-scale version. You will, in the process, have to pretty much rewrite your prototype from scratch. But the act of building the prototype will have forced you to think through most of the issues specific to your project and figure out solutions. More importantly, it will give you a concrete objective and help you resist scope creep: "Our product needs to do this."

As a person with little to no experience coding, I'll have to defer to your expertise. What I'm questioning, is how they didn't even have (by all accounts of those who had beta access) an even functional product at this point. It looks as though the developers tried to do too much at one time and both companies got burned by not having a working product several months after the players handbook released.

 

[Mistwell]

I just canceled my DMG pre-order. If and when WotC delivers water-marked PDFs, I'll be back. Until then, it's Pathfinder.

This is the second edition of D&D in a row in which I really like (kudos to the designers), but during which WotC's near-comical bumbling has driven me away as a customer. If they don't turn it around, there won't be a third. Really, did WotC learn nothing from 4E?

*facepalm*

No offense intended, but I doubt your claim. You've been very vocal on this issue for many months now, and already said back in August you were not buying it unless they offered PDFs. You already vented this rage, prior to this news, so I am doubting your claim that you've made any new decision based on this. You already said you would stick with Pathfinder two months ago...and now you sound like you're just trying to get double mileage from that threat.