Masterplan, how I love thee...

[Scrivener of Doom]

I've been using Masterplan as a monster builder for about two years now, in reaction to my expectation that the DDi tools would disappear rather quickly. Of course, the DDi tools are still there but I'm much happier having offline versions of everything so I'm not going back.

But I digress.

Last year, I was able to return to face-to-face gaming and ran multiple sessions of a 4E campaign set in the Forgotten Realms. Unfortunately, it died an ignoble death for a range of reasons that don't need to be mentioned but I've been able to start another game with other players who are much more reliable and a lot less personally "challenging".

In the gap between the end of the earlier campaign and the start of this one, I spent some time seeing what else I could do with Masterplan and - damn! - I'm impressed. I've actually ditched my usual multiple word documents have built the entire campaign, including individual encounters, in Masterplan. I'm even using Masterplan to run the bookkeeping and dice-rolling part of the encounters and it's saving me *a lot* of time and energy that I can instead focus on descriptions, RP, and story. It even tracks XP.

So, is anyone else still using it to build and run adventures or campaigns? Any tips? tricks? advice?

 

[thanson02]

I haven't had a chance to really dive into it yet. I'm still a little old school that way but it looks really interesting!

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[Scrivener of Doom]

I haven't had a chance to really dive into it yet. I'm still a little old school that way but it looks really interesting!

Sent from my XT1096 using Tapatalk

Anything that saves me time at or away from the table is a good thing, IMO.

 

[Garthanos]

My son has been using roll20

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

My son has been using roll20

I've read good things about it but I spend a lot of my time in the Third World where internet access is such a problem that it was one of the reasons I moved over to the offline versions of all the DDi tools, including Masterplan.

And Masterplan rocks.

 

[Cyvris]

Is Masterplan still up and about? The site doesn't seem to be working for me.

I recently found the Adventure Tools squirreled away on an old flash drive, which has been fun, but the program crashes a good deal. Replacing it with something snappier would be nice.

 

[DMJon]

And Masterplan rocks.

Does Masterplan do all the calculations when creating monsters? Does it format the stat blocks properly? I've tried the Adventure Tools but it was frustratingly buggy. A good, reliable offline monster builder would be awesome.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

Does Masterplan do all the calculations when creating monsters? Does it format the stat blocks properly? I've tried the Adventure Tools but it was frustratingly buggy. A good, reliable offline monster builder would be awesome.

Masterplan does the calculations although you have to adjust brute and minion damage yourself (easy enough to do in your head). Ditto for Initiative (again, easy enough to do in your head).

The output format is the same as a post-MMIII stat block with powers classified by TRAITS and action types.

It is not buggy at all plus, unlike the online version of AT, you can save as many stat blocks as you like. (I currently have more than 6,000 although I am gradually culling the duplicates and the pre-MMIII and otherwise poorly designed stat blocks.)

 

[firesnakearies]

Where does one acquire Masterplan in this day and age?

 

[MoutonRustique]

you could probably find something by googling things such as: habitual indolence masterplan wayback machine // or somesuch searching.

Should you find nothing of use, PM some users from this tread or similar ones.