CITY OF BRASS: A New RPG Electronic Tool Suite Is Glimpsed On The Horizon!

With Trapdoor Tech and Lone Wolf cautiously circling each other with their Codename: Morningstar and Herolab/Realmworks applications respectively, another player has been quietly prepping something in the background. The City of Brass, billing itself as "the next generation of gaming apps" is working on "a fully-featured app specifically designed to manage the mechanics of pen-and-paper games while allowing you to focus on what matters".

The application, which will have public betas in early 2015, and hopefully full production midyear, has been privately in use by the developers for months for both D&D 5E and for N.E.W. The Roleplaying Game (the inclusion of the latter attracted my interest for obvious reasons, but the app is designed for multiple systems). It features a world builder, a character (and monster) builder, a story builder for creating adventures, and a campaign manager. Plus a whole bunch of stock art you can use in your creations. Lucas of City of Brass shared some screenshots with me, below.

It's an interesting time, to be sure. It seems that this particular application is pretty much built already, and is is heavy playtesting mode right now. It does look like the forefront of electronic aids development is proving to be a highly competitive area in terms of functionality and cost, and that can only be good for us potential customers!

Here's a D&D 5E character. This is the overview stuff.

And here's the actual character sheet.
​

Hoard of the Dragon Queen (D&D 5E) in the Campaign Manager.

Recaps from the Campaign Manager.

The character page. All the sheets can be viewed by the GM.

A preview of the City of Brass character sheet. This is Jack, a PC from a What's O.L.D. is N.E.W. playtest.

The tab with Jack's exploits. All the gold numbers are interactive. If you click them, they roll dice.

The Story Builder. This is the splash screen for an adventure.

An encounter in the Story Builder.

A peek at the World Builder pages. Crisp, clean, easy to navigate and simple to create and manage.

A quick glimpse of the FAQ pages which gives some hints as the licensing and pricing.

​

 

[Jessic]

https://www.thecityofbrass.com/support/faqs

FAQ - Billing
Do I have to pay for The City of Brass?

Anyone can browse public Districts (game worlds), but if you want to create your own content in The City of Brass you have to have an account.

I suspect pming is correct. There will be a month subscription. It's a shame - I was really looking forward to this.

 

[turkeygiant]

https://www.thecityofbrass.com/support/faqs

FAQ - Billing
Do I have to pay for The City of Brass?

Anyone can browse public Districts (game worlds), but if you want to create your own content in The City of Brass you have to have an account.

I suspect pming is correct. There will be a month subscription. It's a shame - I was really looking forward to this.

Haha that must have got put up right after I looked at their site, I actually wouldn't mind a reasonable subscription, especially if people without a subscription are able to interact with the system enough to participate in a game. My preference would be to have a option to buy a permanent license if at all possible.

 

[LucasC]

Hello!

I can answer some of these questions.

Some of our FAQs are live but ask me any questions you have, I’ll answer if I can. The actual FAQs are here: https://thecityofbrass.com/support/faqs

The City of Brass is a web-based application. You do not need an app to run it, you just need a web browser. All of the functionality is available on your phone, tablet, or computer. We have about 15 people using the system right now. Most of them use tablets (Apple, Android, and Windows among them), a few use their smartphone, and a few use computers.

Our system is a cloud-based, subscription product. To use it, you will need both an active internet connection and an account. We are sensitive to concerns of data loss, however, and are looking for a good option that will allow you to export your data in some fashion.

On integration and Functionality
I’ve never used Evernote, so if there are any specific questions let me know and I’ll try to answer them. What I can say is that we have built everything to work together as a single unit.

For example, most records have “parents” and “children.” This creates a strong relationship between them, that the system is aware of and allows us to program against. We use this to automatically bring information into pages, allowing you to do things like:

• Create a dynamic list of cities that are part of a nation
• Automatically build a page of adventures that are all part of a larger story
• Create stories linked together automatically

A second concept we have built into the City of Brass is tags. You can tag records and then use those tags to bring associate pages. So, while parent/child records have to be the same type, tags can cross record types. This enables thing such as:

• Automatically associating NPCs with a location
• Displaying a subset, rather than complete list, of child records
• Associate deities with a religion

There is a ton of other functionality you get with the system. Some examples:

• Players enter and manage their characters in Entity Builder while the GM creates a campaign in Campaign Manager. The GM can then invite the players, who will add their characters to the campaign. The GM can then see the character sheets (and the other players can too if you have your sheet privacy set to allow it).
• Character sheets are interactive, they are dice-enabled and allow you to track things (such as hit points, fate points, inspiration, etc.)
• You build a library as you use the system. We don’t pre-load any rules, but as you add things like Feats, Spells, or special powers, they get stored with your account and you can re-use them with other characters or monsters.
• Everything is available to you from any device, anytime, you just need to fire up the City of Brass and login.

On Character Sheet customization
The character sheet is made up of blocks of information.

Without trying to cover every one of them, I’ll discuss a few blocks.
View attachment 65818

In Entity Builder you’ll have a section to enter Ability Scores. You can enter anything you want in this section. So if you’re playing D&D you might use Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. You don’t have to though, maybe your DM uses a homebrew stat – say Comeliness – because you control what is here, you can add that also.

When the City of Brass displays your character, it looks at the entries in Ability Scores for your character and then displays them. Whatever it finds there is what gets displayed, in the order you told it to show them.

That concept is repeated throughout each section. We look for what you entered for your character, then display it on the sheet. You dictate things like whether to roll a d20 for a skill check or a d6 (or multiple d6s). You also specify things like bonuses although because most games have ability scores modifying skills, we built functionality that will – if you choose to use it – link your ability scores and skill (or ability scores and damage, hit rolls, saves, etc.).

One more important concept is illustrated in the Defense section of this screenshot. In certain areas of the sheet we look for common keywords and display them prominently. In the screenshot below, because I had the term “Armor Class” in as a defense, it was brought up to the top section and displayed more prominently. If this was a W.O.I.N. sheet, the listing would be Defense, and it would be brought up like AC is.

This approach gives you a great deal of flexibility for inputting characters.

 

[MoutonRustique]

If there is a "lifetime" option in there, it'll be pretty hard to resist...

 

[Jessic]

Our system is a cloud-based, subscription product. To use it, you will need both an active internet connection and an account. We are sensitive to concerns of data loss, however, and are looking for a good option that will allow you to export your data in some fashion.

I, and many other people, won't touch City of Brass unless a usable portion is free. Will I, and those like me, find an option that provides this?

 

[pming]

Hiya.


EDIT: *snip* seems I was a weeee bit late to the punch here...

Paul

 

[LucasC]

I, and many other people, won't touch City of Brass unless a usable portion is free. Will I, and those like me, find an option that provides this?

Everyone will have access to a free 30-day trial account, with all the features of a paid account, so you can give the system a test run and see if you like it. After that, if you feel it's worth the cost, simply setup your subscription and keep using the City of Brass. However, once your trial is over there will be a cost to continue using the service.

We know people are not thrilled about a subscription model, but to keep that subscription as low as possible, we cannot give it away for free. We incur costs delivering the service, and every free account would mean that paid subscribers have to shoulder those costs.

We believe we can get you a great product, at a very reasonable rate. I hope you'll give us a try.

 

[Nikosandros]

I don't love subscription based models, so I'll be looking at the export options that will be available. That said, the possibility of putting my own rules content is very welcome indeed and, if you'll provide a free demo period, I'll be sure to give your product a try.

 

[Morrus]

I'm guessing here (correct me if I'm wrong, Lucas) but for me the main objection to a subscription based model is that I want to keep content I've bought. This application doesn't include content, so there's no 'purchases' for me to lose if I end my subscription. I would just lose access to many of the features. I don't get the impression this thing is going to sell me a copy of Hoard of the Dragon Queen.

Since the only content on there is content I put there myself, as long as I'm able to export it, that worry is gone for me personally.

 

[Mercurius]

Looks good, definitely will give it a try. I'm particularly interested in the world, campaign, and adventure building aspects. For me the holy grail of such programs would be a campaign builder that helps a DM build a campaign on any level, from different scales of the world to story arcs to short adventures, dungeon generators, and encounters. But the key would be guidelines and a toolbox so that you can vary to what degree you want to use it.

When will this be available?