CITY OF BRASS Launches, Bringing You Web-Based Campaign Management

[Promoted thread] City of Brass from Embers Design Studio launched over the weekend. I've mentioned it before - it's a suubscription-based web-based campaign management platform which successfully Kickstarted a few months ago and has just finished a beta period. System-neutral (although with some included data for various systems) it features builders for worlds, characters, NPCs, monsters, stories, and campaign management. Current supported (i.e. pre-loaded, though you can add your own data freely, so the platform handles any system) rulesets include D&D 3.5, Pathfinder, Fate, d20 Modern/Future, and What's O.L.D. is N.E.W. What's below is Ember Design Studio's Lucas Currel's own post, as he describes it in far more detail than I ever could!

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City of Brass is a web-based application for managing your favorite tabletop RPGs - all of them. The app contains four major components:

• World Builder helps you create and organize beautiful settings.
• Entity Builder houses your characters, NPCs, and monsters.
• Story Builder helps get your adventures setup for the gaming table.
• Campaign Manager brings players and GMs together in a shared space.

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What's more it runs on any device - phone, table, computer - it doesn't matter.

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The service is subscription based, but everyone can evaluate it absolutely free for up to 30 days with no credit card needed. When your ready to subscribe, choose either a monthly or an annual subscription plan.

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And be among the first 100 people to subscribe, and use the code First100 during setup, for another 25% off your first subscription charge. That mean's you could get your first year for just $18.

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Here are some screenshots from each of our major components.

World Builder (browse this setting here)

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Entity Builder

5e Character
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W.O.I.N. character
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Red Dragon (Pathfinder)
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Selection of stock monsters
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Story Builder

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Campaign Manager

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[lyle.spade]

I've used the Obdisian Portal for over 7 years, and have been generally happy with it. I've become increasingly concerned over it since the Kickstarter and the tech and communication problems on their end, and so CoB is interesting to me as a possible replacement.

My biggest question, which I was not able to get answered explicitly on the site (although I admit that I didn't look for that long), is this: if a GM pays for the subscription, can players within the campaign use a free version to access the campaign and interact with it, as with the OP? Or must all participants in a campaign pay for individual subscriptions in order to be able to interact with and edit campaign material? That'll be the deciding factor for me.

 

[Morrus]

Not sure whey the advertisment says it supports 3.5 if the current edition is 5e.

Some people still play 3.5. And it's OGC, so I expect it's easy for the software developers to import. May as well include it as not!

 

[Queer Venger]

Thanks Morrus, just seems like as a start-up they'd want to appeal to the vast and growing number of 5e fans.

 

[Morrus]

Thanks Morrus, just seems like as a start-up they'd want to appeal to the vast and growing number of 5e fans.

I'm sure they'd love to. That's a slightly more difficult legal environment.

 

[LucasC]

If a GM pays for the subscription, can players within the campaign use a free version to access the campaign and interact with it.

First, let's define a campaign.

In the City of Brass, a game world or setting, is called a District. Permission to view Districts is controlled by the creator and can include:

• Private (self only)
• Affiliates (self + friends)
• Residents (self + anyone with a City of Brass account)
• Public (anyone with Internet access)

So, if your question is, can your players see your game world and keep up-to-date with it, without paying for a City of Brass account, the answer is yes.

They cannot edit it, however, without an account and without you configuring them as a Contributor.

Now, distinct from Districts, is Campaign Manager.

This is a tool inside City of Brass specifically intended to bring player information (such as character sheets) together with DM information (such as game recaps). Campaign Manager and it's features are available only to subscribers.

In fact, the best tools of Campaign Manager are only useful if your players are active in the City. You cannot, for example, look at a players character sheet, if that player doesn't have a sheet in the City. If you would use Campaign Manager only for pushing information to your players (like game recaps), you can easily mimic that functionality inside World Builder, so they can get to it for free.

It's probably worth explaining this choice, as there are lots of folks who would like some sort of free access, at least for players.

Our objective is to deliver this service at as low a cost as possible. If you sign up and pay annually, you get access to the City for $2 a month. That's less than the pop most of us will drink at a gaming session. But the only reason we can offer it so low, is that our bandwidth and features are not being utilized by people not paying for them. So-called "free" accounts are not free, they're just paid for by other people. Every free user is a bit of extra overhead that paid subscribers would need to carry.

Lucas

 

[Mercurius]

Seems more than reasonable, Lucas. I'll definitely give it a whirl.

 

[Morrus]

Scales nicely on my iPhone.

 

[Valador]

I supported this on Kickstarter, simply because I want to support the community by helping more tools release. Personally, I think the site looks nice, but I don't really like the process of adding to it. In particular, the district manager feels like a pain in the ass to add links and menus to. It would be better if they had some premade templates for the layout, some drag and drop options and more options to autopopulate. Im not a fan of having to deviate away 2-3 links just to add something to a page. Personally it would be cheaper to just host my own website and code it to my own specifications...

I really like the site otherwise. I like the intention a lot. Perhaps here in another 2 months when I finish up my contract with the military and I can relax and go back to being a normal human being without all the ADD and short patience I can sit down and enjoy it more.

 

[CubeB]

Is there any way to make it so that character sheets are public? That's a function I could see myself using more than the campaign wiki.

See, the way I see it, this thing is competing with several other services...

• Obsidian Portal, which has a free option, but is mostly wiki based and has a weaker character sheet system.
• Realm Works, which is very expensive at the moment and really works best for in person games as a fancy GM notebook.
• And Google Docs, which is typically what a lot of people I know end up using. The bare bones straight up text document system.

For this system to work, it has to be easy to use, easy to share, and affordable.

In terms of affordability, I can't argue with $3. It makes sense. Bandwidth isn't free.

In terms of ease of use... I have no idea what I'm doing, really. I tried converting various pre-existing sheets, building a world... but it's overwhelming. There are tutorial popups in some places, but they're often absent at the points where I need them, and I haven't been able to find a clear "this is how you build an X" tutorial. I think there are videos, but I have to dig through the youtube account to find them.

In terms of ease of sharing... This is where it gets rough. One thing I immediately noticed was that it's impossible to share character sheets with people outside the service. The only options are Residents, Affiliates, and Private. That pretty much ruins half of the service's functionality for me, as it would be a great way to store and share sheets otherwise. I don't mind having to pay to make sheets, but locking them up the ability to view a non-interactive version behind a paywall is... I'm really hoping I'm just missing something here. Can they be made public if you link them to a public campaign? Can you even make a public campaign?

That's the real issue here - while I am I willing to pay for it, in order for me to get any use out of it the majority of people I play with have to also pay for it. If I use it as a player, my GM has to have a subscription to it in order to see the sheet I made in it. If I use it as a GM, all of my players have to pay for it. There is no Fantasy Grounds style option where the GM can pay a larger price to provide the service to their players for free.

And it is very difficult for a GM to get their players to pay for a service; if City of Brass was a must-have service that made everything easier, I would totally be willing to get my players to pay for it. It's cheap enough that I'd be willing to cover the cost for them.

...But right now, it's not, really. It's an okay service. Better than my scattered and unformated Google Docs, to be sure. But it has a learning curve, and while I'm confident that I could use it to make strong sheets, setting documents, and campaign logs, the fact that I can't guarantee that anyone else will be able to see them is discouraging me from going much further. Maybe if it were easier to use and had more integrated rule support.

I'm still going to try and finish my district, at least. If that turns out to be a stellar feature, then this will be worth the relatively low price of entry. But that still means that 2/3rds of the site's functionality would be hidden behind that pay wall. Especially the character sheets. The fact that the character sheets are subscriber-view only is just tragic.

 

[the_redbeard]

While it is an entirely different product, one thing that Fantasy Grounds has going for it is that a DM can pay a higher fee and allow their players to access the full features for free.

A subscription level that would allow a DM to pay a group rate would be very welcome, I'd bet.