Gamers Opinion of PCGen (No Rants)

[Knightcrawler]

I thought I'd put this question out. What do most gamers think of PCGen. Is it useful, how do you use it, what are the problems and any ideas that you can offer.

I'm looking for constructive criticism and ideas, not empty rants and flames. So if all you want to do is attack PCGen please don't post on this thread.

One of the things that I do want to hear about is: Does PCGen make it so you don't have to buy the book? That I know is a concern often voiced by publishers.

 

[TBoarder]

This is negative, but hopefully not a flame. I actually do appreciate all the work that's been put into PCGen.

I tried PCGen twice (sorta, as I'll explain). The first time I tried it was pretty close to its first release. I was utterly and completely confused. I don't think I got a single character entered into it before I gave up on it.

The second time I tried it was around version 2.4. I was able to see some major improvements. The interface was still horribly unintuitive but after some playing around with it, was able to enter in most of my characters (about 3 dozen).

The problem was that I couldn't figure out how to create custom options. One character I was playing was a young black dragon. I couldn't create the character at that time because dragons weren't in the program yet. I looked a bit at the possibility of creating it as a custom race and my eyes just glazed over. When I wanted a character to have a single feat from an unsupported book, I just left that slot blank. It seemed like far too much work to learn how to make one up myself. Wow, that makes me sound lazy, doesn't it?

Here's what killed the program for me completely. I kept up with the program, consistantly downloading the weekly updates and bug fixes. This broke many of the characters I had entered into it already. The constant GUI revisions and additions meant I was pretty much relearning the program from scratch every single time I updated it. Tabs were added that, to this day, I have no idea what their function is, or how they work. I was never able to find any sort of documentation as to what their purpose was, and the description in the weekly Yahoo e-mail was vague and unhelpful.

I gave up. PCGen was just something I didn't want to use anymore. The GUI revisions weren't much more intuitive (especially[/] the location of that @&#% alignment tab. I'd lose that every single time I'd make up a character.) I was tired of constantly re-entering my characters and of constantly relearning the program. Granted, I know I'm not a normal D&D player. I don't many other players who have 2 or 3 dozen characters, so my opinion probably skews this thread in the wrong direction without giving the benefit of the opinion of an average D&D player.

Has PCGen made it so I didn't have to buy any books? Nope, but it did make me decide not to buy a few. It also led me into buying a few as well. Being able to see what new feats and prestige classes that were available in various products made it like free advertising. So I don't think d20 publishers have anything to worry about with PCGen, but I just have no interest anymore in giving it a 3rd try.

 

[Knightcrawler]

I thank you for your opinion. I am sorry that you feel that way about using it again. I do agree that the GUI needs some work and that the learning curve on it is a bit high.

After we get OGL/D20 issues taken care of one of the first projects, hopefully, is going to be a file editor to make it easier to create custom files in PCGen. Right now you have to be a bit more into programming to create your own files. But it is getting easier. The documentation is much better than it used to be.

As to all the releases and changes. Yes they can cause some of your characters to stop working. PCGen is still somewhat in its beta phase. We just had our first "official release", version 3.0.0. There is now a file converter built into PCGen now for older versions of the data files. Hopefully recent improvements and changes will make it so that data from any version will work.

Again I thank you for your opinion.

 

[Leopold]

i think he was going through the 'growing up' phase that PCGen went through earlier this year. The GUI was revamped from the ground up to look much smoother and run more streamlined than before, so that might have been part of the problem there.

Is there a steep learning curve? Not really anymore. I revamped the docs on the walkthrough and intro guide and mynex redid the code speak to make it flow and comprehend easier than it was before.

trust me, if my mother can build a PC anyone can build a PC

 

[Femerus the Gnecro]

When I first tried PCgen, I was really excited.

"Look! This'll let me use supplements I don't even own and give me options that the CG demo doesn't support!"

I was pumped.

Five minutes after starting to use it, I gave up and deleted it.

Several times after that I tried to get into it again, and never succeeded.

Until recently.

Ya see, I use Openrpg. Someone on these boards mentioned that PCgen had an openrpg sheet export function, and I thought I might try it out. I discovered 2 things.

1. PCgen, while still being horribly difficult to learn, is really quite a nice piece of software. *Especially* in comparison with Etools (IMO of course).

2. The Openrpg sheet template kinda bit.

Ironically, I'd already gotten so enmeshed into PCgen (finally learned how to use it, thanks to ppl on these boards) that I decided to do something about #2 rather than just complain about it.

I wrote another template.

NOW PCgen officially rocks. Not only can I enter more or less any character I want, I can export it to OpenRPG with fully dynamic button functionality, etc. It's lovely.

So that's my opinion. PCgen rocks. It just takes some getting used to.

-F

 

[Glyfair]

Let me say that this will sound negative. My general opinion is sort of like the typical comments made about the U.S. political system. "It's the worst one except for all the others."

I'll start with some positives, just to balance out my negatives. I use this exclusively. I haven't picked up E-Tools yet (loss of my job has left me with no excess money). I probably won't use it even though I will almost certainly prefer the interface.

I've decided that when I start picking up d20 supplements again that I won't be buying any that do not have PCGen support (at least any with character generation related information). If I can't create a character using that products rules with PCGen and my players can't, I have little reason to consider adding those rules to my games.

Now the negatives:

1) I've sat down and created a series of .lst files for my campaign. A week later it wouldn't work. If fixed it for the changes, a month later my campaign again wouldn't work. I don't have time to constantly update my files, I'm supposed to be using that time for my campaign.

Add to that the fact that for a long period of time the changes weren't in the documentation, it made it impossible to keep your files up-to-date without living on the PCGen Yahoo group.

2) It's written by programmers for programmers. Many changes in the program seem to be suggested by someone in the group, and they stick. My casual players look at and say "what were they thinking?" The number one issue that came to mind was when the decided to change the filters from something easy to figure out to a hard-to-find, arcane system that no one in my group liked or ever used.

Another related issue was the change to Java. A program that worked well on my computer suddenly went to a program that takes forever to load on my computer. Even the recent improvements in this area have cut it from about 5 minutes to about 4 minutes.

Sometime in the future they are planning on going to xml. Great, that means the files will be broken again. I'm at least hoping this will at least solve the slowness issue.

3) This isn't directly a program issue, but a number of PCGen supporters have left a bad taste in my mouth. I'm not talking about the key members (Mynex & "Merton Monk" come to mind as key members). However, a number of the supporters made inflammatory comments about how PCGen was the only character generation software for D&D & d20 and how MasterTools (later E-Tools) was going to suck. All this before it was anywhere near release.

I'm also not talking about an occasional comment here and there. I'm talking about people who had to post to every single conversation about Character Generation programs and voice these opinions.

That said, the Character Generation system I'm going to use in the futures will have the following features (whether it be PCGen, E-Tools or something else).

1) Data for the supplements I'm going to use in my game: If I have to sit down and create a character by hand or "fake" something to do it in the character generator, it loses value. Missing a supplement or two isn't a problem, unless they are important ones to me I'll just not buy & use them. Missing most of what I want to use is.

An exceptable substitute would be an easy to use interface that allows me to input the information. I don't mind adding it in myself. I do mind when doing so requires hacking files & multiple tries to stop the program from crashing with the new data.

PCGen could be the leader here if it gets WotC approval for the non-OGC material. E-Tools will probably never reach this because it will always be behind the curve given WotC production schedule and because it likely won't have sufficient support for 3rd party publishers.

2) A clean, easy to use interface: I want to put a new player at my computer, have them open the program and be able to create a character in a short period of time. I want them to be making decisions about which feats, skills and equipment to take. I don't want them trying to figure out how to choose an alignment, how to figure out which feats they are allowed to take or have to figure out whether they have to look for "Sword, Long" "Long Sword" or "Weapon (generic, customize)".

E-Tools will likely have the edge here. PCGen has been making strides in this area. However, they are still behind the curve, even compared to the Mastertools Demo, IMO.

3) A smooth running program: If the program takes forever to load, it's not very useful. If it takes forever to switch between screens, loading characters, etc. it's not very useful. If the program crashes when loading a character because it's "out-of-date" it's just a piece of trash taking up space on my computer.

E-Tools again will likely have the edge here. Most of this is because of PCGen's constant updating. This allows them to support more products, however, it doesn't allow them sufficient testing time to catch these errors.

4) Easy Customization: I want to be able to easily input my campaigns prestige classes, feats, equipment, etc without having to manipulate data files directly. E-Tools has a slight edge here right now. From what I hear, it still has a major stumbling block

5) Quick Updates to Data: When I buy I product I want to use, I don't want to wait a year or more to use the program to create a character with it (see #1). This is another one that Easy Customization would help deal with. This one is up-in-the-air depending on how fast PCGen can get their data files up with their new approval system. However, odds are strong in their favor given how slow product updates are going to have to be for E-Tools.

So, looking at my requirements, I'd say that a programmer who wanted to create a program for me to use should make sure that they have an interface that allows for me to easily update and edit the Data Files within the program or in a separate Data manipulation program.

Glyfair of Glamis

 

[Knightcrawler]

1) I've sat down and created a series of .lst files for my campaign. A week later it wouldn't work. If fixed it for the changes, a month later my campaign again wouldn't work. I don't have time to constantly update my files, I'm supposed to be using that time for my campaign.

Add to that the fact that for a long period of time the changes weren't in the documentation, it made it impossible to keep your files up-to-date without living on the PCGen Yahoo group.

Most of the time all custom lst files will migrate without any problem. I think you may have been caught between major changes in the code. There is a converter for old custom files in PCGen now.

2) It's written by programmers for programmers. Many changes in the program seem to be suggested by someone in the group, and they stick. My casual players look at and say "what were they thinking?" The number one issue that came to mind was when the decided to change the filters from something easy to figure out to a hard-to-find, arcane system that no one in my group liked or ever used.[/B]

I have to agree somewhat with what you are saying here. You have to understand though that PCGen was in beta form and was going through many changes. The filter system could use a little tweaking to become more intuitive.

Another related issue was the change to Java. A program that worked well on my computer suddenly went to a program that takes forever to load on my computer. Even the recent improvements in this area have cut it from about 5 minutes to about 4 minutes.

I can't ebtirely comment on this, as long as I have been involved with PCGen it has been Java based. I know the decision to use Java was made so that it would be cross-platform. As for speed problems some of those can be fixed by upgrading to Java 1.4.

3) This isn't directly a program issue, but a number of PCGen supporters have left a bad taste in my mouth. I'm not talking about the key members (Mynex & "Merton Monk" come to mind as key members). However, a number of the supporters made inflammatory comments about how PCGen was the only character generation software for D&D & d20 and how MasterTools (later E-Tools) was going to suck. All this before it was anywhere near release.

I know this has happened. PCGen has some very enthusiastic supporters who unfortunately do not take criticism well. THe yahoo group went through a period where everyone was demanding the pulled files and no one was going back and reading the previous posts. Everyone started getting a little touchy. Fortunately things seemed to have calmed down and have become much more civil.

You have to understand a couple things though. PCGen is Open Source and all work done on it is on an entirely voluntary basis. People work on it in their spare time and most of us have RW jobs. We do not get paid for our time, we do it because we want a Character Generator better than the ones that are out there.

One major project that is in the works is an interface that will allow the user to enter his own custom files, without having to go in and code them from scratch. I agree that right now PCGen has a relatively him learning curve and that iin order to really create the things you want you have to have a little computer background. We are moving towards changing this and making the GUI more user friendly.

I got involved with PCGen because not all the sources that I wanted were in it. Thats how alot of the people now working on the project have gotten involved. So if your really interested in making PCGen better I would say get involved. Make regular visits to the Yahoo group (No you do not have to live there), work on the lst files for a source that you want included and make comments land suggestions as you have here.

I'm not going to say that PCGen is the best Character Generator out there. We're going to have to let the dust settle on the OGL/D20 conversion and the talks with WotC. Also we're going to have to see how E-Tools pans out. So my advice is wait and be patient. Hopefully in a month or two everything will be sorted and settled.

I you can't wait there is nothing I can say to you. Its your decision as to what program your going to use. But just remember PCGen is free and will always be free.

Hopefully I've answered at least some of your questions.

 

[tburdett]

PCGen was very useful to me up to and including version 3.0.0.

Now that you can, apparently, no longer use the 'forbidden' lst files, the program is useless to me.

Before you rabidly attack me with claims that this is false, go to the plambert file site and grab the latest auto-build. You will quickly learn that what I am saying is the truth. The next public release will probably not allow the use of anything that is not SRD.

I hope I'm wrong.

 

[Halma]

PCGen

Well My opinions for what is worth are positive (Sorry you guys out there that don't like it much).

First off its free!!!!!!! Yeah......!!! sue me (should I rephrase that?) I'm cheap. hehe

I have been using PCgen from day 2.2 or .4 ish....(I can't remember) I really liked the fact that you could use ALL source material and until recently count on the fact that all source material would be provided into the coding. Playing a Monte Cook variant Sorcerer was never easier for me.

Being able to create custom magic Items, and able to pump up my stats with just a click of the mouse is incredible.

I fully admit, now I am a Laptop Gamer. I use my laptop at the table with a box of Dice (it would be nice if you could put a nice, or nicer Die roller in), and a spread sheet up with my current hp's, AC, spells that I have cast on myself. It is invaluable to me at this point. No paper to lose, get torn in a bag of gaming supplies or forgotten at home, which really sucks. Not to mention all that I have to carry now to the game table is my Laptop bag (IBM T21, which opens up PCgen in less than 30 sec.) Much Lighter!!!!


Now I am certainly not against E-tools, anymore, or for that matter ever thought that I was, after seeing the debut at GenCon, but again PCgen is FREE!!!!!

I just learned recently that you are having some trouble with licensing problems, that I hope you guys are getting fixed. I can only assume that you are getting things taken care of.

I really like to say thanks for all the hard work you guys put into this product. Although I do agree that it does take some getting used to, but once you do .......


Thanks,

Halma ---- The Dead Barbarian

 

[plodnik]

Maybe I'm just stupid, but I've never been able to get the thing to work.