Sad state of DnD Tools

[bdefreese]

Hi folks,

Some other old farts and I have been playing for the last several months. We started at 2nd Edition since we all knew it well but have since begun playing 3.5e. We really have no interest in 4e.

I use E-Tools currently to manage the characters and the DM uses a combination of E-Tools, Excel, and others to generate encounters, etc. He is pretty frustrated with E-Tools so we have started looking at other tools. I won't use PCGen because I despise Java. We are currently playing with RPGXplorer and while it looks nice and has some excellent features, I am just not feeling it.

So we started talking about building our own tool but looking around there are so many out there, I wonder if I am just missing something. I find it a bit odd that there are so many one-off tools out there that some folks haven't banded together to create one good tool.

Does anyone know of a good Free Software tool out there that works well, that isn't in Java. Or if not, anyone know of a decent project that started but maybe never finished that the source is available for? Even better would be one that uses or could use the datasets from E-Tools since I already have a great deal of them. If not, I guess I am reduced to parsing the E-Tools XML files and generating my own database.

Thanks!

Barry

 

[Nebten]

I've been a big fan of Hero forge over the past several years. It's Excel based and pretty straight forward, I believe. There are a few others, but I don't know the names of them. I'm sure somebody else here uses them them and will post a link or two.

I'm surprised you stuck with e-tools as long as you did.

Enjoy: D&D 3.5 and Variants Files

 

[AstroCat]

Naw, they all pretty much suck and are a pain in the butt, I suffered through them for years. What you really wish you had is the Tools WoTC has for 4E, they are really ,really good. Since we dig 4E the tools have been really nice and part of the reason 4E is so much better for us than 3/3.5.

 

[Redrobes]

Does anyone know of a good Free Software tool out there that works well, that isn't in Java.

If you write anything for RPG players that's not in Java you get slammed for it being non cross platform. Also, why do you expect people to write great software and then make it free anyway. AstroCat is saying that the WotC tools are good but they were developed by paid programmers and this generally makes for better software where the market is quite niche.

 

[bdefreese]

Uhm, Java is by no means the only cross-platform environment. Python, Mono, you name it. And why it should be Free Software (as in Freedom, not necessarily as in beer)? So we wouldn't be stuck with something like E-Tools where it is a decent product but now cannot be touched, updated, etc. Because it is a niche market makes it all the more alluring for Free Software development.

As an example, if RPGXplorer were Free Software, I would pay the $40 for it today so I could get it and modify the source to work the way I want it to. But because it isn't, I don't want to pay the $40 for a tool that is lacking some of the functionality I would like to have.

But I digress, this wasn't meant to be a discussion about Free Software.

 

[dinelendarkstar]

For 3.5 or 4th edition D&D I would have to say that HeroForge is the way to go. But I am bias.

As for those that wish all the software was free... Would you go to work day after day just to have your boss tell you that he/she don't want to pay you because he/she thinks your work should be done for free?

We all have to make a living and software development is how some of us make it.

 

[Volcarthe]

RPG Web Profiler was a pretty good database, but it stopped being supported. if you're into futzing around with SQL, the old code is still here: web-based rpg character sheet | Get web-based rpg character sheet at SourceForge.net

it was designed to be able to be interchangable with all manner of game sheets (if someone coded them), but i believe all it's got are d20 bits to it.

i use a version of it for my online game as is mostly because i haven't had the time to really dig into it and change stuff.

 

[bdefreese]

Hmm, I'll have to go back and the my post where I said all software should be free.. PCGen is a good example of where it can work, I just don't happen to like Java. But as I said, I would really rather not debate free software on an RPG forum.

Volcarthe, thanks I will check it out. I already have an SRD Access Database that I found on the web and I'm debating on translating the E-Tools xml files into it, though I'm not a huge Access so I'm debating between SQL 2008 Express or MySQL.

If I ever get anything worthwhile put together I'll post it up somewhere, though unfortunately mine won't likely be cross-platform compatible because my Python sk1llz just aren't there.

 

[falcarrion]

Take a look at hero lab by lone wolf development.

 

[azhrei_fje]

Uhm, Java is by no means the only cross-platform environment.

You're correct of course. The code could be written in C or Fortran or COBOL, too. There are compilers for each of those languages available...

Java is the only _practical_ cross-platform language. There aren't any others with the breadth or depth of support.

PCGen isn't slow because it's written in Java -- it's slow because of what it does and how it does it. For example, if the LST files were serialized back to disk as a cache then source loading would be much faster.

A problem that MapTool has (Java-based VTT) is not the execution time during use, but in loading and saving the "campaign files" -- internal objects are converted to XML and zip compressed during saving. That takes some cpu.

Every language has its problems. Java is no exception. But it's the best all-round choice right now.