State of D&D Software

[primarchone]

I'm sorry to say, you came back at a really bad time for official WotC support. (And welcome back, by the way!)

But as far as different softwares, there's DM Genie, I believe Twin Rose Software is still alive and kicking, there's Redblade (I think it's called), and many others I'm fuzzy on. DM Genie comes recommended by friends on ENWorld, and I still use PCGen myself, with the datasets I've bought.

Hi!

I have actively been using DMgenie for the past 4 years as a DM. I have used pretty much everything else there is during that time. IMO DMgenie has all of the things a DM needs to run a game effortlessly with the added bonus that its highly customizable if you now a little VBscripting. The only downside is the entry of third party info or things outside the SRD, which is manual unless another DMgenie fan hasnt done so (possible, since there is a yahoo group and a good library of resources).

I recommend you give it a try.

Primarchone

 

[Old_Man_Fish]

Theres also Timpani... just an excel spreadsheet hack, but if you know your way around it is not that difficult to add in any wildshapes / classes / what not to it.

We didn't change all of the wildshape rules though, so I don't know how hard that would be to mod in the sheets.

 

[Breakdaddy]

For all practical purposes, yeah.

Which sucks pretty badly, btw. Codemonkey did their best to clean up the mess that Fluid made of etools and once they got it usable and reliable, WOTC pulls the rug out from under them. If WOTC makes their own character generator, I wont hold out much hope for it considering the fluid debacle. I hope to be proven wrong, but that's how I feel at this point.

 

[Ranger REG]

Well E-Tools is dead....

You can only leave it on life support for so long.

I invite any flaming but it should have died and been replaced a year ago.

 

[xmanii]

Care to share it with the rest of us?

Olaf the Stout

Seconded.

 

[Ranger REG]

Which sucks pretty badly, btw. Codemonkey did their best to clean up the mess that Fluid made of etools...

But you can't clean up a deeply flawed program. Sometimes you can patch a levee, sometimes you must rebuild it from scratch (and hopefully on a more solid foundation).

 

[Breakdaddy]

But you can't clean up a deeply flawed program. Sometimes you can patch a levee, sometimes you must rebuild it from scratch (and hopefully on a more solid foundation).

Im not arguing that the program was ever going to be 100 percent. CMP was/is working on a new program to address these issues. They had the understanding that they would be able to release WOTC closed content for sale like the old etools content, but WOTC took that from them. I wonder what WOTC has up their sleeve at this point. I have seen speculation that they may do a pay-per-month web based character creation utility. This is wild speculation and I am not throwing my hat in with this theory but if it were come to pass then I would be an unhappy camper indeed. If, on the other hand, they are outsourcing to another company, then I hope they show more wisdom than they did when they picked Fluid to create the original etools. Call me a skeptic when it comes to WOTC's ability to show corporate wisdom in such matters.

 

[Nightfall]

Math is for suckers and so are automated character sheet!

*is kidding* WB Gene.

 

[caudor]

I sorta feel left hanging by the whole deal. The latter part of this year was real busy at work, so I missed the news that CMP was losing the license. I found out after Dec 1 when I went to go purchase the data set for Magic of Incarnum. I'm not mad; I'm just disappointed since there is no apparent solution right now except rolling up a new character on paper or entering tons of information from the book.

I guess I got a little spoiled on being able to purchase data sets and get my setup work done fast and conveniently.

It was nice while it lasted

 

[Nightfall]

Caudor,

yeah well WotC has traditionally shafted more than it helped gamers and especially gamers with poor math skills.