Trapdoor Tech is Back With A Pathfinder iOS Application!

If you remember Trapdoor Technologies from last year (DungeonScape; Codename: Morningstar), you may be interested to hear that they're back! They've just released Playbook for PRD for iOS devices -- PRD, of course, meaning Pathfinder Reference Document. "With Playbook, everything is at your fingertips from rulebooks, adventures, characters, and maps to the most specific character customization - even a hard-earned badge from an epic homebrew campaign. Rolling up characters, running adventures, tracking campaigns and compiling logbooks are no longer chores, but an integrated, shareable experience."

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Last we heard of Trapdoor was their unsuccessful Kickstarter campaign for a Pathfinder version of their Codename: Morningstar software, which followed the unfortunate cancellation of their D&D 5th Edition license with WotC. This release appears to be a version of that vision - it has 7 modules:

Home Module -- Game Night mode to synchronize all Playbook modules for the evening's adventure; display your hard-won badges and honors; and keep updated with the latest Playbook announcements.
Character Module -- Build and manage characters; character generation from novice to expert; customize your character sheet; and quickly generate NPC’s.
Adventure Module -- As a GM, manage your adventure, track encounters, share maps and take notes. Links in the adventure allow for instant information lookup. If you’re a player, a customizable logbooks keeps notes, maps and your adventure exploits organized and sharable.
Campaign Module -- The big picture of an RPG setting is sometimes lost in the details. This module keeps the campaign story arc organized and available with campaign maps, major world events and notable places and people easy to find.
Party Module -- Share information, pass secret notes, and muster your own game nights.
Library Module -- Read your own creations or browse through an expanding library of content from small publishers and our prolific community of homebrew and indie authors!
Forge Module (in development) -- A powerful toolkit for easily creating your worlds. Everything from modifying monsters to making maps - edit existing content or start from scratch.


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There's more information on their web page. You can find the application on the iTunes app store here.

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[DLIMedia]

I'm the author of "Cavern of the Damned", the 1st level adventure that Playbook launched with. It was pretty fun to do.

Can't wait what this means for CotD in terms of getting reviews on this site or ENnie nominations (is this the dawn of a whole new category? It's not hardcopy... it's not PDF...). We'll cross that bridge when we get to it, I suppose.

 

[hardvice]

It's pretty, but the character module at least seems… kinda useless. It takes all your information, spreads it out over ten different pages, and doesn't really do anything with it. You can collapse sections to half size, but without the ability to rearrange them (which I couldn't find), there's not much point in doing so.

Text lookups are nice, but calculations for things like class features aren't really there. There are trackers for expendable features, which is handy. None of the numbers are directly rollable (there's a dice roller in the corner, but you can't just, say, tap your Acrobatics skill and make a roll).

Made a druid; you can pick your animal companion and display the base stats, but there's no place to track them, and improvements from leveling up just show up as a separate class feature. Wild Shape tells you it works like Beast Shape without linking you to that spell or listing forms you can take or their statistics. Less than helpful.

The nifty "turn your iPad sideways and get a PDF character sheet" feature is still there, and if that's all you want, it's well done. But a digital character sheet should be better than paper, and it just isn't. What it gets right is more than offset by what it gets wrong and how difficult it is to navigate. I can't imagine that using this would do anything except slow you down.

The library module is nice, but the much-hyped intelligent hyperlinking is a bit hit or miss. Tap something like the word "class" in the PRD and you're never entirely sure where it's going to take you.

The rules integration itself is another problem. It only contains the races, classes, and spells from the Core Rulebook right now, which would be OK except that there's no way to add options from other sources (at least none that I could figure out).

And… well, it's Pathfinder. There are already so many great options for Pathfinder, most of which have integrated the material much better and much more thoroughly.

This is one of the best looking presentations I've seen, and the inclusion of the library, campaign, and party modules is all pretty fantastic… but I just can't imagine using this character sheet at all. A shame, really.

 

[Newtonian]

It's pretty, but the character module at least seems… kinda useless. It takes all your information, spreads it out over ten different pages, and doesn't really do anything with it. You can collapse sections to half size, but without the ability to rearrange them (which I couldn't find), there's not much point in doing so.

Did you try a pinch gesture on the character sheet? Definitely appreciate the feedback .

 

[Jester David]

Wow, that is one dark ap. I had to crank up my brightness to get much use out of it. That seems like a big flaw for ap you're meant to use for an entire game session. It'll chew through a battery.

Okay, when downloading the app, it doesn't specify in-app purchases. Most apps that have those include that warning. It's a bit of a faux pas not to have that called out in the iTunes store.
There's only the single adventure, and I don't see an easy means of making a new one yet. So the app really limits you to pre-designed content.

The app wants you to download the full PRD ruleset to level beyond 4. Then wants you to pay $12 freakin' dollars for levels 5-12 and another $12 for levels 13+. You can get the entire Pathfinder Core Rulebook for the HeroLabs app for just $20.
And that's not super useful unless you have the world's most restrictive Pathfinder GM, since it's a very mature game system. Unless you can get all the options from the hardcover Roleplaying Game line there's no reason to bother with the app.

The dice rolling is pretty crappy. Drag a dice and then hit the roll button and it just changes the dice number. Pretty "meh". Especially if you're trying to make a check. You have to pull up the dice roller and then enter the bonus rather than just hit a dice icon by the skill/ability/save. I hope it works differently in an adventure, but lacking 2+ iPads I can't test that feature.
It'd be lovely to be able to run a test party through and adventure. Doing it blind seems awkward as eff. And requires *everyone* to have the app (and an iOS device).

Flipping through the PRD is a pretty slow and painful experience. The page flipping feature is a needless graphical flourish and just slows down reading compared to scrolling. It'd be fun if the app was a PDF with default pagination, but as straight text it's annoying.

The app also doesn't include the OGL. Seriously. If you click the "Legal" tab and scroll down to the end, it just says it makes use of the OGL and directs you to a website. I thought that was a no-no.

 

[Morrus]

This is now in the reviews section for those who would like to rate it.

I couldn't get past the EULA. The "I have read and agreed..." button doesn't work for me.

 

[MythosaAkira]

This is now in the reviews section for those who would like to rate it.

I couldn't get past the EULA. The "I have read and agreed..." button doesn't work for me.

I was having a problem with that myself, but there's a checkbox to the right of "I have read..." that's very hard to see (it's a slightly-less-dark brown on a dark brown background). Check that and the "Proceed" button enables.

Also not a fan of apps that I have to create an account for just to use, but we'll see how the rest of it goes. Rotating from landscape to portrait gives you a character sheet, which is handy.

 

[Atlatl Jones]

The top in-app purchase is for the "PRD Rulebbook." The lack of even basic proofreading not promising.

 

[Remathilis]

I'm beginning to see why WotC cut ties..

 

[DaveMage]

It's essentially like Realm Works + Hero Lab, but without 90% of the content and functionality of those products.

Still, with a lot of polish and content (and I mean, a LOT of polish and content), I think there's potential. Search needs to be smarter, and, as others have posted, they really need to sharpen/brighten the text in a lot of places as it's hard to see.

 

[Dausuul]

Still, with a lot of polish and content (and I mean, a LOT of polish and content), I think there's potential. Search needs to be smarter, and, as others have posted, they really need to sharpen/brighten the text in a lot of places as it's hard to see.

They've had most of a year to polish it. If it ain't there now, I wouldn't expect it to get there in the future.