WotC is going online. What do you want the digital initiative to be?

[Zaruthustran]

Bump in response to Morrus's interview!

 

[wingsandsword]

1. Support for d20 Modern & Star Wars. They implied this could be possible. I bought every Dungeon/Polyhedron that was made, just for the Polyhedron side. Eventually it was discontinued by the Dungeon buyers that didn't want anything but adventures, but if they include significant support for d20 Modern and the Star Wars RPG (I know that this might be rough, since apparently there are licensing issues with anything electronic and Star Wars) it would be a big factor to me in regards the D.I.

2. Print compilations and the Dragon and Dungeon brands.
If they are going to make print compilations of the Digital Initiative materials, and they say they plan to keep using the Dragon and Dungeon names, seeing an annual (or quarterly, or whatever) compilation with the Dragon name does seem appealing, especially for those who for various reasons prefer hardcopy. If they do this, I do hope they preserve the issue numbers of Dragon Magazine in some form, to keep a sense of continuity.

Oh, and if it is made dependent on a specific browser or OS, count me out.

 

[WayneLigon]

The Monstrous Compendium
Monster Manual 1-3 with the ability to print out single sheet monsters, like the old 2E MC should have been done. Choose your monster. Choose which illustration you want for it (Do I want the Wayne Reynolds troll or this other one here; 'none' is also a choice for illustration), choose single or multiple page, condensed or expanded format, classic stat block or new encounter presentation, etc.

Notice all the choices I have, there. That segues into something else that will cause me to give up my cash to WoTC:

Convenience
Let's assume there will be articles, adventures, NPC"s, monsters, treasures, etc along with the types of articles we've been seeing so far. These need to be presented in a number of different formats.

Let's assume that we have the Digital Dragon and Digital Dungeon. I should be able to have the Table of Contents page show me new articles, of course, along with their publish date, author, etc. I should be able to see all articles by a certain author within a certain timeframe. All articles from a certain column. All articles within a date range.

Tagging and indexing all articles is a must. Tagging, because I want to be able to say 'show me all articles dealing with trolls in 2008' and have it show me articles that actually dealt with trolls in some means, rather than just mention the monster. Especially important would be NPC's, new monsters, new spells (tagged by the various things you can ag spells for already; I should be able to search for 'all 5th level cleric spells with the [Evil] descriptor published in 2010', etc), and stuff like that. If I know that such and such adventure had a drow NPC, then 'show me all drow npc's in adventures between 10-01-2009 and 03-20-10' should pull up that adventure.

I've wasted who knows how many hours looking for things like that, even with indexes available online. If I'm paying monthly for that content as well as continued access to it, I'd better never waste even more hours when that work should be done up-front.

 

[Pyske]

There are two components that are critical (to me) for the Digital Initiative: User Experience and Content. I feel that others have covered a lot of what I want for content, so let discuss what I'd like from the User Experience:

• Massively filtered...
  • common filters / searches (topic, author, column name, body text keyword)
  • filter by example (for any stat block or other content with multiple fields, provide a blank one and let me partially fill it out... then find all matches)
  • filter by ranges (publication date, level range, user rating, etc.)
  • filter by read / unread (combinable with above)
  • filter by recommender / reviewer (including rating filter)
    • i.e. show me everything Crothian thinks is a 4+
• Bookmarkable / Categorizable
  • more than just "Favorites", allow multiple tags for each item, etc.
    • i.e. if I am running multiple campaigns, I can tag items with the campaign name, and am not retricted from having "Ecology of the Orc" tagged in both campaigns.
• Customized Interface
  • using something like Web parts... see MSNBC site or any number of other websites where you can add, rearrange, or remove blocks of content.
  • allow hiding of types of content, such as images, inline stat-blocks, end of adventure stat-blocks. Context sentitive, so that turning off images inside adventures doesn't HAVE to mean they are off everywhere
• Pushable (by request)
  • Opt-in E-mails of new articles (c.f. Monster job search agents)
  • Custom local reader (i.e. Glyph, Acrobat Reader, etc.)
    • High resolution
    • Zoomable
    • Offline / cached access
    • Background downloads (like Windows Update, Guild Wars, various other apps)
• Cross-linked
• Multiple payment strategies
  • Subscription
  • Pay for use
• Sharable
  • URI links
  • Free preview of X% of any article I want to send someone
• Customizable calculations
  • i.e. chargen with arbitrary new skills, etc.
  • Third party participation / integration
• Remember me
  • Authentication
  • Preferences (font size, images, zoom, etc.)
• User extendable / third party contributions
  • Proxy payments (pool of money to pay based on portion of reading done by a subscriber... example: 50% of my subscription money goes to WotC for infrastructure / upkeep / portal service, and the other 50% is split among the 1-10 top content providers I visit according to my viewing habits)
• Ratings
  • User Ratings
  • "Autority" Ratings (staff reviewers, etc.)