OrcPub Is An Unofficial Online Character Generator for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition

lkj said:

I agree that keeping it open to the community is great, and it will foster more options for us 'consumers'. The only tricky part is that I would like these apps to be able to add the data from new releases. Ideally, that means a suite of third party apps, all of whom somehow get permission to enter the new data (through a license presumably).

But I worry that last part would be intractable-- either because WotC would want to have a license with each vendor (either to make money or protect their IP) or because WotC lawyers would just say no because of the complications.

So if there isn't going to be a way for 3rd party apps to get the new data legally, then a second best choice might be a single 'official' app.

I don't know. I'm kind of torn on this.

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Morrus said:

We've got the exact model. This is exactly what 4E did.

There was an official character builder. It was really good, too. Everybody used it - so much so, that if an option wasn't in it, it effectively didn't exist. And, of course, it had no third party stuff in it, so third party player options effectively didn't exist. It was next to impossible to sell a third-party player option book; heck, we stopped putting player options in the 4E adventure paths we released, because we knew they wouldn't be used if they weren't in the official character builder.

A lot of people feel the GSL was responsible for the lack of third-party material for 4E. Speaking for myself, and the stuff ENP produced, it wasn't the GSL - it was the character builder. The damn thing was too good.

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lkj said:

I don't disagree with this at all. It's an excellent point. The inability to import 3rd party material or even homebrew rules into the 4e character builder was definitely a hindrance to third parties and reduced your flexibility with regard to homebrew.

Perhaps the hybrid solution is to have a 3rd party publisher that makes the officially licensed generator and has permission to allow import of custom datasets.

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larryxensen said:

That, ideally, is where I would like to take OrcPub if things work out. The application is pretty rough right now because I'm testing the waters, but I'm thinking if there's enough interest I'll do a Kickstarter to fully flesh it out, with a really slick modern interface, cloud storage, and tons of really cool features for generating and sharing characters and other content. On top of that I'm hoping I can do licensing with WotC and other publishers to include their premium content.

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Morrus said:

Of course, an official character app is the one foolproof way to kill off any third party player options. As in 4E, when everything you release is met by the question "Is it in the character builder?", an official app that's too good essentially locks out fan support on any reasonable scale.

That's why I'd rather see third party creations like this than a dominating official app. Not having an official one is - bizarrely - pro-community.

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CapnZapp said:

That really is the worst way of looking at it.

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So you really think it's better to not have a proper character builder at all?

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That's a really unfortunate position to take :-(

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If you were to say, for example, that you would rather see a licensed app with 3PP support than one without, I would understand.

But not having digital tools at all, just to protect your precious third party providers?

In my opinion, that means you have completely forgotten what comes first, the stem or the leaves. There can't be any 3PP without a successful base.

And for the masses of people, me included, with a massive interest in digital core support, but with average to little interest in third party products, that's a real disappointing stance to take.

Wishing for your own success is one thing, but at the expense of *everyone*...? Nope, that doesn't fly.

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