If I could ask WotC for a few reasonable things...

[mattcolville]

...this would be what I'd ask for.

1: The Character Builder. Allow anyone to make a character for free. Let people make a character without registering, without giving you their email. They can't save their characters, but so what? Let them make as many characters as they want, up to 3rd level, would be best, but if you want to restrict it more, fine. You may have some arcane reasons why you think this is bad. Like...few games progress beyond level 3, so most people would be getting free use of the tool for most games. Doesn't matter. Means more people will play, that's all that matters. If anyone can make a dude, you convert idle, curious people, into players.

2: Organize the Dungeon & Dragon info better. I pay. I subscribe. Why can't I easily bring up all 1st level adventures? Or all 1st-through-3rd? Or all Warlord content? Let *us* tag the content, just XML, and we'll do all the work for you.

3: Give these guys some love. They've made the most useful tool in the history of the game, throw them a bone. Make their program official. Give it some support. You don't need to make your own version, these guys have already done tons of work. You have no idea how easy this little program makes running the game, but I can't import monsters from the online builder, which means...and I want to make this clear...your new monsters are useless to me. That's right, this tool is WAY more useful than the new adventures you're publishing. I'd rather not use your content, which I'm paying for, than give up using this free tool.

There's a lot of stuff I *could* ask for, but isn't this reasonable?

 

[DEFCON 1]

...this would be what I'd ask for.

1: The Character Builder. Allow anyone to make a character for free. Let people make a character without registering, without giving you their email. They can't save their characters, but so what? Let them make as many characters as they want, up to 3rd level, would be best, but if you want to restrict it more, fine. You may have some arcane reasons why you think this is bad. Like...few games progress beyond level 3, so most people would be getting free use of the tool for most games. Doesn't matter. Means more people will play, that's all that matters. If anyone can make a dude, you convert idle, curious people, into players.

2: Organize the Dungeon & Dragon info better. I pay. I subscribe. Why can't I easily bring up all 1st level adventures? Or all 1st-through-3rd? Or all Warlord content? Let *us* tag the content, just XML, and we'll do all the work for you.

3: Give these guys some love. They've made the most useful tool in the history of the game, throw them a bone. Make their program official. Give it some support. You don't need to make your own version, these guys have already done tons of work. You have no idea how easy this little program makes running the game, but I can't import monsters from the online builder, which means...and I want to make this clear...your new monsters are useless to me. That's right, this tool is WAY more useful than the new adventures you're publishing. I'd rather not use your content, which I'm paying for, than give up using this free tool.

There's a lot of stuff I *could* ask for, but isn't this reasonable?

1. Maybe. I would wonder why your requirement of not registering or submitting an email address would be necessary, but I do think having the CB available to create unsaveable 1st level characters wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, unless the computer program just can't be jerryrigged to do it.

2. Yes. Tagging their articles like blogs do is certainly a reasonable request, and something that probably would be welcomed by the player base. Making those tags searchable would also be a helpful addition to their article database.

3. No. It is only your opinion that these guy's tool is the "most useful tool in the history of the game", and I'm pretty sure you'll have plenty of people coming back with saying that "no, Masterplan is!" or "no, iplay4e is!" or whatnot. WotC has shown that they are not interested in taking other companies or other programs under their wing as 'official add-ons' to the game. So to expect them to pick and choose a single one just because you think it's useful is not a reasonable request.

 

[Scribble]

I've been saying foreeeeever that they need to do a better job sorting/cataloging the adventures.

Tags would be great- just allowing you to sort by level range would be something!

 

[Zaukrie]

It is amazing how hard it is to find articles you want. Baffling really.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I just wish someone would make something truly cross-platform. lol. I mean the web based stuff is OK, IF you have a connection when you play, and iplay4e is useful, but does far less than a complete tool would.

 

[JoeGKushner]

How about electronic editions of the printed books?

And this is more of a question, but are full scale maps finally include in Dungeon magazine for the adventurers? I could never understand why they didn't include such maps since they already had the map as an electronic file to begin with.

 

[CroBob]

Why does everyone think electronic versions of the rules books are such a fantastic idea? Maybe I'm just getting old, but physical books made form paper are actually easier to use. Need information from inside the book? Open it! Bam, it's all right there, and you can easily flip between two or more pages, holding your place with your fingers, flip, flip... no biggy. Electronic versions just aren't that convenient, especially in books like RPG role-playing books, where almost everything references some other page.

The character builder, on the other hand, was far more useful than the books, but only when specifically making a character. But screw people who get deployed to Afghanistan, or something, because if your internet connection sucks, good luck with using the new one! Oh, and good luck with using house-rules! No way we're going to allow custom rules to be inputted in any meaningful way!

 

[Ratinyourwalls]

While the character builder does need a lot of work...they really, really need to do something about the monster builder.

Does anyone really use it in it's current form?

 

[was]

I still want that character image generator they were working on

 

[CroBob]

I find it weird how you can put something in the holding pen, but you can't save a list of monsters you want in there for easy reference during a several session long adventure.