What D&D Tool/App are you looking for?

[weem]

Hello fellow EN World’ers!

I’m trying to brainstorm something and thought I would come ask here in the hopes you might have a minute to offer some input!

Myself and my friend/co-worker (also a gamer) are thinking about working on a D&D-related App (iOS, etc), or web-based app for our company. We’ve been doing web development for many years, and recently decided to try making our own product of some kind. We started talking about ideas this morning (we have a number of them) and I decided, let me hit up EN World! So, here is the question(s)…

What kind of D&D-related application would you be willing to pay for (either as an up-front 1-time cost, or a small monthly subscription)? What kind of app(s) would you find valuable to you as a DM? As a player?

Again, we are trying to brainstorm some ideas of what people feel is needed/missing/lacking when it comes to online apps related to D&D.

Obviously there are a lot of dice rollers, and there are of course various campaign managers, etc. But what are you looking for that you would use regularly?

Of course, as a business, the point is to make money so we're looking for ideas you feel would be worth paying for (assuming they work well, etc).

Please let me know by responding here in this thread, or (if it’s easier) send me a message on Twitter [at]theweem.

Thanks everyone

 

[Quickleaf]

When it comes to apps I've used "i4e" once when I forgot my character sheet and played around with "Battlemap", and I have 2 players who use their iPads exclusively for character sheets and note-taking. A buddy introduced me to master plan which I thought was great at first until I did a bit more tooling around and realized it's massively front-loaded in terms of what you need to input in order to get much out of it, and the interface is seriously unintuitive (but then it's FREE).

My observation is that if it takes much longer to something on iOS than by hand, folks will go back to doing it by hand, and if the tech becomes all consuming it detracts from the game.

That's my long-winded prelude to an idea. I am trying to run a sandbox and we meet at my friend's house who has all the minis. I keep my sandbox organized with a sleek Word file which I access from my laptop. Occasionally I'll print something out but usually the players have enough flexibility I'm not sure where they'll end up next, hence having the laptop becomes handy if not necessary.

I would love an "all in one" campaign manager app which I could access with my iPad. I would want it to talk with monster/trap/treasure files (in whatever form they take), have some kind clickable of plot organization flowchart (but cleaner than Masterplan's), and allow me to roll on random encounter tables keyed to locations...just a few examples of features. Think Masterplan combined with Evernote (but everything stored locally not in a cloud). Done well, I would pay for that in a heartbeat; I prefer the one time upfront cost rather than subscription for the same reasons I left DDi when the builders went online only.

Or, if that's too ambitious, how about an insult sword-fighting mini-game?

 

[Kannik]

Ohhh... an app by the Weem! Woo! Shame I don't actually have any tablets/i-devices...

But one idea that would work great for me (esp if you can have it have a web-front end for the DM to access via laptop, and then the players can access via tablet/phone/laptop/taligent/whatever) would be a way to 'push' images, text, notes, to specific players on the fly. For example, if a particular PC has some knowledge and the King starts talking about it, I could push the knowledge to the player's screen, letting him read it and then RP his character with that knowledge. Or if some PCs spot something (a design on a wall, for example) and others don't, I could push that image to them, and again let them RP it out. In many ways it would take note-passing into the i-age.

Whether that would be enough on its own or be part of a larger module is up for the masses to choose.

peace,

Kannik

 

[BobTheNob]

I want multiple device support. Dont bother if you have a character sheet generator that only exists on one device, it has to exist on all. Seriously, when we gather, we have laptops, tablets, phones...its literally got to the point where every player has multiple devices at there disposal.

What I want is that all the devices have a shared source of info for the game. So, when the DM applies damage to a character, or they contract a disease, everyone can see it on every device. If this ran online, it could be taken even further to suggest that people could use devices when they cant relocate i.e. same level of interaction from home.

 

[Frostmarrow]

I'd like a magic eight ball in a drawer I can pull down like notifications from the top of my iPad. See sometimes my players ask something and if I just could pull down that ball and get a quick answer maybe my replies will be more interesting. Let's not call it magic eight ball. Call it Oracle or Scrying Bowl.

When DMing I have a pdf active on my device and while I could make a four finger sweep to access whatever program I'm running on the side, I find that motion cumbersome. I'd rather just make a one finger pull.

I like to roll physical dice, and we track initiative on a big white board. Also I don't use sound effects even though that is a pretty cool thing when others do.

When I slide down the notification tab I don't want to see "No new notifications". I want to see "Favorable but needs a little macguffin".
Oh and it should retract by itself.

 

[Alan Shutko]

I'd like a magic eight ball in a drawer I can pull down like notifications from the top of my iPad. See sometimes my players ask something and if I just could pull down that ball and get a quick answer maybe my replies will be more interesting. Let's not call it magic eight ball. Call it Oracle or Scrying Bowl.

When DMing I have a pdf active on my device and while I could make a four finger sweep to access whatever program I'm running on the side, I find that motion cumbersome. I'd rather just make a one finger pull.

[...]
When I slide down the notification tab I don't want to see "No new notifications". I want to see "Favorable but needs a little macguffin".
Oh and it should retract by itself.

FWIW, all of these would require jail breaking.

 

[Frostmarrow]

FWIW, all of these would require jail breaking.

Had no idea. Not into that sort of thing, myself.

What about a program that highlights dice formulas in text and allows you to roll them by tapping on them? Is that feasible?

3d6

 

[weem]

Thanks for the feedback so far everyone, I really appreciate it!

Some more info...

We are leaning towards making a web app (s'what we are best at) but are open to an app for iOS or Android (or both), it just depends.

There are some things to consider as well, such as the likelihood of receiving a C&D. There are some things we can't do because the risk of that is too high, but I wanted to start by brainstorming so it's good to hear any ideas.

We actually started on a web-based project a while back that let you make maps of your own (by placing down tiles) into a grid on the browser and then saving that out as a JPG or PDF. You could add your own tile images as well, and in fact save your maps to work on them later etc. We had plans for that system that would allow others to view your maps (if you made any public), rate/comment on them, etc.

It worked pretty well where we left off, but we moved on to other things before finishing it (that was done on the side for fun, as an experiment mostly). I'm thinking that we may take that up again and officially work on it, but that's just one option.

Thanks again for the feedback - I look forward to seeing any more ideas you might have!

 

[Alan Shutko]

What about a program that highlights dice formulas in text and allows you to roll them by tapping on them? Is that feasible?

3d6

Everything that changes the behavior of other programs requires jail breaking. The App Store only allows apps where all functionality is within the app.

This is because right now, there are no public APIs that allow programs to run within another program.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

We actually started on a web-based project a while back that let you make maps of your own (by placing down tiles) into a grid on the browser and then saving that out as a JPG or PDF.

I've seen at least one app that does this, and it's pretty cool, so that could be handy, but I would really like is the ability to essentially paint a map using the square grid.

For example, I would pick the "dungeon floor" brush and any square I paint over becomes a dungeon floor. Then I simply place objects where I want them.