The Holy Grail of Online Tools (Listen up, WotC!)

[Mercurius]

Alas, I don't see it happening with the DDI as it stands - it would appear that most people who are willing to pay for DDI at all are willing to pay just for the Character Builder and Compendium (and maybe the magazine content). So there's no real incentive for WotC to go beyond that basic offering.

How about this: WotC offers different tiers of subscriptions, something like this:

Copper: Character Builder and Compendium only - $10/month
Silver: As above, plus Dragon and Dungeon - $20/month
Electrum: As above, plus Adventure and Monster/NPC Builder - $30/month
Gold: As above, plus Dragon and Dungeon hardcopy annuals - $40/month
Platinum: As above, plus yearly limited "big boss" miniature - $50/month

Or something like that. I suppose it might be hard to get people to spend something like $40-50 a month on a subscription, but you never know - limited/exclusive books and miniatures go a long way.

 

[Mistwell]

How about this: WotC offers different tiers of subscriptions, something like this:

Copper: Character Builder and Compendium only - $10/month
Silver: As above, plus Dragon and Dungeon - $20/month
Electrum: As above, plus Adventure and Monster/NPC Builder - $30/month
Gold: As above, plus Dragon and Dungeon hardcopy annuals - $40/month
Platinum: As above, plus yearly limited "big boss" miniature - $50/month

Or something like that. I suppose it might be hard to get people to spend something like $40-50 a month on a subscription, but you never know - limited/exclusive books and miniatures go a long way.

$120 for a miniature?
$120 for an annual?

Too high.

 

[Mercurius]

I encourage you to keep an eye on The City of Brass. We are finalizing our World Builder alpha testing right now (you can read about it at our blog) and are right currently in discussion for our Toolkit, starting with the adventure building system for DMs.

Looks interesting - I'll keep an eye on it.

So what kind of guidance would you be looking for? I could see a program that comes with several templates like several variations on the 5 room dungeon. But other than that, I can't seem to think of anything else that something like masterplan could do to provide guidance.

I think it would work well for simple adventures like dungeon-crawls, encounters, and short scenarios, and less so for more complex story-based games. But I think you could still have well-designed algorithms that, with a series of drop-down menus and multiple choice questions, could design interesting short adventures.

Adventure design requires actual intelligence. Not that a person can't throw something together rather mindlessly and hope it has value as a game. But the odds are against you. A computer program could be created like Big Blue to help individuals create adventures, but the design is only going to be as good as those who programmed it. The designers at Wizards are bright, but they've had a bad track record with software implement, much less understanding the designs most helpful for their customers. It's a nice idea, but it's going to take a whole lotta thought to get to the point where those with the resources could follow the instructions.

Yes, true - and ultimately no computer-designed adventure could create anything close to what the human imagination can do. But we don't need to go so far. I mean, imagine if you could enter some parameters like so:

Level range
+ primary adversaries
+ treasure amount/type
+ location type
+ basic plot threads/points
= voila...a short adventure

A good program would allow different levels of customization. Some might simply offer broad step-by-step guidelines and categories, while others might actually create adventures for you complete with flavor text if you don't have time to plan an adventure.

 

[Mercurius]

$120 for a miniature?
$120 for an annual?

Too high.

Those numbers weren't meant to be taken too literally, thus "or something like that." But I agree!

 

[GMMichael]

Adventure design requires actual intelligence. Not that a person can't throw something together rather mindlessly and hope it has value as a game. But the odds are against you. A computer program could be created like Big Blue to help individuals create adventures, but the design is only going to be as good as those who programmed it. The designers at Wizards are bright, but they've had a bad track record with software implement, much less understanding the designs most helpful for their customers. It's a nice idea, but it's going to take a whole lotta thought to get to the point where those with the resources could follow the instructions.

+1.

But let's add to the value of ENworld and write up some adventure-design tables for the O.G.R.E. to use.

 

[delericho]

How about this: WotC offers different tiers of subscriptions, something like this:

Copper: Character Builder and Compendium only - $10/month
Silver: As above, plus Dragon and Dungeon - $20/month
Electrum: As above, plus Adventure and Monster/NPC Builder - $30/month
Gold: As above, plus Dragon and Dungeon hardcopy annuals - $40/month
Platinum: As above, plus yearly limited "big boss" miniature - $50/month

I fear that if they did that then everything except the Copper level offerings would quickly wither and die.

The advantage of the current holistic subscription is that everything subsidises everything else - most people, it seems, subscribed for the Compendium and the CB, but some subscribed for the magazines, some subscribed for the Monster Builder, etc. In each case, they subscribed for what they wanted, and got everything else for 'free'.

If you switch to a tiered model, especially with the tiers you suggest, I fear you'd get loads of people taking the Copper subscription for the tools they actually want, and opting out of the rest.

I think they might do well with three (maybe four) tiers:

White: Dragon and Dungeon only
Blue: As above, plus the tools (Compendium, Character Builder, Monster Builder, etc)
optional Green: As above, plus the Virtual Tabletop (including the ability to invite subscribers of White and Blue tier to games)
Red: As above, plus access to "The Library" (which is that bank of fan-made monsters, adventures, etc that I posited earlier)

But, even there, I suspect they'd do better to offer a single all-inclusive subscription. The hope is that WotC recognise that DMs are disproportionately good for the game, so it is right to support them with tools even if they're a less immediately lucrative source of revenue. Which, based on recent moves by WotC, is no longer something I despair about entirely.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

But, even there, I suspect they'd do better to offer a single all-inclusive subscription. The hope is that WotC recognise that DMs are disproportionately good for the game, so it is right to support them with tools even if they're a less immediately lucrative source of revenue. Which, based on recent moves by WotC, is no longer something I despair about entirely.

Serious question: which moves would that be? I seem to have missed them.

I don't think we'll see any substantial online support from WotC. Previous efforts were lacklustre, development after initial release non-existent, and communication with the customers abysmal.

Apart from two or three PDF adventures supporting new DMs I expect only marketing texts like Dragon articles referring to just release products. One tidbit of additional material with three parts of advertisment.

Hey, a few years ago I was very optimistic regarding DDI and WotC proved me wrong. Perhaps if I'm outright pessimistic this time...

 

[delericho]

Serious question: which moves would that be? I seem to have missed them.

On the "support for DMs" front, there's their newfound willingness to put out adventures again, and that they've started rereleasing the classic materials in PDF and developed a 5e that seems to allow for easy conversion. And, actually, with regard to 5e they seem to have swung back towards an edition that supports (and indeed requires) much more DM control, rather than the previous editions that tried to lock everything down in rules (and so were a boon to rules-lawyer players).

Of course, I might be misinterpreting all of that.

I don't think we'll see any substantial online support from WotC.

I'm rather concerned at the total silence surrounding any 5e version of the DDI. That does suggest to me that there may not be one - that the 4e version will remain active until such time as its not worth keeping going* and then they'll pull the plug.

* The running costs for it are fairly negligible, but there will come a point where the servers need upgraded and the new OS isn't quite compatible, or something similar. At which point, they may elect not to pay the cost to upgrade.

However, even though the 4e DDI offering was disappointing (compared to what was promised) they still managed some 80k subscribers. I would have thought that would make some sort of 5e DDI a no-brainer. At minimum, of course, that could just mean a new Character Builder and Compendium, probably coupled with 'magazines', though those could just be Games Workshop-style adverts in disguise.

But, yeah, I would like to believe that if there's a 5e DDI then, in addition to the player-side tools, they would take the position that DMs are worth giving extra support, and so we'd get some proper DM-side tools. I will freely admit, however, that that might be wishful thinking on my part - indeed, a part of me still fears 5e may be cancelled before the end of the year.

 

[Dungeoneer]

OK, this isn't all that ground-breaking of an idea, but indulge my hyperbole.

It is really quite simple: An Adventure Builder - anything from encounters to short scenarios to modules to adventure paths. Unless I'm completely daft, there's nothing out there that takes DMs through a step by step process of adventure design in all its glory. I know it wouldn't be easy, but I don't see why it wouldn't be possible and hugely popular.

The closest thing that I'm aware of is MasterPlan, which is a nice program but has no actual guidance - its just an organizing suite - but what I'm talking is something akin to Character Builder, but for adventure design.

Make it happen, please.

Are you A PROFESSIONAL GAME DEVELOPER who makes SIX FIGURES A YEAR? Because if not your opinion is irrelevant!

Seriously though, tools like this are great but they are hard to get right. The user experience is critical to making them work, and most developers are really bad at that. You could build a massive, feature-packed AB, but if it was cumbersome and hard for the user to find what they were looking for it would be a waste.

I too think this would be awesome, but I'm not gonna hold my breath.

Just out of curiosity, what sort of features would be in such a program? Off the top of my head I'm guessing

• Monsters
• Map-making
• NPCs
• Encounter Builder

 

[Jan van Leyden]

On the "support for DMs" front, ...

Ah, I was more strictly thinking about online tools and such...

I'm rather concerned at the total silence surrounding any 5e version of the DDI. That does suggest to me that there may not be one - that the 4e version will remain active until such time as its not worth keeping going* and then they'll pull the plug.

That's the most probable scenario. Also, some people have an eye on WotC's job offers. After they have let go the software team they would have to hire new guys. Or search for a contractor, of course. Which would mean that WotC would have to put some effort in requirements elicitation, user stories, and so on.

But, yeah, I would like to believe that if there's a 5e DDI then, in addition to the player-side tools, they would take the position that DMs are worth giving extra support, and so we'd get some proper DM-side tools. I will freely admit, however, that that might be wishful thinking on my part - indeed, a part of me still fears 5e may be cancelled before the end of the year.

Frankly speaking I fail to see any effort on WotC's part to cater for the customers of such product. No, they seems to stop the whole online product family. When they announced the magazine's hiatus last year would havbe been the point to get our collective mouths watering for the 5e version of the service.

Oh well, it was good while it lasted...