A Call to Arms for 3rd party RPG aide developers

[iwarrior-poet]

Well, the dreaded moment we have been waiting for has finally come. WoTC is coming out with 4e and it will be VERY tightly linked to various digital aides. It will probably be shoddy at first (witness the server failure that WoTC has had for the last 20 hours), but eventually it will work---and it will drag a lot of us kicking and screaming into 4e.

Now is the time for 3rd party DnD digital game aid creators to produce a truly creditable piece of software for those of us who want to stay with 3.5. I have well over $2000 dollars worth of investment in 3.5 and I DO NOT want to migrate to 4.0---but I will if their DI significantly aides gameplay. I am pretty sure I speak for a very large part of the potential DI market (anyone 21+years with a sizable investment in 3.5).

So here is the challenge to you 3rd party developers, you now have nine months to create a slick, capable, powerful game aid. You already know what it needs to do, but let me give you a short list:

1. Character generation
2. Easily generate custom Prestige Classes, Feats, magic items---without having to know a single lick of code
3. Easily create CR based monsters/npc stat blocks with customizable fields (ie CR 10 Duergar encounter)
4. Slick gui
5. leveling wizard
6. Able to create, import, export datasets
7. Be error free (both in implementation and in the resulting PC's/Statblocks)

OK, there you have it. And yes, before some of you reply with terse, "We already do that!" responses----No, you don't. (ahem, KingPaul) There isn't a piece of software out there that can EASILY accomplish all of the above--and I have tried most everything out there.

Now if someone can truly lay claim to this ability----and it is a slick, well produced piece of software----you may well have a very, very large market. Just take a peek at the 'Doomsday' thread at WoTC's 4e boards---plenty of folks are angry at WoTC and would love a good alternative---particularly in the DI field. CMP blew it---who will answer the call?

If not, then all of us, ALL of us, will eventually be chained WoTC's revenue stream for a long, long time.

 

[Vascant]

I have no plans to switch to 4e based on two reasons.
1. What I see now doesn't impress me enough to consider changing from a game I already do enjoy.

2. If I enjoy the game I play now, why change? I don't think the reasoning because a new edition is out is enough to make me "see the light"


Now because of all this, I will continue what I do now.. creating new software and on the good note already a great deal of work done on Evolution and so far Alpha Testers agree we are headed in the right direction with it. It already can handle quite a few of the items on your list and in time I am sure it will handle them all (I am sure because those are a few of the items on my list)

 

[Anurien]

With our GM Tools product slated for Christmas, I think we will put a tick in all the boxes here (most of them already I hope).....except perhaps 7., this is a little ambitious on any level and from any company!

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

With our GM Tools product slated for Christmas, I think we will put a tick in all the boxes here (most of them already I hope).....except perhaps 7., this is a little ambitious on any level and from any company!

That looked cool. I peeked over a shoulder while someone was running a demo at GenCon. Meant to come back and ask questions, but never made it.

 

[andargor]

If not, then all of us, ALL of us, will eventually be chained WoTC's revenue stream for a long, long time.

Playing on our feelings, are ya?

I'm sure the commercial-oriented products will have well progressed in that time.

The amateur crowd, like me, will probably wait until the core books are all out. Then we will examine what DI does and does not well, and what available data in electronic format is available. After all, most amateur coders do it for their gaming groups to start with, and then share it with the community.

So you will have to wait before being saved.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

So here is the challenge to you 3rd party developers, you now have nine months to create a slick, capable, powerful game aid. You already know what it needs to do, but let me give you a short list:

1. Character generation
2. Easily generate custom Prestige Classes, Feats, magic items---without having to know a single lick of code
3. Easily create CR based monsters/npc stat blocks with customizable fields (ie CR 10 Duergar encounter)
4. Slick gui
5. leveling wizard
6. Able to create, import, export datasets
7. Be error free (both in implementation and in the resulting PC's/Statblocks)

OK, there you have it.

A patent impossibility - at least for 4E. The 4E game, by all accounts, will simply not be plug-and-play with something designed for 3E rules paradigms. 4E is still IN DEVELOPMENT. What little we know about it now is NOT set in stone, in fact is almost certain to change, and is continuing to be added to. You simply CANNOT write proper software while guessing at the game rules and how best to make them work comprehensively.

It will almost certainly be Summer of 2009 before we could really hope to see proper software intended to respond to whatever WotC has for us in Summer 2008. [I vaguely recall that would be about the time period it took for PCGen to surface and that only continued to work because WotC let them eventually pay for the privilege of proper functionality.] It will suffer from the same critical limitation that all the software you mention has now - the need for users to manually input WotC IP [or BUY it from WotC anyway]; for users to effectively BE programmers.

Whether it will work for 3E still depends on WotC allowing sale/distribution of their IP. SRD just won't hack it alone for 3E materials.

 

[iwarrior-poet]

A patent impossibility - at least for 4E. The 4E game, by all accounts, will simply not be plug-and-play with something designed for 3E rules paradigms. 4E is still IN DEVELOPMENT. What little we know about it now is NOT set in stone, in fact is almost certain to change, and is continuing to be added to. You simply CANNOT write proper software while guessing at the game rules and how best to make them work comprehensively.

It will almost certainly be Summer of 2009 before we could really hope to see proper software intended to respond to whatever WotC has for us in Summer 2008. [I vaguely recall that would be about the time period it took for PCGen to surface and that only continued to work because WotC let them eventually pay for the privilege of proper functionality.] It will suffer from the same critical limitation that all the software you mention has now - the need for users to manually input WotC IP [or BUY it from WotC anyway]; for users to effectively BE programmers.

Whether it will work for 3E still depends on WotC allowing sale/distribution of their IP. SRD just won't hack it alone for 3E materials.

Dude, you kinda missed my point. I am hoping that software developers will crank out something to support 3.5, not 4e.

 

[andargor]

Dude, you kinda missed my point. I am hoping that software developers will crank out something to support 3.5, not 4e.

Then we all missed your point.

 

[iwarrior-poet]

Then we all missed your point.

I think Anurien and Vascant caught it.

 

[andargor]

I think Anurien and Vascant caught it.

Then I'm dumb.