Alternative to PCGen?

[coredump777]

It's just me that thinks that PCGen 4 lost a lot of its power? Lost material, facilities and all this why? Just for make wotc happy?

I'm looking for a good program with no strings attached, (etools not, please).

anyone?

 

[Brown Jenkin]

Yes PCgen 4.0.0 is stripped down and has been since 3.0. As a long time follower I am still willing to give it a little longer. Now that they are d20 complient they can begin negotiations to use non-SRD material. It has only been 1 day so far.

Yes it is irritating not having dice rolling, but aparently anyone who does without special permision is in violation. Also the loss of the experience table is anoying but same issue.

The thing that has iritated me the most however is the new hostile attitude on thier message board. We are no longer allowed to mention anything OGL/d20 related even if it has to do with functionality or anything that in even the slightest way is critical of WotC. Many posters now reply to any violation of these dictates with flames and the new Moderator instantly shuts down and deletes any such messages preventing even constructive comments. Your post and mine would recieve a canned response and then the thread would either recieve 5-10 flames or be deleted. Additionaly it was also mentioned that OT were no longer allowed (ok) but then the Moderator and certain select individuals are allowed to continue OT postings.

 

[enrious]

I'm a fan of Campaign Suite, from Twin Rose Software (www.multiweave.com/trose).

Yes, it costs ~$25, but it's money well spent, IMO. You can download a demo from that site, plus there is a mailing list and chat channel available (via the IRC server chat.psionics.net and channel #campaignsuite)

CS has an easy to use interface, many great features, and helpful tech support.

 

[merton_monk]

RE:Alternative to PCGen

Yes PCgen 4.0.0 is stripped down and has been since 3.0. As a long time follower I am still willing to give it a little longer. Now that they are d20 complient they can begin negotiations to use non-SRD material. It has only been 1 day so far.

Yes it is irritating not having dice rolling, but aparently anyone who does without special permision is in violation. Also the loss of the experience table is anoying but same issue.

The loss of die rolling has indeed been painful, but we only underwent that surgery because Wotc said that by doing so they would seriously consider giving us permission for their non-SRD material. Remember that the D20 license has built it into a clause that will let Wotc change it as they deem fit - so I'm hoping that by having a good working relationship we can see if we can at all influence the restrictions built into the license. It may be a pipe dream, but we'll see. If no die rolling is the cost of being able to include all their material, it's a price I'll gladly pay!

The thing that has iritated me the most however is the new hostile attitude on thier message board. We are no longer allowed to mention anything OGL/d20 related even if it has to do with functionality or anything that in even the slightest way is critical of WotC. Many posters now reply to any violation of these dictates with flames and the new Moderator instantly shuts down and deletes any such messages preventing even constructive comments. Your post and mine would recieve a canned response and then the thread would either recieve 5-10 flames or be deleted. Additionaly it was also mentioned that OT were no longer allowed (ok) but then the Moderator and certain select individuals are allowed to continue OT postings. [/B]

I like to think our board is generally quite friendly. I can understand why you might think it's a bit hostile due to our vigilant moderators. For the past 4 weeks we've had a lot of users rant about the licenses - it varied from innocent queries about how it would be applied, to invectives against Wotc for "forcing" this upon us (nevermind that we made it clear that it was our choice!), to people suggesting lots of ways to covertly get around the restrictions by inventive rationalizations. This started many flame-wars and bug reports and user questions were getting lost in all this traffic. This traffic generally wasn't helpful with regards to our discussions with Wotc either - not that Wotc holds us directly responsible for everything that occurs on our boards, but I didn't want our board to denegrate into a hotbed of anti-Wotc sentiment. We started off by asking/warning the frequent offenders about their behavior, but that had no impact, so we started invoking moderator priviledges. I really don't like our having to play censor, and I'm hoping that in the near future this will calm down so we can stop moderating. The unfortunate side-effect is that sometimes a new user thinks that they're the first to go on a rant about what they think has been going on. Sometimes other users took our policy of stopping threads as open season on stepping on anyone who even came close to stepping over that line. When that happens, those users get the same treatment - a warning and/or their post is deleted. It's stated clearly in our "Welcome" message that these topics have been beat to death and most users would prefer not to see another thread on those subjects. If you ever think that someone was stepped on unfairly or that a post was deleted unjustly or that a moderator or anyone else was out of line, please email me directly. If people want to rant against Wotc in general we direct them to the message boards at wizards.com. If they want to discuss the fine points of the OGL/D20 license they could do so here or on the OGL mailing list. Most of our audience doesn't care about the license - they simply want a place where they can give bug reports and other feedback, ask questions about functionality and not feel like their post gets lost in a lot of traffic that is tangential in nature at best.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

Bryan, While I understand the need to keep your List focused on improving PCgen I still stand by feeling that this is place that has lost its friendly atmoshpere. I have been reading almost all the posts for about a year, and it is only since GenCon that the problems have come.

Yes OGL/d20 were discussed heavily here, both in threads started by me and by Knightcrawler. However these threads while answering some questions did not and were not intended to discuss how OGL/d20 complience impacted PCgen functionality. This seems to be one area we disagree on, I feel that the PCgen List is the apropriate place to discuss those issues, you feel here is.

This includes why dice rolling was removed, both stats and hps as well as why there can not even be a dice roller packaged in PCgen that does not input into any fields. Since random names are allowed why aren't random numbers that don't relate to any fields. Also could we have a next level experience table that like the point buy table can be user inputed. Either of these questions if asked on your list would get the response "Because WotC said so. Topic closed." I personaly feel that these are valid points of discusion and should not be passed off to another location.

One idea that was proposed is to have a second list where OGL/d20 complience could be discussed without cluttering the bug reporting list. This would give us someplace official to comment on this issue. And yes this would not stop old users who are checking back from asking where are the lst files and where is the functionality. It would however allow an answer to include a message that if you have more questions please direct them here instead. If you realy want us to start asking support questions about how OGL/d20 applies to PCGen here I will take you up on this, but this will only force you mynex, bd, paul and others to provide support at non official locations and increase the chances of things spiralling out of control since we all know what happens when PCgen complience is discussed here.

The problem of flames however seems to be deeper rooted. Hopefully it can be atributed to lack of sleep and stress trying to get things complient as fast as possible, but it is everyone, including Silverbacks on up and the moderator who are being snappish. Since I have not recieved a personal letter from your moderator I can't personaly comment on how soft the paws are being used in private but I personaly find the public response cold and unfriendly. "I believe this question has been adequately answered. Topic Closed." There have been a couple of threads I thought had a real question that had not been answered but I did not want to risk the wrath of the moderator and the inevitable outside flames by responding. As for reporting things to you or Mynex I personally would rather that you spent your time improving the program not interceeding in every dispute. Beware what you ask for.

As for the policy of always be nice to WotC for it will hurt us otherwise seems to be caried to the extreem. Yes WotC/ET sucks type posts should not be allowed, however it is enforced and things get out of hand even for "I love PCgen it is a much better program than ET. (insert real question here)" This is a matter of opinion that realy does not matter in the larger scheme. Yes if they thought ET was better they wouldn't be here, but this is not a real attack on WotC and WotC should not care about it. I would be greatly surprised if WotC could not diferentiate between things posted by those in charge and people who use the program as customers. If you don't believe this look at what they put up with on thier own boards, and they certainly would be withdrawing support fron ENWorld as well. If nothing was said about it it would die on its own when the real question is answered. instead everyone including the higher up feel the need to respond to this part of the post as well with a sharp response that including this was a bad thing. The outside flames are just following the example set by those in charge.

Sorry for the Hijack but my frustration on this issue has been building for a couple of weeks and now that I have ranted I feel better.

 

[coredump777]

What really annoys me isn't the experience or dice rolling thing. I use PCGen to input characters that the people from my 3 campaigns (2 OA/Rokugan based and one Chtulhu) and reassure that class skills, feats, and such are right (skill distribution is always a problem for my players, and I like to assure it using the program).
So, I have the characters rolled, and the level ups are done in the table, after each session. We have all the books we use, and the program is just for reference and sheet printing.

What pains me to the core is the loss of sources. All this because this SRD thing (not to say nonsense) that simple reduced the sources in PCGen to a state of inutility very close to Etools.

I still using the PCGen 2.7.3, that's is bugged I know, but I have the Oriental Adventures sources, I have a first version of Rokugan Campaign Setting, I have Forgotten Realms and a lot of sources.

I think that this OGL/SRD is just a way to wizards cripple good softwares (by the gods, pcgen is almost perfect for every game in the D20 system! and free! why they would support it?) and drop PCGen to all fours... Maybe I think of that because my heavy Linux/Free Software filosofy, where I see good programs (sometimes better than the "Most used OS in the world from M$") fall because they are forced dow by lawsuits from the great companies, and I see others resist bravely, take GIMP and GNOME integration in Exchange Server that works better than outlook.

I really, really think that in this point, there's no difference in the situation. It's a big company forcing good software to complain to rules that make the program as horrible as his own proprietary software.

tks
coredump
BSD/Linux User.network administrator.c ++ coder. free software/information advocate.

 

[bushfire]

Originally posted by coredump777
I really, really think that in this point, there's no difference in the situation. It's a big company forcing good software to complain to rules that make the program as horrible as his own proprietary software.

No, it's not making PCGen compete fairly with eTools that is the question. eTools being a licensed product, can leagly contain all sorts of data and information that other programs can not. It's making PCGen compete fairly with the other software programs that were/are trying to follow the D20/OGL. Programs like DMF, TwinRose, and RPM. These are the programs that PCGen should be compared to.

Now if you are saying that the *only* value you see in PCGen is the data sets rather than the actual program features then you devalue the work done by the programmers. From what I have heard the latest version (4.0) of PCGen is a very good program and the future plans would seem to make it even a better program.

What you are bitching about is not changes to the program, but the loss of all the "free" data. Well, too bad

 

[drnuncheon]

What pains me to the core is the loss of sources. All this because this SRD thing (not to say nonsense) that simple reduced the sources in PCGen to a state of inutility very close to Etools.

Er, correct me if I'm wrong, but there's nothing stopping an individual user from including anything they want - whether it's WOTC material or anything else. The problem is only with the stuff being distributed. Surely you could take the old data files and fix 'em up to work with the new version of the program?

J

 

[Leopold]

Er, correct me if I'm wrong, but there's nothing stopping an individual user from including anything they want - whether it's WOTC material or anything else. The problem is only with the stuff being distributed. Surely you could take the old data files and fix 'em up to work with the new version of the program?

J

the answer is unequivacably yes...

 

[Bulain]

documentation

Where would I find documentation on how to include prestige classes and suchlike from splatbooks?

I have read the help file and tried to wade through the generally unfriendly boards on Sourceforge, but can't find simple information like this. A request for such information just got lots of people flaming me because they thought I was complaining about the data file removal.

Currently I can't use PC-GEN to create characters that use any rules from anything but the main three. I have a number of books like sword and fist, tome and blood etc and I have to make manual sheets to use them.