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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kalex the Omen" data-source="post: 1254395" data-attributes="member: 5086">It's been a while Victor, but here is my entire experience with computer D&D game aids...I started using computer game aids for D&D on a 286/16.  In those days it was the SSI Dungeon Masters programs (I don't remember their exact names anymore, but there were two of them).  I think they were for 1st Edition and they were DOS text based monstrosities.  They worked well enough and did save me some time generating encounters for my games.I bought CRI when it came out.  While I thought the minimovie was very cool, I wasn't as excited about the program itself.  If I remember correctly my players and I struggled to make accurate characters before giving up entirely.  I believe I may have still used the program for NPCs and encounters.When CRII came out I decided to give it another try.  I was very impressed with how it worked, but due to the lack of support for the Player Options books we couldn't get as much use out of the program as we'd have liked.  The addition of the mappers was great though.  We used them extensively.When CRE was released we went right out and bought it for the Player Options support.  However, as was previously stated they didn't not implement those rules flawlessly.  That is when I came up with a very simple rule.  If CR didn't have support for it, my characters wouldn't be able to do it.  This worked very well in allowing us to use CRII w/CRE extensively for a few years.Then 3e came out and we converted immediately.  We used the Character Generator from the back of the Player's Handbook for a while, but it wasn't much good for anything but initial character creation due to lack of support for magic items and such.  So we eagerly waited for the release of Master Tools...and waited...and waited.In the intervening time I tried to use PCGen, and (at the time) found it to be unusable.When eTools came out, I went right out and bought it.  It wasn't very long before I realized that I couldn't use this program.  There were too many bugs and data errors to be able to create workable characters.  The errors were so prevalent that I couldn't even implement my rule that we'd used for CRII w/CRE.Now that eTools has been patched, and the datasets are coming out (3.5 soon I hope) I have some optimism for the future of computerized gaming aids again.  I use it to create my adventures, mainly by pasting stat blocks into the adventure Word documents.  The guys at CMP are perfectionists and I think they'll put out a quality, solid 2.0 version of the eTools product.  I will be willing to buy that program when it is released.I should note that I have used PCGen (and now GMGen too) since my first experience with it, and I like it well enough.  I have suggested that my players use it for tracking their characters, so that they can be loaded into GMGen for initiative and experience tracking.  In fact we used the initiative and combat tracking last weekend for the first time and I think we all loved it.  I think it took some of the war gaming aspect out of miniatures combat when the players didn't know initially what their initiative was.  Makes for a tense first round.I look forward to more integrated player and DM game aids in the future.The world according toKalex the Omen</blockquote>

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