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<blockquote data-quote="smiteworks" data-source="post: 7684283" data-attributes="member: 87795">I'm not familiar with OpenRPG, but depending on the ruleset, Fantasy Grounds provides a lot of automation. Underestimating the scope of the problem is a common thing. That's why you see a new VTT pop up every few months on Kickstarter. A single RPG book might be 300 pages and be full of rules and often those rules are not planned for ease of translation into a program. There is not a single game out there really allows all of those rules to be automated. Even big blockbuster titles typically choose to only deliver a subset of the rules.&nbsp; Character Builders like PCGen and HeroLab have done a pretty good job handling the rules for different game systems, but that took a lot of resources to do and continues to take a lot of resources to maintain. Character generation is also only one part of a game system. When you start trying to automate or support all the things you can do in combat, what resistances work against what damage type, how one spell or affect can affect the next action another combatant takes, how to randomly generate treasure, assign a CR for an encounter, pre-place combatants on a map, roll initiative, communicate over a network or on a web page, etc., then those things all take code and time to implement and test them. There is no one thing that Fantasy Grounds or another program does that another program couldn't be written to do. It's the combination of all of the things that are done that gives an overall experience. People outside of programming don't really recognize the amount of effort that goes into things like this or even for a relatively simple video game. At least it's a fun challenge to solve. I'd take that over working in the corporate world again.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="smiteworks, post: 7684283, member: 87795"] I'm not familiar with OpenRPG, but depending on the ruleset, Fantasy Grounds provides a lot of automation. Underestimating the scope of the problem is a common thing. That's why you see a new VTT pop up every few months on Kickstarter. A single RPG book might be 300 pages and be full of rules and often those rules are not planned for ease of translation into a program. There is not a single game out there really allows all of those rules to be automated. Even big blockbuster titles typically choose to only deliver a subset of the rules. Character Builders like PCGen and HeroLab have done a pretty good job handling the rules for different game systems, but that took a lot of resources to do and continues to take a lot of resources to maintain. Character generation is also only one part of a game system. When you start trying to automate or support all the things you can do in combat, what resistances work against what damage type, how one spell or affect can affect the next action another combatant takes, how to randomly generate treasure, assign a CR for an encounter, pre-place combatants on a map, roll initiative, communicate over a network or on a web page, etc., then those things all take code and time to implement and test them. There is no one thing that Fantasy Grounds or another program does that another program couldn't be written to do. It's the combination of all of the things that are done that gives an overall experience. People outside of programming don't really recognize the amount of effort that goes into things like this or even for a relatively simple video game. At least it's a fun challenge to solve. I'd take that over working in the corporate world again. [/QUOTE]

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