D&D Insider - Pay tomorrow for what you get today for free?

[delericho]

The software experts on here are not telling us anything new. Yes New software may have a few bugs in it,

Replace 'may have' with 'will have' and you've got the right of it.

but the more money goes into a product (the bigger the company) the less likely there is of signifcant mistakes. I think we are naive in thinking that Hasbro's going to put their name on a piece of crap after the last launch.

This character creator will be a minor product in a niche market. And, software is emphatically not Hasbro or WotC's core business. Therefore, there's no reason to assume that they've thrown significant resources at it. (Of course, it's also true that we shouldn't automatically assume that they haven't.)

I'm open to the possibility that this will be the greatest character generator in history. However, I don't expect it to be. In fact, I would be surprised if it was anything more than usable for the first six months. That's not anti-WotC sentiment talking, just my best guess based on experience. I'm really hoping I'm wrong.

We are also being naive in thinking that the internet will have premium free content forever. What "good thing" is free anymore?

I'm inclined to think that WotC are making a mistake here. The Previews, the Web Enhancements, the Map of the Week, and so forth are essentially advertising, samples, and all the other things that companies do to entice customers to try out their product. Once they've tried it, the theory is they'll say "hey, that's cool!", and go and buy the real thing.

The Errata and the FAQ, incidentally, should absolutely be free to those who have bought the books. Otherwise, Wizards can be accused to selling substandard work and then charging customers for the fixes. (I don't blame them for there being mistakes in the books - those are inevitable - but I do expect them to put them right.)

That leaves the player and DM advice, which is cool, but can be gained from message boards here, at Paizo, and at Wizards themselves, and generally in greater quanitities and often in far more depth. It also leaves "Design & Development", and maybe a few other columns. These are interesting, and I'll miss them. But they're not worth paying for all by themselves, any more than I'd pay to read Monte Cook's blog, even if he restricted it to solely game-design thoughts.

We're bashing wotc, but they have developed some decent webtools as of late. The forgotten realms calender was neat as was the java tile generator that wasn't bad. The original charachter generator that shipped with 3.0 was good for its time as well.

Fair enough. But there's a world of difference between any of those tools and a real character creator that includes all the material from all the existing 3.x books. Even the original 3.0 generator was core rules only, and the game is now an order of magnitude or two more complex than it was then.

This is a big big project, and to do anything other than a half-assed job will require a great deal of time, money and expertise. Will Wizards have invested the required resources? We'll have to wait and see.

 

[Psion]

The software experts on here are not telling us anything new.

Okay, then why did you choose to label my "obvious" observation "animosity"?

Yes New software may have a few bugs in it,

As Deliricho said, will have.

but the more money goes into a product (the bigger the company) the less likely there is of signifcant mistakes. I think we are naive in thinking that Hasbro's going to put their name on a piece of crap after the last launch.

I don't think they are going to sink more money into it than e-tools.

Even if they do, think back to when e-tools was first released. It sucked. It was only after it was nursed along that it was turned into a competent piece of software.

We are returning to that state.

We are also being naive in thinking that the internet will have premium free content forever. What "good thing" is free anymore?

Once again, I have no problem paying for a worthwhile web magazine (I've subscribed to JTAS for years), and especially not for a worthwhile character generator. E-tools and the packs for PCGen weren't free, you know. They were just mature, and WotC is throwing that away.

We're bashing wotc, but they have developed some decent webtools as of late. The forgotten realms calender was neat as was the java tile generator that wasn't bad. The original charachter generator that shipped with 3.0 was good for its time as well.

Well, that's arguable (I found it's interface crappy at the time too). But lets take that for what it is. If we revert to something comparable to the PHB-only 3.0 character generator without the support for all the new options available to e-tools and PCGen, think of what we are losing.

Wizards is scuttling YEARS of development effort just so they can add a shiny bit to their web subscription. That is not a good move for we the consumers. I consider it a foolish move.

 

[Klaus]

Do we know for certain that WotC isn't (or haven't) basing the Character Generator on e-Tools?

I just want to mention that, back when it was announced that WotC was nixing the license to CMP, I said that they could be working on a character generator that might double as an Online RPG client, including the visuals. Close enough, eh?

 

[ShinHakkaider]

If the pay WOTC site is going to provide PDF's and/or JPEG versions of encounters that are in their hardcover adventures (like Expedition to Castle Ravenloft) that I can download and print out and use (depending on the price of course) I'm all for it. By encounters I mean the delve format pages that are in the books.

I see this as an opportunity for something great and I agree with a couple of the posters (but not thier "tone") that the first iteration will probably be less than great. However if they listen to good ideas from thier fanbase (which, let's be honest isnt really a lot of the people here at ENWorld) this might turn out to be something worth while. Like I said I'm willing to wait and see what they produce before I start hating.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

Steve Jackson Games has the Pyramid site for $20 a year. Articles, archives, forums, chat, and the chance to playtest SJG material.

They also have The Journal of the Travellers Aid Society, an ezine for all versions of Traveller. Also $20 a year with the same benefits as Pyramid.

Yeah, per year, not per month.

 

[Belen]

Mmhmm. So we used to get all this stuff for free, and in the future, we might have to pay for it (this is assuming they even offer this product and that they don't remove all the currently available stuff on the site).

So in other words, you've gone from getting the biggest bargain in the history of gaming to something reasonable. They are paying writers to make content for you, so if you want it, you pay them and they make a profit.

Capitalism.

No more manna from heaven.

Yeah, this really makes them bad people.

This is bull. The only reason I visited the WOTC website was to see the free adventures and previews. It was a great way to build excitement for their products. However, if I have to pay for the priviledge of their advertising, then I will not be visiting their site.

I would much rather pay Phil Reed for the same material because, let's face it, Phil is a better designer and he pays attention to the community. WOTC does not do this for me. I get material that their designers find cool. The material is nothing special and is often bland. It is worth it as a free service only.

Hell, I used to love Mike Mearls, but WOTC even found a way to stifle his creativity.

The material on the WOTC website was not a bargain. It was a cost of doing business. Now they want to charge me for the web enhancements and errata to books that I purchased from them and charge me to read previews of upcoming books as well as bland articles from game designers.

Color me bored. They would have to really offer something special for this to grab my attention.

Instead, I will just start buying stuff from Phil Reed that I will use rather than pay a fee to WOTC for a chance to see if I could use some of what they offer.

 

[DonTadow]

Wizards is scuttling YEARS of development effort just so they can add a shiny bit to their web subscription. That is not a good move for we the consumers. I consider it a foolish move.

I use might because you never know. (mathematically its not impossible).

Wizards is scuttling it away so that they can control the product. That seems to be something that wizards has been rumored to want control of since 3.5, control of dungeons and dragons.

I couldn't see why WOTC wouldn't open up their checkbook on this one. They realize now that d and d is more than just some nerdfad and its a commodity. I might have been as much a skeptic as you guys. Heck, I'm usually the first person with my pitchfork outside of a microsoft or hasbro. Perhaps I've toned it down in my old age, but I just don't see this as that bad.

I think about it like this. PCGen, DMGenie and a host of other programs (NPCDesigner) were created by individuals as ahobby first. These were just regular guys in the d and d community. With the upgrades in technology and enough money behind it, image what wonders can be done to this program. I figure if hasbro got behind magicnline and made it a success, why not others. Sure they started out as a toy company but they have been developing various software for their other brands and products.

This is bull. The only reason I visited the WOTC website was to see the free adventures and previews. It was a great way to build excitement for their products. However, if I have to pay for the priviledge of their advertising, then I will not be visiting their site.

I would much rather pay Phil Reed for the same material because, let's face it, Phil is a better designer and he pays attention to the community. WOTC does not do this for me. I get material that their designers find cool. The material is nothing special and is often bland. It is worth it as a free service only.

Hell, I used to love Mike Mearls, but WOTC even found a way to stifle his creativity.

The material on the WOTC website was not a bargain. It was a cost of doing business. Now they want to charge me for the web enhancements and errata to books that I purchased from them and charge me to read previews of upcoming books as well as bland articles from game designers.

Color me bored. They would have to really offer something special for this to grab my attention.

Instead, I will just start buying stuff from Phil Reed that I will use rather than pay a fee to WOTC for a chance to see if I could use some of what they offer.

And as Bill Gates would say if you said you're switching to LInux "SO". One day wotc will be producing the only dungeons and dragons related material and small portion of die hard anti-hasbros are not going to stop the profit margin their hoping to make. And WOTC won't care who takes their ball and go home. Again, I'm using magic the gathering as my template here. I was a big time player, and once that online virtual thing hit its stride my interest died off, but by opening up some type of internet component, they brought more fans into it, obviously replacing me and my money.

I dont think noones stifling the creative minds of the d and d world BTW.

 

[Monkey King]

To me it looks like they want to make an electronic 'Dragon magazine'.

Since I am not a person who pays money for web resourses, I'll pass.

If they do want to make an electronic Dragon magazine, it makes me wonder what happens to the real Dragon magazine in that case...

 

[Diremede]

I can't say that I use the WotC site all that much anyway, if they started to charge for some of the stuff, well then I probably would stop using it all together. At best I might go there 5-6 times per year, there really just isn't anything there I need to game, I own the books and my brain.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Do we know for certain that WotC isn't (or haven't) basing the Character Generator on e-Tools?

I'd find it doubtful. I haven't run Etools in a while but I remember it being a fairly heavy executable, not something suitable for a webapp. The server farm would be a pretty hefty investment to feed that beast CPU cycles. Same goes for PCGen.

Had WotC planned on using ETools it would have only made sense to contract CMP for support of the app, rather than dumping them all of a sudden. I'm fairly certain it was a dumping or else the press releases would have said "CMP & WotC to collaborate on new online tools! ETools users to continue receiving support of current products but look for something kewl in the future!"

Therefore it is a new app, from a new developer. Oh, joy. That would be bad enough if it was a download app, but being an online app we can also foresee the joy of snafus on the server side. All in all, I predict no joy from the chargen tool for 3 months.