D&D Insider! UP ! (merged)

[ProfessorCirno]

My biggest worry:

Dragon, while sometimes fun, was a side thing. You could use stuff from Dragon so long as you cleared it with the DM first, but none of it was needed or even expected. My worry is that DDI will be different - that many of the things from it will be "neccisary" or very, very potent for gaming, thus making you throw even MORE money into something you don't really want in the first place.

So instead of "Man, this book doesn't have many feats, I can't wait for the new books" we'll have to go "Man, this book doesn't have many feats, guess I'm ponying up for the online service I won't actually use."

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I don't even see anything. Is it not compatible with Mozilla?

Had no trouble with Firefox 2.0...

But the page doesn't contain enough information. For starters, how can I pay? Is Paypal an option? Do I need a credit card?

 

[ObsidianCrane]

The D&D Character Builder automatically calculates your character"s statistics based on your choice of race, class, trained skills, equipment, feats, and powers. It also creates power reference cards for you based on your choice of powers.

Wow way to take the choice out of character creation.

Why yes you can apparently play them using non-recommended stuff, but then you don't have an "Official" character you have a "Homebrew" one.

OMG my character is so Homebrew, just because I don't want to fit in their little box...bah what rubbish.

Hmm okay I might be overreacting here, but still...

 

[delericho]

Are you interested?

Only in the virtual tabletop.

Do you think it will succeed?

No.

I really hope I'm wrong about this, since my biggest fear for D&D is that the DI will crash and burn, and take D&D as a whole with it. Obviously, that's a worst-case scenario, but there it is.

Anyway, the record of official electronic support for D&D in any incarnation has never been good. I don't expect that to change.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Hmm okay I might be overreacting here, but still...

Yep, you are. The character builder obviously uses the game rules, just like PCGen. If you don't use the rules, you'd have to wait for a mod.

Though from what I understood, the Virtual Game Table might allow house-rules. It is not a rules adjudicator, meaning your home-brewed Power Attack feat can work there, too.
and I suppose that the game builder also allows this (but the latter I am not sure).

 

[HyannisRPGER]

As a gamer that lives 2 hours away from my old game group, and there is zero RPG gaming here on Cape Cod, I hope this will succeed so I can play with my old friends and play with other people online.

Will it succeed? Hard to say right now. With the delays, this is looking more like etools/ master tools all over again. All aspects of DDI was suposted to be live on the street date for the books.

 

[Samadhi]

Lol Cailte, that's the most attractive feature for me. I run a weekly session for five 11 year olds, so I end up maintaining their character sheets. I've been using DM Genie to do this (and run games) very successfully for the past 6 months, and I'm hoping the OGL will allow them to bring out a 4E version of the software.

But failling that (or even in addition) the ability to print out nice up-to-date character sheets and power cards is exactly what I want. And the good news is that if you want to tweak a character or power, you can! Yes, it's marked as 'homebrew' for the purposes of RPGA games, but WHO CARES? Flexibility = teh win.

 

[Samadhi]

Woot 2nd post. /cough

Just wanted to say that it looks like the WotC site was really struggling a few hours ago, probably under the load of tens of thousands of Europeans hitting the site thinking D&Di is actually live. I'd expect a similar drop in availablity when the US wakes up.

I'd also guess that, as they haven't actually announced anything on the front page, D&Di is not 'officially' up. They've just added the structure to the main site to allow for the content. Launch day is still 1 day away, according to their front page clock. There's probably an army of people working through the night (US time) on the go-live. Guess that's me and a million other people hitting refresh all day. Should help with their capacity issues.

It is very annoying though that both the Dungeon and Dragon sections clearly say 'The first 4E issue is now available, click here' and all you get is a (juicy) table of contents. The teases.

 

[Samadhi]

Oh, and yes - the official forums are a smoking pile of chips. Either because they're going through some sort of upgrade related to launch or because of the afore mentioned million raging nerds, all demanding WotC take their money or give them free stuff.


Edit: One day I'll learn to proof read *before* I post. /sigh

 

[Plane Sailing]

Wow way to take the choice out of character creation.

I think you misunderstand.

It isn't automatically allocating your skills, feats and powers.

Instead, it is calculating your skill check bonus depending upon which skills are trained, what your ability scores are and so forth. Calculating your damage from various attacks depending upon your weapon, ability scores, powers and feats.

y'know, that kind of thing

Cheers