• NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.

DM's famillar, anyone use it? Worth it?


log in or register to remove this ad

In my gaming group we found DMGenie to be much better (best of all the options we've tried in fact... two DM's use it without exception now)

Cheers
 



I've used DMF for several years now, and found it absolutlely invaluable. At one time I was using it to run 5 on-line campaigns and 4 FTF campaigns at the same time.

It reduces the amount of time spent running melees by about 50-75% for me, and the support is excellent - the developer is constantly releasing new improved versions at no extra charge and the discussion groups are excellent.

YMMV, but I can't recommend DMF highly enough. I suggest you do what I did - download the trial version and try it out for a sessions - after that I was completely sold on it.
 

I use DM's Familiar and love it. I run three different campaigns and can't imagine not using DMF. Primarily I use DMF for reference (all creatures, spells, feats, etc) and for running combat & rolling checks (spot vs hides, listen, etc).

I originally took to DMF due to it's simpler user interface. It was very intuitive for me. Also, it isn't a character generator, so I didn't have that overhead I didn't want. I use eTools for character generation, and DMF has an import capability that works for me. There is also a PCGen import method.

Definately give it a try. The DMF message board is great as well. You can get any of your questions answered there. (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dmsfamiliar) And there is a lot of additional stuff & help available on the unoffical DMF site (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DMF_Unofficial_Fan_Site) you would want to check out too.

Todd, the author, is also very available. Whenever I've suggested new minor features, I tend to see them withing a month or so in a new release.

I think DMF is one of my best D&D related perchases ever.
 

I use it and really like it, but I wrote it so I'm just slightly biased. :)

DMF does have a free demo so you can download and try it out before buying. DM Genie and Roleplaying Master have free demos as well. Try em all, see which ones mesh with the way you play, and then decide.

If you have specific questions, I can answer those.
 

I've used DMF for awhile and it's a useful program. I wish it would do more, but I've found that it's the best compromise out there between functionality and simplicity. Plus, the community support is unparallelled. The programmer also releases regular updates. I've tried DMGenie; I like DMF better.
 

And the evidence of this thread is that you *must* try it out yourself! Some people will find one product works better for them, someone else will find another suits them.

Just for the record I'm really glad that it is a healthy field with several different developers working on similar products. Go developers!

Cheers
 

I use DMF and I would say overall I really like it. I would love it if it was able to run on a Mac as a native program. I have to run the program on my friend's laptop when using it in a game, and using Virtual PC on my Mac otherwise. Virtual PC slows down the program too much to use it in a game, IMO.

The main reason I like it is the ability to organize large combats in the Combat Board. One group I DM has eight players. Add in a dozen or so creatures and keeping track of inititive is a nightmare. With DMF I just drop the players and enemies onto the Combat Board and just click my way through the initiative. Its also nice that it keeps track of how many rounds have elapsed and you can drop in things like spell durations so you can easily keep track of when a spell wears off.
 

Into the Woods

Remove ads

Top