D&D 5E Dungeonscape no more?

[Nebulous]

I don't think Dungeonscape was going well anyway. Better to call it a day now and move on I think. I think it was the right decision.

I've not been privy to any of the beta or inside knowledge, but I thought everyone was very, very pleased with the progress and it was on the very cusp of wide release??

 

[Zaruthustran]

You know how Narbacular Drop was a clunky, ugly game with a crazy innovative, fascinating mechanic? And that team was given money and art and other resources by Valve, and turned that game into Portal?

Yeah. I want WotC to do something like that.

Our hobby has a talented, passionate, and tech-proficient constituency. There are so many community-made tools out there. Tools that aren't pretty, but work. I'd love to see such a team get elevated. Take something that already works, polish up the UI and optimize the functionality, and ship it.

It's D&D, for crissakes. Simple math and text. All I want is a pretty front-end of any of the dozens of auto-calculating character sheets that are out there. With added functionality of pulling race, class, and feat information from a simple text database.

I don't want or need anything complex or difficult to program. Nothing grandiose. What I described above shouldn't take more than two months of dev time. Write a programmer a check for $24k, write a UI designer a check for $10k, and get it done!

 

[ForumFerret]

I've not been privy to any of the beta or inside knowledge, but I thought everyone was very, very pleased with the progress and it was on the very cusp of wide release??

Not hardly. Sadly, the beta was in sad shape. Last time I used it, it didn't even add Con bonus to HP. You couldn't multiclass, it was a mess, stuff didn't work all over the place. It would be more accurately termed alpha software, it didn't really even hit basic functionality in the character builder, and NONE of the other features had been implemented yet.

 

[Nebulous]

You know how Narbacular Drop was a clunky, ugly game with a crazy innovative, fascinating mechanic? And that team was given money and art and other resources by Valve, and turned that game into Portal?

Yeah. I want WotC to do something like that.

Our hobby has a talented, passionate, and tech-proficient constituency. There are so many community-made tools out there. Tools that aren't pretty, but work. I'd love to see such a team get elevated. Take something that already works, polish up the UI and optimize the functionality, and ship it.

It's D&D, for crissakes. Simple math and text. All I want is a pretty front-end of any of the dozens of auto-calculating character sheets that are out there. With added functionality of pulling race, class, and feat information from a simple text database.

I don't want or need anything complex or difficult to program. Nothing grandiose. What I described above shouldn't take more than two months of dev time. Write a programmer a check for $24k, write a UI designer a check for $10k, and get it done!

I agree, this should be ridiculously easy in this day and age to do. Hell, in some respects, 5th edition should have launched out of the gate with digital character building support.

 

[drjones]

That sucks. The beta I tested was coming along well enough and was more useful than nothing at all, which if they are going to start all over on their tools is what we will get for another year or more.

 

[Zaukrie]

And people ripped me for my thread on how bad licensing was going... sad news. I really want a good set of etools.

 

[Astrosicebear]

This type of program with this type of scope is NOT easy. The backbone, which no one ever sees, was most likely 90% of the codework. You are talking about a DRM system with heavy protections, an e-store, with a complex character generator and expandable ruleset codebase. Building a basic structure is fine, but making it expandable is quite a challenge.

 

[Piratecat]

You know how Narbacular Drop was a clunky, ugly game with a crazy innovative, fascinating mechanic? And that team was given money and art and other resources by Valve, and turned that game into Portal?

Yeah. I want WotC to do something like that.

Our hobby has a talented, passionate, and tech-proficient constituency. There are so many community-made tools out there. Tools that aren't pretty, but work. I'd love to see such a team get elevated. Take something that already works, polish up the UI and optimize the functionality, and ship it.

It's D&D, for crissakes. Simple math and text. All I want is a pretty front-end of any of the dozens of auto-calculating character sheets that are out there. With added functionality of pulling race, class, and feat information from a simple text database.

I don't want or need anything complex or difficult to program. Nothing grandiose. What I described above shouldn't take more than two months of dev time. Write a programmer a check for $24k, write a UI designer a check for $10k, and get it done!

I'd encourage [MENTION=697]mearls[/MENTION] and his team to consider this approach, too. There are some risks -- ongoing support, for instance -- but there are some huge advantages as well. By taking the best tool from the fan community and legitimizing it, not only does Hasbro know that they aren't starting from scratch, they also build massive goodwill. People like folk heroes, and it's damn cool when a good fan product done out of love gets officially recognized and improved.

 

[Nebulous]

This type of program with this type of scope is NOT easy. The backbone, which no one ever sees, was most likely 90% of the codework. You are talking about a DRM system with heavy protections, an e-store, with a complex character generator and expandable ruleset codebase. Building a basic structure is fine, but making it expandable is quite a challenge.

I'm no code monkey, but you're probably right. Nevertheless, i know there must be thousands of people with the requisite skill and track record to pull this off, as well as love of the hobby. Why they haven't been given enough money to support the most popular rpg in the world, i don't know. I guess it just wasn't up to snuff. I just find it odd, because the 4e tools were well regarded, until the whole plug got pulled on that too.

 

[ExploderWizard]

A quick click and print character builder with a fancy character sheet output would be nice to have but it isn't like 5E is so complicated that you can't play without it and that's a GOOD thing.

Monsters are easier to create than they ever have been since 3E. Characters don't come with reams of powers text that they did in 4E so I'm not seeing the huge need for tools to manage this stuff.

Right now I just use excel and word for game prep and everything is running fine. I would buy a decent character & monster generator but it isn't like the game is unplayable without them.