Electonic Aids, Gaming, and Third Party Publishers

[Belen]

The complications of crunch turned me off completely from the 3E+ ruleset. I ended up playing Castles & Crusades, which is simple enough not to need outside support. On the other hand, crunch is a big plus for many players - it's only the DM who feels the full weight of complex rules.

The main problem with C&C is finding players. My group is not interested and I am not going to form a new group. My current players rock.

 

[Crothian]

Well, Crothian, for someone who spends as much time with the game as you do, I reckon that you have had to come up with the shortcuts. I do not think that others are as fortunate.

Te amount of time I actually spend on games is not near as much as the illusion of time I have to mspend on games that people think. I have a full time job, I see friends and family and game very rarely. The shortcuts I have found actually orginated for me running Palladium and White Wolf. I learned the rules needed to be learned, but the Storyteller/GM could create his own illusion with NPCs and how well stated up they are. I learned the story is more importnat then the rules and that keeping the game going, having good players that know what they are doing and are willing to help the game along, and a DM who knows the system and is not afraid to be wrong or try something new really help.

Also, while I enjoy buying RPG books, I hate reading through the crunch. I never take the time to go through a stack of books to find all the crunch I need, but I can guarantee it would get used if it was all in a nifty excel sheet.

I don't buy a book unless I plan to read it cover to cover, thems the rules or I'd have a much larger collection then I do. And since I do devote the needed time to read them, it helps when I'm looking for something.

 

[IronWolf]

...but the Storyteller/GM could create his own illusion with NPCs and how well stated up they are.

I think this alone is one of the biggest time savers. There just really isn't the need to stat up every NPC a player is going to encounter. The town council person doesn't really need to have a full set of stats to go with him. Some that can run on the fly need nothing or maybe just a short sentence. Even a DM that likes to prepare a large amount ahead of time probably only needs a few sentences written down about him and most of this I imagine to be fluff not the crunchy numbers.

 

[Mythmere1]

The main problem with C&C is finding players. My group is not interested and I am not going to form a new group. My current players rock.

I really only brought up C&C because it would sound whiny if all I said was that I quit playing D&D. Although C&C works really well for a less complex system, it's not to everyone's taste - some of my players would certainly prefer 3.5 if they could find a DM willing to spend the time on it. So, it's not a general solution - just the one that happened to work for me. My real point was that the complexity was enough to make me quit playing 3.5 even WITH all the backup tools I could find.

 

[Belen]

I really only brought up C&C because it would sound whiny if all I said was that I quit playing D&D. Although C&C works really well for a less complex system, it's not to everyone's taste - some of my players would certainly prefer 3.5 if they could find a DM willing to spend the time on it. So, it's not a general solution - just the one that happened to work for me. My real point was that the complexity was enough to make me quit playing 3.5 even WITH all the backup tools I could find.

Well, the Battlebox plus e-aids have kept me in the game and made my life much easier. I do own the C&C stuff, but I was really turned off by the classes. I would go back to 2e before I played C&C.

 

[WayneLigon]

I would like to have some more e-aids as well but for the most part I do fine by hand.

I'd like to go the e-tools route but I don't like the idea of paying once for the program, then having to pay again, even a little bit, for each supplement that comes out that I might want to use. If they gave you the data sets, then I'd buy the program.

I'd say the reason that most other people don't bother with creating such e-aids is the cost. Professional programming time is really, really expensive and even then you might get something like the original e-Tools after you've spent all that development money.

 

[Belen]

I'd say the reason that most other people don't bother with creating such e-aids is the cost. Professional programming time is really, really expensive and even then you might get something like the original e-Tools after you've spent all that development money.

Well, I am not asking anyone to develop something on par with e-tools, but a nice generator such as Heroforge or other aids that help us use their rules would be nice. Crunch provides a real entry level barrier that a lot of people choose not to leap. This is one reason that d20 was so popular. d20 allowed people to master a set of rules, then transfer that knowledge to other games.

e-aids can do something similar. Without them, I would not be able to run the types of game that I enjoy. And as long as I have to do crunch by hand, I will not use books such as Midnight, Blue Rose, Advanced Bestiary etc. Options and rules are fine and dandy, but without an easy way to use them, then they just will not get used.

 

[Klaus]

BelenUmbria -> You've hit upon the very reason the BattleBox was created. In computer terms, the crunch and fluff of RPG books are the software, letting the game do different things. Fiery Dragon wanted to make a new hardware, one that would allow the game to be run easier and faster.

 

[Turjan]

I think a spreadsheet-based solution might be the best idea for a third party tool. Excel contains even the possibility to create masks for putting data in. I haven't looked too closely at Openoffice.org, but I suppose it will be similar, and as it's completely free, it would be the easiest solution. I think the main problem with these easy to use solution is that those files will be easy to copy, and many publishers might simply fear that they will lose sales because of this.

 

[Belen]

BelenUmbria -> You've hit upon the very reason the BattleBox was created. In computer terms, the crunch and fluff of RPG books are the software, letting the game do different things. Fiery Dragon wanted to make a new hardware, one that would allow the game to be run easier and faster.

This is why I own the original battlebox plus the Arcana Evolved version. Those combat cards have saved my life more times than I can count!