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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nathanael" data-source="post: 306232" data-attributes="member: 5784">Actually, PCGEN can filter the information you use. You only have to select the books you want from the various companies, and if you open up a character that used that set of books, you can start a new one with the exact same selections of materials. I use the Core D&D books, the Class Books, the Monsters of Faerun, Oriental Adventures, the Psionics Book and all the Dragon magazines. And I'm only using a small percentage of all the material available.ETools, from what I'm hearing, hasn't even implemented all of the rules in the three Core books. You have to manually enter dragons, you can't fully implement all the magic items you could create using the DMG and templates are not implemented and can only be used by creating a new monster and manually adding the info from the MM. So even if you are the rare DM who uses only the three Core books for designing their adventures (and remember I mean ONLY those three, not those three and a smidgen from here or there) you have to do a lot of work to save yourself some work. And not all of us can afford or are handy with Access. I'm a graphic designer, and with all the programmes I have to know, not to mention HTML and XML coding, I don't have room for a learning a database programme in my busy schedule.The other problem I have with ETools is that WOTC has forbidden to allow PCGen to use non SRD material, but they have also refused to expand the SRD in almost two years so they have basically limited the use of PCGen to 'encourage' consumers to spend money on ETools as the only 'official' book using generator in town. And they haven't even implemented the non-SRD books yet and don't plan on it unless ETools makes Pokemon amounts in their usual time frame of 90 days. This gets right up my nose because the PCGen people have at least attempted to make the best product they can, with regular updates and support. WOTC, on the other hand, has a long history of neglecting to support and outright cancelling game lines that don't meet their profit margins, which are inflated due to their absorbtion into the dying Hasbro conglomerate, regardless of the games success.  They created the SRD, in my opinion, under the false pretense of sharing D&D with the community. What we have is a few books from WOTC that we can use, and a bunch they keep to themselves for personal while the community provides a ton of material (like that which will be provided for ETools) that they can just 'yoink!' and legally use at their leisure. It's because of this callous disregard for their customers that I'll be sticking to PCGen until they complete their product and show at least a years support, thank you very much...</blockquote>

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