I may not be switching to D&D 3.5 (Crossposted)

[Ds Da Man]

Luke, I love RPM, and found it most of it fairly simple, and easy to create custom stuff. If you can get me a "magic shop stock room generator" with something like a selector for type of shop (alchemist, weaponsmith, armorer, bowyer/fletcher, apocrathey(sp?), etc. , size of shop (small, medium, large-which could maybe determine a gold peice value, or even just a determined amount of items), greed factor (you know, like below book price, book price, above book price, super frickin' geedy), and an easy way to maybe include a "special" item or two for characters, I will be paypaling you shortly. Seeing how your work has been closest to what I want from a computer aid anyhow, and I just got a laptop for x-mas (1.6mhz, 256mbram, 30gbhd, dvd/cdrw), this one feature would really sell it for me. Then maybe I could create my maps, build slide presentations for MSPowerpoint, and link my town buildings right into your generator. My DMs work would be cut down even below half. PLEASE LUKE, YOU ARE MY ONLY HOPE!!!!! May the force be with you!!!!


P.S. Oh yeah, and maybe have a buy/sell price determined also buy the greedy/not greedy switch. Just some thoughts!

 

[Ranger REG]

Another HUGE reason people don't look beyond the "official" stuff is because many of them simply aren't aware of anything else. Getting one's program into the gaming public's consciousness is a difficult but necessary task.

Yeah, that's what I observed from the Wizards' message board. They claim PCGen is to slow to operate, they've had a personal experience with one or few third-party d20 product (whether it was written by a former Wizards/TSR employee) to come to the conclusion that all third-party products are not up to Wizards' standard (whatever that is), ... etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

No wonder most people hate the D&D community. They're so closed-minded. Just kidding.

Thank gawd there are those who are open-minded.

 

[Holy Bovine]

I realize that 3rd edition does create a very strong need for software tools, and I hate to hear about people considering giving the game away (or even the 3rd edition) because of lack of software support. I especially hate to hear it from people like Chaz or Eric.
I realize that theres big gaps in what ETools will do, and thats why I developed RolePlayingMaster - specifically to do what ETools (even MasterTools) wouldn't.

For 2 years now, I've developed RPM according to people's feedback of what they wanted. I have all that you mentioned above, and have done my best to make it clear that if something more or different is needed, I'm listening.
If, for example, you wanted encounter game logs automatically entered into the game calendar/diary, you would just have to ask. The only reason I haven't done this is because I work on areas by request, and that was never requested.

Of course, you may be one of the people that was hit by serious stability/corruption issues of RPM. If so, a new version with a different, "incorruptible" database is almost released.

If you insist that your software is by WotC, I can't help.

I just visited your website and looked at several fo the screen shots of what your program can do and read some of the info on it.

All I can say is - oh, my, god!!

I can't believe I haven't heard of the RPM until now - it looks very professional and if all the functions work as described I may be in love (with the program not you Luke - although I'm sure you're a nice guy and all I err, ah - what was I saying again? )

I have downloaded it (and what do you know you even have a Dragonstar download!) and will give it a workout this weekend and next week.

 

[Luke]

I can't believe I haven't heard of the RPM until now - it looks very professional and if all the functions work as described I may be in love (with the program not you Luke - although I'm sure you're a nice guy and all I err, ah - what was I saying again? )

You know, my e-mail and news post style is kind of terse (mostly cause I get that stuff done at around 3:00AM). I'm friendlier than I come across in text, and have given slight thought to putting a friendlier face somewhere on my website with a photo. Even though a photo may actually be a scarey idea, I suddenly feel kinda funny about the whole thing

I have downloaded it (and what do you know you even have a Dragonstar download!) and will give it a workout this weekend and next week.

On a more serious note, you catch me at a funny time, particularly if you want to download and try out sources like DragonStar or D20 Modern.
RPM has all but completed a very serious revamp. This solves serious data corruption and stability issues experienced by some, as well as introduces a swag of better features.

I highly recommend that you look at the almost released beta of the revamp available from:
http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/hosted/rpm/betaProgress.htm
As soon as it becomes the official version (almost certainly by mid next week), I'll update the downloads (DragonStar etc) to work with the new release. RPM now uses a completely different database manager (speed, incorruptibility, stability etc).

Have Fun!

 

[talmar]

I agree with you Eric on the software front but I have to admit I'm looking forward to the revised books. You see, I still have the first printing of all the books and have wanted to buy the rereleased books but couldn't justify the money with a baby on the way.

Now that these books will have more than just the errata included my wife has agreed that I can get the revised books when they come out. I'm one of those who is putting aside 5-10 bucks a paycheck for them.

I know there are a lot of excellent programs out there. I own eTools and keep up with PCGen ( I still use 2.63 and the latest and greatest ) and I've checked out RPM and Twin Rose's and such but my biggest gripe is the lack of WotC material support. With a limited budget I've kept pretty much to the WotC product line and there's nothing out there that supports the splat books or FRCS or Magic of Faerun etc etc etc.

I am eagerly awaiting news on the WotC/PCGen discussions.

 

[Cergorach]

Luke,
Isn't it possible to write a conversion program to import E-Tools data (and PcGen data)? That way a lot of people will be able to use official splatbooks 'legally'...

 

[Ds Da Man]

Hey Talmar, RPM is very easy to add new classes, items, monsters, etc. I'm sure some of the others are too.

 

[Davin]

Isn't it possible to write a conversion program to import E-Tools data (and PcGen data)? That way a lot of people will be able to use official splatbooks 'legally'...

IANAL, but I'd say you're on legal quicksand there. Technically, even the splat book info written for eTools isn't legal -- they're just letting us get away with it (so far). Pushing that illegal data to someone else's product will likely not be tolerated and might even get the eTools-specific files shut down as a side effect.

IOW, if I were you, I'd avoid that whole scenario.

 

[Cergorach]

IANAL, but I'd say you're on legal quicksand there. Technically, even the splat book info written for eTools isn't legal -- they're just letting us get away with it (so far). Pushing that illegal data to someone else's product will likely not be tolerated and might even get the eTools-specific files shut down as a side effect.

IOW, if I were you, I'd avoid that whole scenario.

No offense, but that would kill E-Tools completely. And to be honest, i don't know wheter or not that's a bad thing...

A different approach would be writing a conversion program/tool for PcGen. The crew from PcGen is talking with WotC to get the splatbooks officially in PcGen...

 

[Leopold]

No offense, but that would kill E-Tools completely. And to be honest, i don't know wheter or not that's a bad thing...

A different approach would be writing a conversion program/tool for PcGen. The crew from PcGen is talking with WotC to get the splatbooks officially in PcGen...

which is completely possible as long as you stick by the OGL...once you deviate from such things start going bad...