Eric, stop trolling the boards!
Actually, this brings a good point - just how important are good computer tools to playing an RPG these days? It's not so much that the tools are NECESSARY for play of the game (sorry, Nutkin - gotta burst your tease-bubble) it's the simple fact of how indispensible computers are to all of us in our general lives. Eric, you illustrated that VERY clearly when you said that your computer was your toy, your alarm, your game planner, and your day-planner (paraphrased).
For most of us, computers are an integral part of a 21st century lifestyle (God, that sounds weird!) and without it, many of the tasks we used to do by hand are HARDER now, and we wonder how we used to do these things before.
Eric, I remember your stories of use of the 2nd edition core rules tools, and your use of Campaign Cartographer to map out examples of attacks of opportunity back on your old site to help us all understand them. You've been doing it for years, and just the fact of supplementing what you do inyour everyday life is important to you.
That's the same for me and technical manuals. Gimme the gigantic 500-page technical manual, AND gimme the PDF also! I like a physical book to learn and do an in-depth read of a topic, but when I'm searching for something, I break out the PDF copy and do an extensive search - because physical books can have T.O.C's and indexes that LIE LIKE A CHEAP RUG. There's nothing like picking out every word in a book that references what I seek.
That said, I don't use electronic tools to prepare my game NPC's. I DO use map software (Campaign Cartographer) and I do use Corel Draw and MS Office for my notes and diagrams, but most of the NPC's are prepared by hand - because I enjoy it, and because if I need an NPC on the spot, I use my quick and dirty NPC creation rules to create an NPC if needed. Rarely do I use tools to map out every little thing, because quite simply MY PLAYERS WON'T LET ME PLAN THAT FAR. Those rat-bastards
)) will alter plans, go to places I don't expect them to, and they'll NOT go to places that they OBVIOUSLY must go, to advance the story - so in general, much of my adventure design needs be mobile to handle players that surprise me far too much.
What DO I use things such as PCGen for? Creation of PC's that I play in other people's campaigns. I do this to have an awesome character sheet, not necessarily get every little thing right. Plus, the inventory features of PCGEN alone make it worth my time.
This is why D&D revised (let's do away with the 3.5 or 3.2 nonsense, in my opinion - it really doesn't describe what the revision is) won't depend on my computer support, or lack thereof.
P.S. - Eric, have you tried d20 Modern yet? Would you ever even consider running a game of d20 Modern, if you had no support tools?
