Ideal all-in-one RPG software package

[Jeysie]

I wish there was software ideal for online use, personally... a fully-featured RPG server program that an online group of players and DM could use.

1. Character sheet that involves as little math on your part as possible; all you do is plug in "fluff", abilities, levels, skill ranks, spells, equipment, conditions, and feats, and the software then auto-calculates things for you. It ought to be customizable for those who know what they're doing, however. This information would then be processed into a simple "cheat sheet" where you can look at all your mods at a glance. These sheets should be storable and shareable between people on the program "network".

It might be nice to have a simpler sheet and generator for creating and storing NPCs, but even just the regular PC sheets ought to suffice.

2. A dice roller that pulls its numbers from the character sheets. If you need to roll a Search check, for instance, you'd just pick it from a menu and the dice would get rolled for you. Of course, there should be a manual input option for when you need to roll weird stuff, but most of the time menu macros should work. There should also be a log for all dice results, with time and player stamps.

3. A battle map. Doesn't need to be anything fancy; a grid and "pogs" would work just fine. Should have a "marking pen" of some sort, with line, circle, square, and temporary overlay options. You should be able to make little "post-it" labels on pogs and squares, and there should be a "private map" for the DM.

4. A combat tracker to go with the battle map. Something to let you keep track of initiative, current HP, current AC, the whole nine yards at a glance.

5. My own group would rather use their own IRC clients for the actual RPing, but I suspect most online groups would need chat/log abilities as well.

6. It should be a "normal" program runnable on computers that aren't necessarily full-juiced. No Java, no Flash, no Python, no GTK, no whatever. No needing high-end tech specs. You just install and it runs, instead of having to track down, download, and troubleshoot a multitude of separate frameworks and dependencies. It should be able to accommodate dial-up connections.

7. It should have the option to easily form a private network. No having to register for anything, or connect to a public server, or what have you, unless you want to.

I've come across software that does one or more of these things, but not all of them at once. Some like OpenRPG and Fantasy Grounds sound like they do 1-5 just fine, but even they fall down at 6 and/or 7. That tends to be the sticking point for my group, since we have computers of varying ages and Windows versions, some are stuck on dial-up, and not all of us are hugely computer-saavy.

Peace & Luv, Liz

 

[iwarrior-poet]

We have all been waiting for this type of software since Third Edition came out. There has been nothing but a series of bungles and problems (Master Tools---E-Tools---CMP's RPGTK/Foundry + WoTC not releasing datasets to other developers), that have left all of us in the lurch without a good comprehensive digital aide.

Now with WoTC's Digital Initiative on the (distant) horizon---there is very little impetus for anyone else to create a good bit of software.

As much as is it hurts to admit it---WotC has won again. Most of us will wind up paying for a web-based aide that will be buggy as heck, not too well integrated, and aggravatingly slow. Why will we do this? because we all want access to the datasets---Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Complete Series, Monster Manuals, Draconomicon (great book btw).

WoTC and CMP have completely blown their chances in this market. We could have had a stellar piece of software YEARS ago if it hadn't been so badly mismanaged.

 

[Alan Shutko]

My approach is a simple db architecture with really only two tables: objects and functions.
Everything is done in xml, even the functions.

I went that way for a while, and decided it was a really, really bad idea.

There are tons and tons of great programming languages out there. It's usually a much better idea to write a framework in one of them rather than to write your own bad language in XML. (In general, any language written in XML is bad, and any language you write yourself is bad. Doing both is quadruply bad.)

Here's why: it's easy to write a dice roller in any programming language around. Why would someone want to learn your undocumented language to write a dice roller, when they could write one in the language they know? Or, why write one at all, since you can't swing a cat without hitting five?

I'd say, in general, the "totally general" application framework is a bad idea in itself, because honestly, most people don't want to write apps, they want to use them. And those that do want to write them, generally don't want to learn something new unless it offers them truly great benefits over existing tools. (For example, how does your framework make it easier to define a skill than doing it in, say, Ruby on Rails?)

Not to say the framework idea is terrible. But it'd probably be much better as a domain-specific language or toolkit on something like VB.net or Ruby.

 

[Alan Shutko]

In case someone thought I came down hard on Firzair, let me explain a little more in detail. Again, I've gone down this path before. I was coming up with the perfectly general character generator... it had ways to define each attribute, calculations, tables, etc....

Then I realized I'd just invented Excel. Except mine was less flexible, had worse formatting options, and way less documentation. There are millions of people in the world who know Excel. How many knew my new system? One.

Chargen is so complicated these days, and there are so many new options coming out every day, that the only way a project can be successful is if it has the largest community around it as possible, creating content and defining the rules within the app. Any decision that shrinks the number of people who are capable of helping out decreases the chance of your app gaining traction. So the trade-off has to be: only decrease your potential community if the increase in productivity you gain is worth it. For instance, Excel (as successful as it is with Heroforge) doesn't make multiperson development very easy, so you might be able to gain in productivity by switching to something else, even though fewer people will be able to help.

For instance, you might switch to python (which is used in a lot of computer games these days as a scripting language) which has a reasonably large development community you can draw from, is dynamic enough to make loading in new functionality easy, and has lots of documentation, libraries and tool support. Or if you want a database-backed website, Ruby on Rails has lots of docs and makes it dead simple to do simple things, and it's getting more people trying it out all the time.

If you can build on something like that, you get to use all sorts of resources other people can do. If you want to write your own stack from the ground up, you have to do all that work yourself. And I guarantee, you don't have time to do all that. No one person does.

 

[boB S]

I'd say, in general, the "totally general" application framework is a bad idea in itself, because honestly, most people don't want to write apps, they want to use them. And those that do want to write them, generally don't want to learn something new unless it offers them truly great benefits over existing tools...

Not to say the framework idea is terrible. But it'd probably be much better as a domain-specific language or toolkit on something like VB.net or Ruby.

When I brought up the "framework" idea earlier in the thread, my thoughts were along the following lines: First, the language I had in the back of my mind was Java; if done correctly it can prove to be as close to truly portable as one can get and its OOP basis fits in with some design ideas I have floating around in my head.

Second, I mentioned having some sort of "wizard" to guide the user of the application in setting it up with the rules the user desired. The wizard would have to be sophisticated--it would have to be able to identify conflicts in any rules the user tried to set up. This would be a framework in the sense, for example, when the user started setting up his character classes, the program might give him generic options such as fighter, magic user, etc., that he would be free to modify. He could rename the term fighter and make it paladin and start modifying the generic properties of "fighter" to match what he wants "paladin" to be. My thinking here is then no corporate entity can claim their trade marked terminology was being infringed upon. As another example, when defining the combat tables for this new entity, paladin, the user would start typing over the existing generic values with the ones he wanted them to be. The programmer could be clever and have a pattern detection algorithm to automatically alter the as yet untyped table numbers (a la auto-completion) to match the detected pattern. Hopefully by doing tricks like this the user would be saved a lot of typing. And no lawyers could claim that that the programmer was stealing copyrighted combat tables. And so on and so on.

So my hope would be that the user would NOT have to be programming-literate, he just would have to be able to fill in the blanks as the wizard guided him through the extensive setup process. When he was done, he would hopefully have a rules structure that matches how he wants to play whatever game (Fighter could be redefined as Jedi Knight and a non-D&D game could be setup for instance) he likes.

Another part of this design would be that it would be possible to export one GM's rules structure to another person who could then import it into his application framework. Would save tons of typing. And hopefully these rules structures could be easily edited after being setup so that if one did import someone else's rules, he could tweak those to match what he wanted.

I think something along these lines could be accomplished in practice if one had the necessary time and expertise.

 

[thpr]

In case someone thought I came down hard on Firzair, let me explain a little more in detail. Again, I've gone down this path before.

I think you were being nice. At least to Firzair. You do seem to have something against cats, however.

I suspect many of us have been down that path at one time or another - just not necessarily with a d20 system (my first experience with building a disaster was a crop measurement and sampling system for a large University field research group)

As you point out (without using the exact words), while Firzair may (or may not) realize what he is doing, he is effectively writing a compiler for another programming language. He's trading Java or C# or JavaScript or whatever for XML.

The key question is whether the translation to a new language is an advantage. Given my experience, it doesn't make sense to do that translation for an RPG system; one is better off with an easily expandable program and dynamically supporting users by adding function as it is requested.

 

[Firzair]

I think you were being nice. At least to Firzair. You do seem to have something against cats, however.

I suspect many of us have been down that path at one time or another - just not necessarily with a d20 system (my first experience with building a disaster was a crop measurement and sampling system for a large University field research group)

As you point out (without using the exact words), while Firzair may (or may not) realize what he is doing, he is effectively writing a compiler for another programming language. He's trading Java or C# or JavaScript or whatever for XML.

The key question is whether the translation to a new language is an advantage. Given my experience, it doesn't make sense to do that translation for an RPG system; one is better off with an easily expandable program and dynamically supporting users by adding function as it is requested.

Hi again,
I know that in effect my application is just using another form of script engine based on xml. But the problem is, I just have not found a script language that allows you to reference object variables that are not in memory but only stored in the database. Sure you could always create a wrapper function but you would always have to call this function instead of simply using the variable.
Having all objects and all functions in memory needs a big chunk of memory. OK, ram is cheap today but there are computers out there that don't have 1 GB, especially laptops that are used on the gaming table.

I've been thinking on how I could create a way to easily define objects, rules and gui just from the program with only a limited form of scripting capability for doing formulas in rules. But until now I haven't found a really good resolution to this.

My goal is that almost every aspect of the appliaction should be customizable, not only adding new variables to a given object that get's represented in a standard gui (often just grids). And I like being able to used it with friends that don't speak english (I'm german). So it needs to be easy to change the language of textfields without changing the rules behind the scene.

Perhaps the xml isn't the best way to write functions, another scripting language more in league with Javasript or something would probably be better from a programmers standpoint as most developers would more easily adopt to just another dialect instead of xml-tags. For now, I'm using xml... perhaps I will redo the functions with a script engine and if someone could point me in the direction of a really flexible one I would be happy.

Greetings
Firzair

 

[schporto]

These are 2 potentially useless cents to throw in...
I find it amazing (and I guess I shouldn't) how many of these stated wants contradict what others want. And I think it merely shows that there will not be ONE solution, but many. And you should pick which you want. For example:
I want to use it on any computer vs. I don't want to have to install dependencies and frameworks: Sorry folks. The program for a Mac is different then the program for a Windows is different then the program for a Linux machine. Unless you install a framework (Java, Wine, .Net/Mono etc). This is a fundamental concept in computers. Yes the internet is the same, but Safari, Mozilla, Internet Explorer, Opera all handle some bits differently. Besides that competes with "I'm not online when I game."
I want it to be speedy vs. I don't want it to use a lot of memory. Decent programs put needed things in memory because memory is 'fast', disk is 'slow'. And because there is so much in DnD that you will want immediate access to, a lot has to go into memory.
I want it to handle the newest from WotC vs. I want it to be free. Here's two that will never see eye to eye. WotC will not release their stuff for free. If I'm wrong about that then I will eat page by page my DMG. WotC will also sue anyone who hosts their stuff for free. For that I'll eat my PHB page by page.
I want it easy to update vs. I want to be able to customize everything. OK these aren't completely contradictory, but the more customizable it is, the more complex that customization will need to be. Conceivably you could make something that has a nice curve on the learning experience, but that becomes awfully difficult.
As I said in the end I don't think there can be ONE solution. Heck Unix users still argue about simple text editors. You even say "vi vs emacs" and a holy war erupts that will prove that paladins can hate each other .
I wish everyone good luck in developing a project that makes them happy. Right now, pen paper, dice, battlemat, minis, and markers do it for me. (OK, I do have something to track HP and initiative, but that meets my needs, and probably nobody else's.)
-cpd

 

[Redrobes]

I find it amazing (and I guess I shouldn't) how many of these stated wants contradict what others want....

I have been following this thread in the background as a developer of an online app and I was going to say the same at the end. Isn't it fascinating. A lot of the feedback that I get is split between the two extremes of more features and make it simple and easier to use.

The question posed by BobS is a good one and the results just goes to show that being able to choose from a variety of RPG apps is extremely useful or even necessary. If WotC is ever going to make an official be all and end all one then I hope they are taking notes here.

There is an ideal app for one person but there is no app that is ideal for everyone. A lot of the reviews on these boards consist of "I use such and such an app and its great / the best" which is all well and good but everyone should try them all and pick the ones that are right for them.

 

[Jeysie]

These are 2 potentially useless cents to throw in...
I find it amazing (and I guess I shouldn't) how many of these stated wants contradict what others want. And I think it merely shows that there will not be ONE solution, but many. And you should pick which you want. For example:

Hmm. Well, addressing the ones I mentioned...

I want to use it on any computer vs. I don't want to have to install dependencies and frameworks: Sorry folks. The program for a Mac is different then the program for a Windows is different then the program for a Linux machine. Unless you install a framework (Java, Wine, .Net/Mono etc). This is a fundamental concept in computers.:

If I decide to go install Opera or OpenOffice or what have you, I just download the appropriate file for my system and go. I don't have to download the program *and* then go hunt down and install all the dependencies seperately, because everything's bundled (as it should be... they're the programmer and know what their program needs, I don't!)

If someone's going to be lazy and force the end user do some of the leg work for them, then they should at least provide links (or better yet, locally hosted downloads wherever feasible) to all dependencies they know work with their program, and provide instructions on how to install/configure them to work with their program.

I don't expect to use the *same* executable on every computer. I do expect to be able to download and install the appropriate executable of a program for my system without having to be a programmer myself.

I want it easy to update vs. I want to be able to customize everything. OK these aren't completely contradictory, but the more customizable it is, the more complex that customization will need to be. Conceivably you could make something that has a nice curve on the learning experience, but that becomes awfully difficult.

Don't really see a problem here, either. Most RPG systems are based on fairly consistent formulas. So having a "builder" which lets you use the most common formulas like building blocks ought to be enough for most purposes; then you can give access for those people who want to dig into the nitty-gritty and do more esoteric stuff. Kind of like the Formula Builder in Excel vs. writing it out yourself.

Peace & Luv, Liz