More Infos About DDI / Campaign Tools

[sunmaster]

I want to bring you another thread with some interesting news, this time about the DDI respectively the Campaign Tools.

Let us hear what Trevor Kidd writes (can you smell it?):

So last week we announced that we were working on a set of Campaign Tools with the intention of helping players manage and run their ongoing games and campaigns. These tools will focus on encounters, monsters, mapping and adventures.

Previously, we focused all of our energies and effort into making the Character Builder the best tool it could be. We're going to continue that focused effort as we move forward - we're just shifting our attention to the Campaign Tools. This means that we're not actively working on any other unreleased tools, which includes the game table and the character visualizer. Once we have the Campaign Tools out and we're as happy with them as we are with the Character Builder, we'll have a better idea of what our next step is.

As far as more details about the Campaign Tools, I don't have any more information for you now, but we should have some details for you soon.

D&D Insider Tools Information - Wizards Community


My last thread about the GTS seminar became a very interesting discussion.
Hopefully these new plans of WOTC about the 4E tools will also become an exchange of interesting ideas.



Good day and good gaming ;-)

 

[Shemeska]

This means that we're not actively working on any other unreleased tools, which includes the game table and the character visualizer.

No surprise there.

And cue the firestorm on the WotC boards.

 

[sunmaster]

What can we - the community - do ?

I do not like the plans of WOTC, too.

We can discuss here your opinions about the WOTC tools.
But we can also collect your ideas what we the community can do to make the virtual life of GMs and players of 4E better.
This would be some constructive criticism of WOTCs plans regarding the tools.

Maybe there is some way how we can customize the existing open-source tools - like maptool and openrpg etc. - for 4E.
Maybe there are other ways, how we can bring 4E virtual functionality into the virtual net of nets of cyber planes?

Hey Mr. Rouse, you read my last thread. Maybe you will in the next days read this, too. Can you say something about the "fan license" of 4E, please?
If the community here is going to make a 4E tool under the so called
"Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike" license - that means a not commercial(<-- !!! ) and free tool/software - , can we make custom maptool and openrpg versions?
(To make this question clear I want to link here to the text of this mentioned license:
license deed: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
license legal text: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/legalcode )

I am curious about your ideas.

 

[Derren]

Bye Bye game table.
Once work has stopped on a software project it is very unlikely that it starts again.

 

[hong]

I do not like the plans of WOTC, too.

We can discuss here your opinions about the WOTC tools.
But we can also collect your ideas what we the community can do to make the virtual life of GMs and players of 4E better.
This would be some constructive criticism of WOTCs plans regarding the tools.

Maybe there is some way how we can customize the existing open-source tools - like maptool and openrpg etc. - for 4E.
Maybe there are other ways, how we can bring 4E virtual functionality into the virtual net of nets of cyber planes?

Hey Mr. Rouse, you read my last thread. Maybe you will in the next days read this, too. Can you say something about the "fan license" of 4E, please?
If the community here is going to make a 4E tool under the so called
"Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike" license - that means a not commercial(<-- !!! ) and free tool/software - , can we make custom maptool and openrpg versions?
(To make this question clear I want to link here to the text of this mentioned license:
license deed: Creative Commons — Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported
license legal text: Creative Commons Legal Code )

I am curious about your ideas.

Someone on the other DDI thread mentioned using the updated Char Builder XML to import characte data into Maptool. He sounded excited.

I haven't used Maptool, but I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't already a lot of 4E user-written stuff for it.

 

[Henrix]

As a DM I really applaud this. Campaign tools sounds very useful to me.

I surmise that there are more DMs among the DDI subscribers than there are people who just play.
And that those who want the map tools for online games is a vocal (on the interwebs) minority (sorry, guys).

The character visualizer would have been very nice to see, though, even in a rough form. Both for player and nonplayer characters.

 

[hong]

Who needs a character visualizer when you have DeviantArt, Photobucket, Imageshack and Google?

 

[Henrix]

Who needs a character visualizer when you have DeviantArt, Photobucket, Imageshack and Google?

Sometimes I prefer I more personal touch.

 

[Nymrohd]

I'd never use the game table, I paint better than any visualizer they could make Give me a way to easily format encounters, a better monster creation tool that can handle NPCs, templates and elites and solos, and a map maker that let me array Dungeon Tiles

 

[Piratecat]

I personally think this is absolutely the correct decision. I don't think the remote game table is dead, though. They've figured out that splitting effort between many projects results in everything sucking, but massive focus on one or two things provides great software like the character builder. I will be delighted if that's what comes from this decision -- especially if they return to the remote table afterwards.

The visualizer was something I always saw as useless, though. Good riddance.