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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="labyrinth" data-source="post: 3478242" data-attributes="member: 48530">My sentiments exactly. Take a look at Hero Lab. It's interface is as clean and intuitive as those you mention, plus it provides a bunch of stuff that is invaluable in a TRPG but irrelevant in a CRPG.Take the original D&D 3rd system. Now look at all the extensions and retrofits that have been added to it. Character creation software written for the original game would almost HAVE to be re-written in order to accommodate all of those changes. The only way to avoid that would be to write a framework that allows virtually complete flexibility to support any game system. And even then it would be quite difficult. Then consider all of the exceptions within D&D, not to mention all of the exceptions to those exceptions. That flexibility is something that a TRPG enjoys, but a CRPG shuns. Why? Because coding it is *HARD*.If you truly believe that it would be easy to start with a character creation tool that was built for 3rd Edition and add all the various extensions to it that have been added through 3.5 (including all the flavors and supplements), you clearly haven't really thought it through. It's a *NASTY* complex task.And now to come back to the primary focus of this thread....I've been playing D&D for a very long time, and I introduced my nephews to it last summer (ages 8 & 11). They and their friends were big-time WoW players, as well as lots of the other online games. After two games of D&D, six kids had lost all interest in the online games because it simply doesn't compare to a good D&D game. There's nothing like the rush of having to make a critical roll when everyone is holding their breath awaiting the outcome. Nothing compares to saving the bacon of someone else in the party by thinking on your feet instead of just repeatedly whacking a monster in WoW. They spend the game thinking, solving problems that are impossible to model in a CRPG (with today's technology, at least), interacting with NPCs that divulge information grudgingly, facing villains that also think and adapt to their strategies, etc. And the camaraderie that develops between them is priceless.That's what good role-playing offers (D&D or otherwise). And it's something that CRPGs (local or online) can only dream of offering someday in the future.Whatever Wizards does with the DI, those are the elements that they need to emphasize. Those are the elements that they need to teach DMs and offer to players. Unfortunately, those are things for which computers can provide great aids (i.e. WITH the computer), but which ultimately don't work very well THROUGH the computer. It sure sounds to me like they are planning to shove these elements through the computer, which will end up acting as a filter that strips them of much of their true value. If that's what the DI ends up being, then clearly the powers that be at Wizards have lost touch with the roots of the game and we can all start signing a dirge. If this is what comes to pass, all I can hope is that someone competent buys the vestiges of D&D at the fire sale in a few years and resurrects it again, just like Wizards did when TSR was going under so many years ago.I'm keeping my fingers crossed there is a competent vision behind all this. But all indications are to the contrary, so I'm certainly not holding my breath.</blockquote>

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