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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jelmore" data-source="post: 5366159" data-attributes="member: 56412">With all of the... ahem... "discussion" that the announcement of the new web-based character builder has generated, I've given a little thought to what I feel the D&D Insider experience should be.MISSION STATEMENT: Improve the pen-and-paper D&D experience by providing resources to make playing the game faster and easier, and help the D&D community connect to and share with each other.Making the game faster and easier:* A character builder that gives me easy access to all of the options available, and cuts down on the tedium of character building: if I select a class build, pre-select all of the associated powers, trained skills and feats appropriate for that build.* An encounter builder that makes it easy to build combat encounters and adjust them on-the-fly.* A combat tracker that accepts input from both of the above tools.* An interactive "character sheet" where I can track item and power usage, damage, healing surges, conditions, and so on.* Support for popular mobile devices, either through tailored web portals or native apps for iOS, Android, etc.* An online compendium that I can both browse AND do detailed searches on. (I can't be the only one who has wanted to find all class powers with the healing keyword, can I? What about looking at traps, or diseases, or poisons?)* A session/campaign planning tool that can utilize all of the items I referenced above.Help the D&D community connect to and share with each other:* Give users tools to share their own self-generated content: campaign wikis, character journals, etc.* Allow users to create their own powers, items, races, etc. with support in the character builder and other online play tools. You could include a voting or ranking system, with popular or successful ideas being added to the compendium, character builder, published in sourcebooks, etc.* A community calendar where people and stores can post times and dates for open gaming tables, demos, etc.* Support for play-by-post or other online play: examples would be dice rollers and easy linking to compendium content.* Oh, and tie my RPGA and my DDI accounts together. Seriously.I realize that many of these tools already exist in some form or another: iPlay4e and inCombat, Obsidian Portal, MasterPlan, and ENWorld's dice roller leap immediately to mind for D&D; examples outside of tabletop RPGs include sites like Wowhead (IMO, one of the best World of Warcraft resources not produced by Blizzard). But many of these were developed, or grew, in the absence of comparable tools with the cachet of being the "official" D&D resources.Give me tools I want to use, and I will happily pay for them.</blockquote>

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