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General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
On the State of Digital Aids for D+D/D20/OGL
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<blockquote data-quote="soulcatcher" data-source="post: 3276742" data-attributes="member: 5940"><p>I'll cover Campaign, Encounter Management and Mapping on this one</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>So different people will have different answers to this one. My current goal is to make the heavy lifting part of pcgen into a library that can then be included in other applications. I think it's better to have multiple apps that are in a suite of tools then one monster bloated application that tries to do everything for everyone. PCGen does some of this stuff via plugins. Some it does well (I think our initiative screen is awesome), and some kind of sucks. In the end, I think these may need to be separate applications, or at the very least loosely coupled tools that chat with one another over a defined protcol.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Once again, the UI may not be the best on it, but you can create pretty darn complex and interesting magic items in pcgen. Sure, sometimes you have to go all the way down to the data level for this, and that suggests to me that we need a generalized "Create and Item" dialog that can do everything the item system is capable of, but our existing magic item system is pretty sweet imho. Upshot: We do this already</p><p></p><p>Note: I *do* want to add a treasure chest and party loot tool to pcgen so that you can store items that can instantly be moved to a PC in rooms, chests, horses, or in a mysterious black box of "party treasure" that never seems to encumber any single member of the party <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>for us, it depends on what you want out of the tool. We still don';t have random generation. we have kits that can kind of frame out a character for you. Mostly I would say pcgen is good for making your big baddies, or your monsters. bar none I think it's the easiest way to alter the hit dice of a monster, or make your were-beastie (or really any other templated creature) But if you need a small goblin troop, what we do now is too heavyweight. What I think we need to do is make a PCGen powered NPC Generator, and that depends on the architecture changes I keep talking about. Upshot: Possible,</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Initiative in pcgen really is a nice tool. you can have your big baddies, and you can just toss a guy in who has X hit dice. It generates statblocks form your loaded pcgen characters, and you can just click on them to roll almost anything. It's also network aware. I think this probably needs to be it's own application (and it was originally, so it's easy to break out into one again), but once again, that depends on a usable external pcgen library. As for all the penalties, we have a whole system foir managing temporary modifiers. Upshot: we do this now.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>It can load any pcgen pc/npc/monster, but in order to keep screen realestate usable, it doesn't use icons. it could probably easily be altered to do that. but this comes back to our art problem. Upshot: we can write the code, but we have no real access to art.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Mapping is a whole other problem. We would need a whole extra team to tackle this. I suspect that the best way to solve this is actually to find another open source project doing a mapper, and then join forces. Upshot: Not any time soon for us. Try Dundjinni for now, it fits most of your requirements</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>If we ever get one, we can look at this part.</p><p></p><p>Devon</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="soulcatcher, post: 3276742, member: 5940"] I'll cover Campaign, Encounter Management and Mapping on this one So different people will have different answers to this one. My current goal is to make the heavy lifting part of pcgen into a library that can then be included in other applications. I think it's better to have multiple apps that are in a suite of tools then one monster bloated application that tries to do everything for everyone. PCGen does some of this stuff via plugins. Some it does well (I think our initiative screen is awesome), and some kind of sucks. In the end, I think these may need to be separate applications, or at the very least loosely coupled tools that chat with one another over a defined protcol. Once again, the UI may not be the best on it, but you can create pretty darn complex and interesting magic items in pcgen. Sure, sometimes you have to go all the way down to the data level for this, and that suggests to me that we need a generalized "Create and Item" dialog that can do everything the item system is capable of, but our existing magic item system is pretty sweet imho. Upshot: We do this already Note: I *do* want to add a treasure chest and party loot tool to pcgen so that you can store items that can instantly be moved to a PC in rooms, chests, horses, or in a mysterious black box of "party treasure" that never seems to encumber any single member of the party ;) for us, it depends on what you want out of the tool. We still don';t have random generation. we have kits that can kind of frame out a character for you. Mostly I would say pcgen is good for making your big baddies, or your monsters. bar none I think it's the easiest way to alter the hit dice of a monster, or make your were-beastie (or really any other templated creature) But if you need a small goblin troop, what we do now is too heavyweight. What I think we need to do is make a PCGen powered NPC Generator, and that depends on the architecture changes I keep talking about. Upshot: Possible, Initiative in pcgen really is a nice tool. you can have your big baddies, and you can just toss a guy in who has X hit dice. It generates statblocks form your loaded pcgen characters, and you can just click on them to roll almost anything. It's also network aware. I think this probably needs to be it's own application (and it was originally, so it's easy to break out into one again), but once again, that depends on a usable external pcgen library. As for all the penalties, we have a whole system foir managing temporary modifiers. Upshot: we do this now. It can load any pcgen pc/npc/monster, but in order to keep screen realestate usable, it doesn't use icons. it could probably easily be altered to do that. but this comes back to our art problem. Upshot: we can write the code, but we have no real access to art. Mapping is a whole other problem. We would need a whole extra team to tackle this. I suspect that the best way to solve this is actually to find another open source project doing a mapper, and then join forces. Upshot: Not any time soon for us. Try Dundjinni for now, it fits most of your requirements If we ever get one, we can look at this part. Devon [/QUOTE]
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