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<blockquote data-quote="Andre" data-source="post: 3289314" data-attributes="member: 25930">While there is some validity to this observation, you miss the most important issue with designing a 3e (or d20) character generator - the rules are not fixed. They are constantly evolving. They are inherently inconsistent. They are completely exception-based (They give us a clear rule, then a bunch of features that violate that rule in one or more ways). By the time anyone has created a clear, coherent, fixed design document, there will be a few dozen new features from WOTC that (some) people will be clamoring for.Of course, one could design just for the SRD, but without very strong support for the average user to customize the program, it would be of limited use to many gamers. Virtually all groups add or tweak something in the game - that's a huge part of the attraction of RPG's vs. board and computer games. That flexibility is liberating, allowing a good group to create something that the original designers never imagined. And even if you ignore your customers' tweaks and try to stick to just the SRD, it keeps changing too. (How many FAQ and Errata have been released?)So we want an electronic tool to make designing characters (or monsters, or treasure, or whatever) much easier, but we also want it to have all the official rules that we use, and be easy to modify to include our (sometimes silly) house rules and tweaks, and we want it to work reliably, and lastly, be relatively affordable. And every one of those features you leave out, you reduce the product's value to the potential customer, which costs you sales.Just my opinion, but it seems to me that choosing an operating system and language for the program are the least of your worries...</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Andre, post: 3289314, member: 25930"] While there is some validity to this observation, you miss the most important issue with designing a 3e (or d20) character generator - the rules are not fixed. They are constantly evolving. They are inherently inconsistent. They are completely exception-based (They give us a clear rule, then a bunch of features that violate that rule in one or more ways). By the time anyone has created a clear, coherent, fixed design document, there will be a few dozen new features from WOTC that (some) people will be clamoring for. Of course, one could design just for the SRD, but without very strong support for the average user to customize the program, it would be of limited use to many gamers. Virtually all groups add or tweak something in the game - that's a huge part of the attraction of RPG's vs. board and computer games. That flexibility is liberating, allowing a good group to create something that the original designers never imagined. And even if you ignore your customers' tweaks and try to stick to just the SRD, it keeps changing too. (How many FAQ and Errata have been released?) So we want an electronic tool to make designing characters (or monsters, or treasure, or whatever) much easier, but we also want it to have all the official rules that we use, and be easy to modify to include our (sometimes silly) house rules and tweaks, and we want it to work reliably, and lastly, be relatively affordable. And every one of those features you leave out, you reduce the product's value to the potential customer, which costs you sales. Just my opinion, but it seems to me that choosing an operating system and language for the program are the least of your worries... [/QUOTE]

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