The Holy Grail of Online Tools (Listen up, WotC!)

[Mercurius]

OK, this isn't all that ground-breaking of an idea, but indulge my hyperbole.

It is really quite simple: An Adventure Builder - anything from encounters to short scenarios to modules to adventure paths. Unless I'm completely daft, there's nothing out there that takes DMs through a step by step process of adventure design in all its glory. I know it wouldn't be easy, but I don't see why it wouldn't be possible and hugely popular.

The closest thing that I'm aware of is MasterPlan, which is a nice program but has no actual guidance - its just an organizing suite - but what I'm talking is something akin to Character Builder, but for adventure design.

Make it happen, please.

 

[Obryn]

I was going to mention masterplan, but you have already!

WOTC could do a lot worse than to have a similar program for Next. Make a tablet version, and that's even better in 2014.

 

[delericho]

Wasn't something like that originally intended to be part of the DM tools for 4e's DDI? Though AFAIK it never materialised, sadly.

I do agree that such a tool would be hugely useful. Even if all it allowed was for the DM to assemble his map using fixed, pregenerated dungeon tiles (or Dungeon Tiles), and then key them to pregen monster stats from the Compendium, that would still be immensely useful.

Alas, I don't see it happening with the DDI as it stands - it would appear that most people who are willing to pay for DDI at all are willing to pay just for the Character Builder and Compendium (and maybe the magazine content). So there's no real incentive for WotC to go beyond that basic offering.

(Though one thing I did muse on, and have posted about before, was the possibility of them hosting an online library of fan-generated materials - let DMs generate and share their adventures, possibly for some small credit towards rewards. This allows WotC to build up a huge library of content for very little expense on their part, and might potentially see a lot of DMs signing up, since it would mean always having an adventure available to run when needed. But the issue remains one of cost/benefit - would such a thing lead to a sufficient increase in subscriber numbers to make it worth the effort of implementing and hosting?)

 

[Storminator]

It would be great if they could come up with a simple layout/formatting tool that I could drop stat blocks and map jpgs into and have it print out easily.

Even if it didn't come with adventure design templates/planning/advice - just let build my adventure from the same place I'm plucking monsters and maps!

PS

 

[Li Shenron]

A character builder has a much larger customer base, but IMHO is less needed. As a player, I never had any trouble creating and levelling-up characters even in 3e, simply because for me it doesn't happen that often. The problem might be significant however for those who often restart their campaign, or quit and join new games all the time, and typically start playing at mid/high-level already.

OTOH, as a DM I would certainly appreciate such character builder for NPCs and classed monsters. Now that is something that the DM (who uses those types of adversaries) has to do very often, usually multiple times per session. Such "expanded" character builder would need to include monsters as races, the possibility to stack class levels on top of them, apply templates etc. I would buy such product, if it did the XP and CR (or whatever) calculations reliably, so that I would be able to quickly check how strong the results are, and finally print the monsters stats.

An adventure builder IMO should include that (basically to design encounters), but then it goes beyond that, and includes mapping tools and perhaps some campaign management tools. It would certainly come handy, although for me this is not the stuff I really need a program do for me.

Actually, all in all I think the mapping tools would probably be the hardest ones to design. IIRC there are mapping software programs around, and they might be huge... not sure if WotC has room to compete with them.

OTOH an NPC/monster builder (i.e. same as PC builder but with monsters data) should be pretty easy to design, any software programmer can do something like that. In fact my guess is that a lot of people have already developed their own apps, except they cannot share them.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Step 1 buy master plan
Step 2 take old off line builder from4e
Step 3 take old off line monster builder from 4e
Step 4 take rules compendium like 4e
Step 5 update to next/5e and intergrate
Step 6 build a basic online table that supports above...

 

[Umbran]

Step 5 update to next/5e and intergrate

I expect that "update" is probably more like, "rewrite from scratch", unfortunately.

 

[LucasC]

OK, this isn't all that ground-breaking of an idea, but indulge my hyperbole.

It is really quite simple: An Adventure Builder - anything from encounters to short scenarios to modules to adventure paths. Unless I'm completely daft, there's nothing out there that takes DMs through a step by step process of adventure design in all its glory. I know it wouldn't be easy, but I don't see why it wouldn't be possible and hugely popular.

The closest thing that I'm aware of is MasterPlan, which is a nice program but has no actual guidance - its just an organizing suite - but what I'm talking is something akin to Character Builder, but for adventure design.

Make it happen, please.

I encourage you to keep an eye on The City of Brass. We are finalizing our World Builder alpha testing right now (you can read about it at our blog) and are right currently in discussion for our Toolkit, starting with the adventure building system for DMs.

 

[herrozerro]

OK, this isn't all that ground-breaking of an idea, but indulge my hyperbole.

It is really quite simple: An Adventure Builder - anything from encounters to short scenarios to modules to adventure paths. Unless I'm completely daft, there's nothing out there that takes DMs through a step by step process of adventure design in all its glory. I know it wouldn't be easy, but I don't see why it wouldn't be possible and hugely popular.

The closest thing that I'm aware of is MasterPlan, which is a nice program but has no actual guidance - its just an organizing suite - but what I'm talking is something akin to Character Builder, but for adventure design.

Make it happen, please.

So what kind of guidance would you be looking for? I could see a program that comes with several templates like several variations on the 5 room dungeon. But other than that, I can't seem to think of anything else that something like masterplan could do to provide guidance.

 

[howandwhy99]

Adventure design requires actual intelligence. Not that a person can't throw something together rather mindlessly and hope it has value as a game. But the odds are against you. A computer program could be created like Big Blue to help individuals create adventures, but the design is only going to be as good as those who programmed it. The designers at Wizards are bright, but they've had a bad track record with software implement, much less understanding the designs most helpful for their customers. It's a nice idea, but it's going to take a whole lotta thought to get to the point where those with the resources could follow the instructions.