D&D 3E/3.5 The way forward 3.5 or 3.75 Pathfinder

[dingle]

My thanks to all of you who have visited my site to create NPC/Monsters http://www.dinglesgames.com/ I have now just about created the NPC Generator as how I envisaged it. I just need to add in the automatic monster adjustments per hit dice (Str, Dex, Nat armour, etc) and add in the ability to save your creations to edit at a later stage.

soon I will at a bit of a crossroads
1. I can either concentrate on more 3.5 tools. E.g. random encounter generators; add in automatically generated treasure and feats to the NPC generator; Create Dungeon generators, Town generators, etc...

2. OR Concentrate on Pathfinder (D&D 3.75) tools. Create a new Monster/NPC Generator for Pathfinder and be ahead of the game.

I very much would like to know your opinions.

I am hoping to make a living on creating tools for D&D . I will be working on this Full-time for the rest of this year (and then until my savings run out)
I will soon be putting a cap on the NPC Generator and any other new generators, the Monster Generator will remain free (but will not be upgraded)
I will be charging a small fee for the full version (A one time life time, a yearly, or a half yearly fee).
It is my hope that I can make a living out of something I enjoy doing, and is useful to the growing D&D community.

 

[aboyd]

Wow, you're going to try to make a living at this? Can you live off of cheap noodles in your mom's basement? That seems to be the only way to live off of D&D tools. However, I wish you well. I'd love more tools, so I hope it works.

Having said that, I don't know why you can't do both. In fact, if you want to make a living at it, you probably need to do more than just D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder. You probably need to try to do some 4th edition stuff, maybe d20 Star Wars stuff too. If you're lucky, you might get a few paying customers from each tool.

It seems easy to do this, right? Take the D&D 3.5 tools, copy them into a new pathfinder section, and then tweak them. You could also tweak them for d20 Star Wars. Fourth edition D&D might be more difficult, as it doesn't really even use the same underlying concepts.

Good luck.

 

[Noumenon]

As businessmen frequently tell aspiring bookstore owners, "Never enter into a business where there are substantial nonbusiness reasons for other people to enter the business." The competition from hobbyists drives down everybody's profits.

Anyway, I say look at some of the other NPC generators out there, like DMGenie, and see if their development teams are still active and planning to release 3.75 versions of their software. If they aren't, then at least you will be the only person in that market segment and might have a chance at earning some money.

 

[Vascant]

Anyway, I say look at some of the other NPC generators out there, like DMGenie, and see if their development teams are still active and planning to release 3.75 versions of their software. If they aren't, then at least you will be the only person in that market segment and might have a chance at earning some money.

DM Genie does not have a NPC Generator per say, however NPC Designer has an output format that DM Genie can read. NPC Designer is also free as of a few weeks ago.

 

[Vascant]

As for the original OP, I don't think I have an answer for that even for my own games. While I do love what the guys have done at Paizo as far as Gamemastery and Pathfinder products go I just don't know if I am into switching editions. They have said there are some changes to the release, so I will wait until I get a chance to read the book and decide if this is something I want to do going forward.

 

[Jhaelen]

Well, I wouldn't be interested in paying for npc / monster creation tools, unless they offered A LOT more than what is currently available in your free tools.

In fact, while I tried using them to create the statblocks for my next 3E adventure, I quickly switched back to creating them manually because there's simply too many things that (currently) aren't supported (or at least I couldn't figure out how to do it).
Some crucial things:
- all relevant details to run the monster/npc should be in the stat block
- support for buffed/unbuffed versions

But the biggest problem is frankly that I want to use and have access to all of the non-SRD material I own.

As an outlook: I expect my 3E campaign to come to an end within the year. In September my group will give 4E a try. I assume (and hope) at least some of them will be interested in continuing to play 4E which would end my interest in 3E tools.

While I'm considering to pick up the Pathfinder rpg, I don't expect to actually use it. It's just to sate my curiosity.

 

[aboyd]

I'll tell you what the next tool is that I'm going to pay for, dingle. In fact, I will probably buy it 5x so that my whole group can use it.

I am waiting for an iPhone application that communicates with the other iPhones at the table. Each player's iPhone application will hold the PC's stats. The DM's iPhone contains the various states & modifiers that can be pushed to each player.

My iPhone would have a small table image on the top half of the screen, with the player's names around the table. The bottom half of the screen allows me to assemble a modifier such as "-2 to AC" or "-25 to HP" or even "-1 to wisdom for 10 rounds." Then with the usual iPhone swish, I flick the modifier to the correct player sitting at my image of a table. When this happens, the modifier shows up on the player's iPhone display. So at any given moment, the player knows hit points, str/dex/etc., saves, and bonuses (such as from spells). It keeps track of each time I start dishing out damage, so that it knows the count of rounds, and automatically erases temporary bonuses & damage when appropriate.

This shouldn't be fancy. I do not want a system that "knows" all the feats in every sourcebook, or which "knows" every monster in every splatbook. Instead, I want it to simply offer me modifiers to push out. Each monster generally does hit point damage on an attack, so no need to program in how much damage each monster can do -- instead just give me a fast easy way to dish out the various types, and I'll enter the numbers from there.

The state displayed to each player should not show an entire character sheet. They will have those, and the screen is too small anyway. Instead, it should merely show the current to-hit modifier, damage modifier, hit points, AC, saves. You know, variable stuff that combat changes. In a big easy-to-read font. Maybe movement speed would be nice to show, especially if it can auto-calculate what happens when a PC takes strength damage and suddenly has a "heavy" load. The point is to make juggling 15 bonuses at high levels a little easier. End some headaches. That's all.

I would pay $20 for that, and I'd make sure everyone I played with had a copy.

What I'm asking for isn't very advanced and could easily be an iPhone application. However, the odds of someone doing this for 3.5 edition D&D seem pretty low. The developer would get, what, maybe 50 customers? 100? Even 500 would seem too little to be worth it. Nonetheless, I'd pay for a program like that if done well.

EDIT: If this is done properly, it should replace the Penny Arcade sticker system. That's pretty much the idea.

 

[Darklone]

Another vote for 3.5 AND 3.75.

 

[dingle]

Wow, you're going to try to make a living at this? Can you live off of cheap noodles in your mom's basement? That seems to be the only way to live off of D&D tools. However, I wish you well. I'd love more tools, so I hope it works.

Having said that, I don't know why you can't do both. In fact, if you want to make a living at it, you probably need to do more than just D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder. You probably need to try to do some 4th edition stuff, maybe d20 Star Wars stuff too. If you're lucky, you might get a few paying customers from each tool.

It seems easy to do this, right? Take the D&D 3.5 tools, copy them into a new pathfinder section, and then tweak them. You could also tweak them for d20 Star Wars. Fourth edition D&D might be more difficult, as it doesn't really even use the same underlying concepts.

Good luck.

I must admit that I don't expect to make to much money in the first year (no where near enough to support my self). I'm hoping working full-time I can create many extra tools which people will find useful and the site will start to grow. I released the site in Feburary I think now I have about 500 regular uses, I think to make a meager living I would need 10,000 regular uses (1 in 10 paying). The only way to do this is to work very hard expanding the site. (If it doesn't work at least I've taught myself web programming)

It was my original Idea was to create multiple tools for each gaming system but I was wondering whether to take a gamble on 3.75 and have something ready for the book launch.

 

[Papa-DRB]

Well, for me it is Pathfinder only, however YMMV.

The one tool that I would pay a lot for is a combat tracker. Lets me enter PCs, NPCs, monsters, tracks spell durations, allows me to roll init for NPCs & monsters and enter init for PCs, conditions on everyone, etc, etc. etc.