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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5368760" data-attributes="member: 82106">Actually I think RLBURNSIDE has a very legitimate point. I've been DMing since 1976 or so. I have probably 10 three-ring binders full of character sheets, notes, hand-outs, adventures, etc etc etc. Basically most everything is there from the earliest days up to now. It really is a HUGE resource (and the main reason I don't create a lot of new settings all the time or use a lot of published background material). Now I do have a TWiki where a LOT of that stuff has been transferred and rewritten and whatnot, but ALL of it is on my hard drive and well backed up, so it really isn't a significant transition. When I make a monster in MB or a PC in CB I can put the file up there, I can import it into some other tools, etc. Still, it is under my control, even if I stop paying for the server that the TWiki is hosted on I can just tarball the files and move them to another server somewhere.Now, I don't think all the gnashing of teeth is necessarily warranted, but it is worth it for some of us to consider the implications of using a totally online system where your data is captive. For example I don't use any of the Wiki hosting services because you really can't get your stuff out of them. WotC could make a lot of nice features for something like that which tied right into the online CB and whatever, but unless I can extract and port the data to somewhere else I will continue to prefer to keep my campaign materials on my own server. I'd also like to be able to have things like .dnd4e files and monster XML and whatnot that I generate available to me. Overall it is a mixed bag. A really well integrated system would of course be really sweet. The thing is it needs to NOT create lock-in. Honestly I think if the people at WotC are REALLY clever they would make it an open source extensible system that anyone can run. 99.9% of the people are going to opt to pay WotC to run the best "4e Community Server" there is, and they'd get all the advantage of all the 3rd party widgets and whatnot that some of us would produce for that. We OTOH would get the option to be able to pull up stakes and run our own server if we REALLY wanted to. That isn't free and would cut us off from other people etc, so we probably wouldn't do it. However we'd like the option so in some hypothetical future when Hasbro grows tired of D&D or things take a direction we don't like we have the option.I strongly doubt WotC is quite visionary enough (or Hasbro is) to do something like that, but it would really be the ideal solution. They'd still get my $9.99 a month, I'd get a better tool set, and we'd all have peace of mind. Sadly most of the corporate world simply cannot grasp that kind of idea, though it is slowly gaining ground.</blockquote>

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