D&D General What Product Do You Wish They Sold For D&D

[Oofta]

I want a tool/website to track all of my NPCs and notes better than what I currently have. It would easily cross-link NPCs with organizations along with how they interact with each other. When I'm planning a session or generating session notes, let me highlight a word or phrase then right click and have a pop-up option to enter additional details. Streamline the process of building a cohesive world one session and random idea at a time.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

Underoos.

 

[ART!]

Yeah. I don't know why you'd want that. Features and traits you aren't using are wasted space in play. But your mileage may vary, I guess.

Oh, I definitely want all the text there. I edit it down so it takes up less space, though. Basically, I don't want to have to look up anything in the books while I'm playing.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I want a tool/website to track all of my NPCs and notes better than what I currently have. It would easily cross-link NPCs with organizations along with how they interact with each other. When I'm planning a session or generating session notes, let me highlight a word or phrase then right click and have a pop-up option to enter additional details. Streamline the process of building a cohesive world one session and random idea at a time.

Yeah I want stuff like this.

I've been through a fair bit of "DM support" software and websites, and none of them really seem oriented towards actually supporting a DM, they all feel more like generic content management systems clumsily repurposed for use by a DM. As someone sometimes works with content management systems, they're not even working off good ones! And some just so weakly-featured it's a joke.

What you're describing sounds amazing.

The best software I've ever actually used for this was Microsoft Note, which, by the way, I hate, but it does a good job for something that is free and works across multiple platforms and retains my data and so on. But like, I'd pay for something better, especially with what @Oofta is suggesting here.

 

[Zaukrie]

I want a tool/website to track all of my NPCs and notes better than what I currently have. It would easily cross-link NPCs with organizations along with how they interact with each other. When I'm planning a session or generating session notes, let me highlight a word or phrase then right click and have a pop-up option to enter additional details. Streamline the process of building a cohesive world one session and random idea at a time.

World Anvil! Check it out. edit: to be clear, it is clunky.......but if you use it fairly often you'll get the hang of it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

World Anvil! Check it out. edit: to be clear, it is clunky.......but if you use it fairly often you'll get the hang of it.

Yeah see, you're illustrating the problem here, by being very honest admitting that it's clunky (it is HELLA clunky imho!) and that you have to use it a lot to even get the hang of it.

None of that needs to be the case. I work with products which absolutely are not clunky, and yes they cost a lot more money, but the concepts behind them could implemented on a budget, it's just the fundamental approach is different.

I want something slick, easy-to-use, not a headache, I don't have to look stuff up (again this is not an impossible goal, I see it every day), and which is pleasant to engage with, so I keep coming back to it, not something which is "powerful but challenging" which is basically what stuff like World Anvil tends to be. Bonus points if it does stuff I didn't think of that's cool, rather than the normal situation where I want to do something that seems patently obvious and it doesn't do it.

 

[tetrasodium]

a dice tower with a camera that shows the GM the result of a roll on their laptop/phone without the player seeing it for those times I don't want the player to know if they are adding their mods to a 2 or an 18. it could even have a little door to flip it from regular tower that spits out the dice & the secret roll with camera. Bonus points if I can cnnect more than one of them at the table (ie bluetooth) or for those who use online VTTs to connect it toth GM somehow

 

[Zaukrie]

Yeah see, you're illustrating the problem here, by being very honest admitting that it's clunky (it is HELLA clunky imho!) and that you have to use it a lot to even get the hang of it.

None of that needs to be the case. I work with products which absolutely are not clunky, and yes they cost a lot more money, but the concepts behind them could implemented on a budget, it's just the fundamental approach is different.

I want something slick, easy-to-use, not a headache, I don't have to look stuff up (again this is not an impossible goal, I see it every day), and which is pleasant to engage with, so I keep coming back to it, not something which is "powerful but challenging" which is basically what stuff like World Anvil tends to be. Bonus points if it does stuff I didn't think of that's cool, rather than the normal situation where I want to do something that seems patently obvious and it doesn't do it.

Oh, I agree, but for some reason that unicorn doesn't exist.......so, World Anvil is the tool I was/sometimes use (my novel is on hold, as is the game I DM).

And, as a former product manager in IT, I know this wouldn't be "hard" to build.....but WA and some other company have both tried, and neither fully succeeds.

 

[Mercurius]

Well, there are tons of books that I'm hoping to see, but as far as utility goes, I'd like to see some digest-sized "compendiums" that can be used as table references:

Player's Compendium: Includes everything needed for making and running characters, including classes, sub-classes, races, etc, from every product already published.

Monster Compendium: Stats for every monster published, with reduced descriptions to fit everything in.

Rules Compendium: Handy reference for rules, ala the 4E book.

The problem with these, of course, and why I don't see them happening (except for maybe the Rules one) is that they continually come out with new sub-classes, spells, and monsters, so as soon as they would be published they'd be outdated. But then they can revise it five years later, so...

 

[Sacrosanct]

Core Rules 3.0

Yes, I know there are tons of services out there like D&D beyond, but I want an offline compendium where I can create PCs, NPCs, encounters, maps hyperlinked to those encounters, etc.