Wizards Digital Initiative

[Mercule]

First requirement: usable offline, with only my laptop. If it doesn't do that, do not pass Go.

Beyond that, just something to help with tedious and background things. Character generation, initiative tracking, treasure hordes, organizing more notes -- especially cities, states, organizations, and NPCs in a meaningful way. I also like the idea of a hyperlinked referrence of all source material.

If the WDI is some sort of virtual tabletop that would replace my looking someone in the eye and speaking the description to them, then I've got no interest in it. PBEM/PBP is nice, and can be fun, but isn't as good as real gaming. I guess I wouldn't sneer at a really shiney tool for that, but it doesn't merit much hype. Play by chat or the like would drive me insane. If I'm going to game real-time, it needs to be face-to-face. I'll burn my books before I play on a chat-like system.

All that said, if they do things like "The Goblin Game", which sounds nothing like "D&D online", I might try it. I like video games.

 

[Hussar]

*snip*

If the WDI is some sort of virtual tabletop that would replace my looking someone in the eye and speaking the description to them, then I've got no interest in it. PBEM/PBP is nice, and can be fun, but isn't as good as real gaming. I guess I wouldn't sneer at a really shiney tool for that, but it doesn't merit much hype. Play by chat or the like would drive me insane. If I'm going to game real-time, it needs to be face-to-face. I'll burn my books before I play on a chat-like system.

All that said, if they do things like "The Goblin Game", which sounds nothing like "D&D online", I might try it. I like video games.

Apologies Mercule, this is an opinion I've seen more than a few times. I'm going to split this off from here and see why. Take a look.

 

[EricNoah]

I fear they are going to get in over their heads and try to do something the fans can (and regularly do) do better.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

For starters, I hope they give us D&D stats for Uncivilized.

I'd also like to see them take on the task of making the game's greatest campaign setting wiki. The World of Greyhawk would be a good choice for this, since it wouldn't compete with any of their in-print hardcopy products.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

A character generator, like the one that came with the 3.0 PHB (but didn't crash) would be good.

Hyperlinked electronic versions of books outside the SRD would be cool too. That would make searching for that rule/feat/prestige class a whole lot easier.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Mark CMG]

I fear they are going to get in over their heads and try to do something the fans can (and regularly do) do better.

It does seem to be a resource-intensive avenue that would not be condusive to feeding a bottomline oriented mentality. Maybe they have some ideas for it that are inobvious to regular gamers like ourselves.

 

[Ry]

A D&D world digitized and interactive BUT still pen & paper.

Origami Printouts!

 

[countgray]

What I would like to see

Prep time it takes for DM'ing a game is the number one gripe I have, so anything to make prep time easier for DM's would be a boon.

Specifically, I would like to be able to pull up all races and monster stats and be able to advance them or add templates or class levels, and even equipment, all at the touch of a few buttons, and then be able to print them out for use in the game.

I would pay a lot of money to have access to a program that could do that. It would make my life so much easier in my weekly game.

 

[Delta]

We've kinda touched on this in a variety of threads before. With the new info on the front page and RyanD's comments on a convergence of tabletop RPGs and computers, what would you like to see in computer support for D&D?

I think for the sake of D&D I would like to see close-to-none. But here's what I really want to say...

I think that WOTC pursuing a digital initiative for D&D is, in business lingo, "not in their core competency". D&D is not fundamentally something played on a computer, it's a pen-and-paper game, more like chess or monopoly or something. WOTC looking enviously at World of Warcraft and trying to position D&D somewhere between the two (WOW and Monopoly) will be untenable for them, possibly the worst of both worlds. Worst case scenario, I can imagine D&D unplayable without a computer, but also without the always-available in-depth play of WOW. Result: I'm on a computer anyway, may as well play WOW.

The D&D Character Generator with the 3.0 PHB is a pretty good example. As we all know, they were promising full generators, magic items, mappers, monster & template creators, etc. But in 5 years they couldn't make it happen and scrapped it (WOTC is not intrinsically a software company).

 

[eyebeams]

Competing with cheap or free tools promoted by a large, preexisting community is . . . a bad idea. Every few years, you read about ideas like this and how they're going to change gaming. The thing is, they're already here and work, and they don't cost significant money. The bottom line is that if a company isn't talking about this community and if they aren't discussing existing tools like DigiChat and IRC, then they just aren't prepared to make a real go of it.