CampaignTool ?

[trevor]

From a post in a different forum (TokenTool):

I've been playing with the idea lately of creating a .map file that contains a map, any stamps, grid layout, notes, and annotations. That way you can download the map and run it without having to set it up.

The same idea would be pretty cool for token tool to set up the tokens: name, properties, sight, whatever, that could then be loaded into maptool.

At some point these could be combined into a campaign file that has everything you need to run a module. This is a great place for people to create and share, and perhaps even sell.

The tricky part about modifying the token tool this way is that lots of people use tokentool outside of maptool, so the default behavior of just creating images needs to remain.

Perhaps a new CampaignTool that set pulls the images from tokentool, and maps, and text files and stuff and lets you combine them into modules.

[Emryys]

At some point these could be combined into a campaign file that has everything you need to run a module. This is a great place for people to create and share, and perhaps even sell

This is where it would really shine...
I love to make ready made adventures, deckplans, dungeons for others to use...

Sell Them! Fame... Fortune... Riches...

[rkathey]

Sell Them! Fame... Fortune... Riches...

<sniff> money? maybe that would finally get my wife off my back about gaming when she saw the $2.50 come in each week via paypal.

OK, quick hit. (honest, this one will be under three pages)

Custom maps with the grid, drawings, and encounter tokens in place, sized with custom states would be cool.

Player handouts (work like maps with selected visibility, supports html, and pdf)

Custom text that could be scrolled into the chat window or presented as a handout detailing dialog, describing settings, and giving history.

Possibly character sheets with pre-genned characters, NPCs, and monsters (custom and standard). (see lengthy character sheet post for details)

Aliases and custom scripts created specifically for that campaign.

If you're serious about selling these things, a license methodology built in.

[trevor]

I'm getting kinda excited about it

[Fobbo]

Would you consider partnering with an already established Campaign Tool?

I currently use DM Genie and are very happy with that program. I think if you could combine forces and make somekind of connection between the two programs that would be great.

[trevor]

If we could figure out the integration piece, we would be happy to connect to other tools.

I imagine that once the rp tools development settles down we'll start focusing on integration with other tools.

Although if someone wanted to take point on figuring out how plugins are written for the other tools, we could coordinate getting that information into MapTool and others.

[Fobbo]

I will write to the creator of DM Genie and see what his thoughts are on integration with Maptools.

[trevor]

Cool. All we really need is a way to write a plugin that can gleen and modify information from their tool. Once we have the ability to get information from them, we can write the components necessary to transmit that back and forth to the rp tools.

[thelevitator]

RPTools and DM Genie working in harmony? Just when I thought this program couldn't find more ways to rock!! I'm no coding expert, but I've been using DM Genie for 3 years, so if you need feedback from a user standpoint, count me in!!

[trevor]

Do you know if there is support for third party plugins ?

[Fobbo]

Not at the moment. I have sent him a email and also posted on their boards. DM Genie does have scripting features so I am wondering if some thing like that can be done to create some read/write API's or something.

[thelevitator]

For that I would defer you to drswoboda. He is also a contributing member of the DM Genie boards and has more technical knowledge of the program than I do. I've only done some very minor scripting. I know that DM Genie lacks networking support. The only importing I've ever done from other programs have been NPC Designer and James Bucks' NPC Generator. Those are just for importing statblocks.

Yoo hoo! drswoboda!!
Can you help trevor with this?

[trevor]

How cool would that be, to be able to provide networking support to DMGenie through MapTool ?

Talk about value add !

[Fobbo]

That would be very cool.
Lets discuss what kind of information would be need from DM Genie.
I see the following

-Encounter Information (NPC and Monster names)
-Maybe token status (durning combat using DM Genie combat tracking features a creature becomes dead that information is sent to Maptools and changes the status of the token.)
-Token information (vision and light radius, size, etc.)

This would be cool
DM Genie has a map section for Campagin Management it would be realy cool if you could setup a Maptool campagin in DM Genie place the tokens and then start maptools from DM Genie.

[jay]

I talked to our group's DM Genie guru and he concurs with Fobbo, no integration features or API as of now. He said that it has been asked for on the DMGenie forum multiple times, but has not been added yet. DMGenie appears to written in Visual Basic and I'm not sure if there is any support for Java to interact with that. We may be able to do that ourselves if the API is simple enough. DM Genie is currently only available on Windows, so you would have to run it under an emlator on Linux or Mac.

However, we should be able to import PC's and NPC's from DMGenie very easy by using the print character sheet functionality to output XML that a character tool could read.