RPTools.net

When it comes to gaming aids (apps), are there tools that are needed that just don't exist, or perhaps exist but suck so bad that they don't count?

If you could ask for a gaming app and have it magically appear, what would you ask for?

Oh, and when answering this, try thinking tablets and phones.

There are a wide variety of good apps starting to appear, besides MT you have things like Hero Lab for character generation.

What is missing are phone and tablet apps that integrate in to these - I would love to have an app that ran as a character sheet on my phone, to use after I had created the sheet in Hero Lab.

Similarly having a phone app that could integrate in to MT to run a virtual character sheet would be nice

Find a way to combine the two and I would be in heaven.

Not missing "totally", but might as well be is a good game manager application. Somewhere to consolidated everything or at least most things. I am thinking about something like MasterPlan, but written in Java or something else that is truely cross platform.

I would also like a networked Character sheet app runnable on non desktop OS's. In a perfect world, CT/IT/MT would all be networked, possibly along with DT and the missing GMT(GameMasterTool). There are issues such as large data set sync across devices. One way around that is load on demand, ie, here is a list of feats with a very short description. Then you click on it, and it would load the full thing. However, once you set that on your character, it dynamically purges/syncs full data only for the stuff you character actually has... so you can see the whole thing offline, but could only make changes while online and connected to the CT or GMT.

LoneWolf the company that makes HeroLab is in the process of making a iOS version of HeroLab now. Their Mac version was just released on the 20th and it shouldn't be that hard to port. The big hurdle is the screen size and redoing the UI. They are also making a MasterPlan like program called RealmWorks. From the people I know that are beta testers they say it is far beyond MasterPlan and will make DMing easier. Not just for organization, but also for designing campaigns, encounters and such.

What I would like to see is CharacterTool support more frameworks and have the ability to design character sheets with ease.

I would also like something like RealmWorks/MasterPlan but ties directly in to MapTool. There was a program called RPGM that is built with JAVA that was similar to this. The designer/programmer basically abandoned the project when it was starting to work.

The final program I would like is something like CombatManager for Pathfinder but not tied to C# so I can use it on my Arch linux boxes. I use this program almost every time I DM which means I have to use my Windows system as it doesn't run in WINE(and probably never will).

True dat!!

True dat!! I would like to do something like this, but...well life is a B*tch and time just sucks...



From the tiny bit I have just seen, this looks like what CT/IT is supposed to do. The big issue is getting them over the last few hurdles. I know Jay is around, but I don't think he is able to spend any real time on either program. Personally, I would love to see this sort of thing be both stand alone as well as integrated into MT. My thoughts here are along the lines of networked. Imagine IT being networkable but just like MT, the player clients can do/see only what the GM says they can. To some degree, players can also allow access to parts or all of their character(currently "open") over the network for the other players to view.

Agreed on Character sheet.

I dont know if it should be like CT, but a universal, easy-to-use and hopefully network supported character sheet app would be awesome. Maybe included easy dice roller (there are enough stand alone apps, but I'd hate app switching for every roll) and notes making. As GM i'd like to have access to all players sheets and npc sheets as well.

I see this app used in face-to-face gaming.

I don't use Combat Manager for it's initiative tracking. I use it for it's Treasure Generator(mostly to look up the Caster Level to see if my players spellcraft checks can figure out what they have), Monster statblocks and rules. This way I don't have to have d20pfsrd.com up and twenty tabs open. It is quick and easy to figure out what staggered does and how that spell truly works. Yes, this would be a pain to implement for all of the systems out there and I understand only OGL systems can have this, but I only play Pathfinder and LL at the moment.

I have an MT macro that sort of does this. You give it the CL of the item and (something else?) and it calculates the Knowledge(arcana) DC and the Spellcraft DC. I used it in the CotCT campaign, but I'll need to rummage around a bit to find it. I'll send you an email attachment if I locate it.

I found RPTools from a web site called RolePlayersHome.net. It has a great tool for 3e character sheets you shared with the GM. The GM had to approve all changes. It was great. I wish there were something like that for Savage Worlds or a generic one that let me build my own character sheet template for my players. I've done a good bit of that in my framework but you have to have MapTool up to modify your character. It would be better to have a web site devoted to such a program usable from tablets and phones. I would add a dice roller to that (called from the character sheet) that would share rolls with the GM and/or other players.

HeroLab can do this, but it is not free no is it a web program. It is however available on Macs and soon iOS.

I'm a Linux guy :/

It works on Linux via WINE great. I use Arch Linux on all of my systems, except my gaming PC which has Win7 x64.

Oddly enough, my wishes would be for tool-making tools.
What I mean is, instead of a character sheet for a game system, there would be a proto-sheet, with X attributes, Y skills, etc. that has some fairly easy to implement instructions on customization. Once that is released into the wild where non-coder, but gamer heavy people can build effective tools the populatoin of available resources will grow much more dramatically (teach a man to fish...)

We have all kind of maps made from just this model. Build the MT program, make some tutorials on HOW to draw a map and BOOM, lots of comunity generated maps.

Many macros get much tougher because there is a significantly higher barrier for entry. All the common stuff is already there adn custom stuff take a skilled user. IDK what 1.4 will be like, but if the macroing is easy enough there will be a lot mor sources of functional playthings. What would easy enough look like? Graphical logic flow instead of nested line code perhaps? I'm not sure. Has anyone else used Simulink? I think if we could 'program' like you can in Simulink we could have a huge number of people adding value.

Craig actually has ideas for this (and some prototype code, IIRC). But the project stagnated and he didn't continue with it.

It's an interesting project though -- a meta-sheet sheet.

This meta-sheet sheet idea sounds a lot like how *deep inhale* Microsoft Access *deep exhale* works with forms for databases. It would be a very cool idea, and powerful, but not anything that cannot already be accomplished with some code.

Being someone who has this level of coding skill, I feel that it'd be a waste of coding time to implement this;
Appreciating the side of view of someone who couldn't do this, I feel that it'd be a very useful tool indeed.

However, my mind boggles at the sheer scale of coding required to get this working and bulletproofed.