Talk:D20pro
Feel free to add to this, but I intend to flesh it out a bit more with my thoughts. -Mattie
Absalom's Thoughts
- Other Cons
-> Built around a skirmish system. Do you like 100+ person set piece battles? They can't be reasonably be done in d20 pro. -> All handouts and stuff are externally opened. -> Only one map at a time, with a preset-nonadjustable grid (so, no world map, or having small groups on different maps (which happens a LOT) -> Every part of the game must be programmed in advance by the GM - encounters, etc.
So, from what I've seen tinkering with it, the players will see about a 15% reduction in workload and a MUCH better interface, while the GM sees the workload at least double for a moderate interface improvement, all at the expense of far less versatility. I think it's a great program, and I think the FGII people should really take a look at it (ESPECIALLY when it comes to movement, which is the think d20pro does damn near perfectly.) and especially great for 4.0, but for the type of game I run and the way I run it (no advance notes, almost never setting up major counters in advance, and most random encounters generated on the fly) it will make me dread running games more than I already do because in addition to requiring DMs to approve everything on the front end, they have to put in a TON more work before the game starts. Mattie: How long did your demo take to set up? Considering I've almost retired the game about 3 times in 2011 alone (last night being the most recent), I'm not exactly sure switching to a program that makes the game feel MORE like work than it already does is a great policy unless someone is looking to take over for me.
Excepting, of course, getting Matt Allen to run a fucking 4.0 Dark Sun game.
Some thoughts on the pros here, though:
-> Built around a skirmish system. Do you like 100+ person set piece battles? They can't be reasonably be done in d20 pro.Comment
It does seem skirmishy, but I think we need to try this. I don't see why this wouldn't actually be easier in some ways. I'm not familiar with how you do it in FG2 but I'd be surprised if you couldn't (a) wing it like we do in FG if the tracker stuff is cumbersome or (b) get it to work. I think the battle part will be easier because you're not having to manually lookup saves, skills, AC, etc, for all the rolls for all the random odd beasties. Again, I want to try it. Maybe recreate the epic orc tribe battle and see how to optimize it-- for FG2, we were forced to find heuristics to make big battles work. I think if we had been using d20pro we would have done the same thing to cut corners to keep the DM's sanity. Expertise over time will make either tool work, IMHO-- we just have a lot of FG2 expertise currently.--Mattie-> All handouts and stuff are externally opened.
Are the handouts in FG2 just tracked as DM notes? If so, this aligns with the con I will add that "Notes interface from FG2 isn't there" (which has other player-collaboration cons). The points I'd say here are:To try them out in my game, I personally used PDFs and notepad txt files instead of handouts. I like PDFs but they have size/network concerns. In-game DM note handouts like FG2 is something I could probably code up, and if I get source access I'll do it just to get acquainted with the codebase.
- Graphical handouts are internally opened.
- Text block descriptions have a special spot to paste into chat so they're called-out in the chat logs (as a quest note guy, I love this). In the end it's just you can't do in-game note handouts without using chat.
- The only things that are externally opened are things FG didn't have anything for: URLs, documents, music, etc.
--Mattie-> Only one map at a time, with a preset-nonadjustable grid (so, no world map, or having small groups on different maps (which happens a LOT)
Not following this 100% (for the world map part). Only one map shown at a time to players can be a drag, but the GM can have as many maps loaded as he wants. Definite con in terms of flexibility, but a positive for keeping game focus and simplifying things. The DM swaps the viewable map and everyone swaps when he tells them to. You can have different people on each map, no problem, but not all are visible at the same time. :( The good news is that we do usually keep all action on the same large map in FG2 aside from world map stuff. Still, this feels a lot like the problem/feature we already have in FG2 where the DM pins the map zoomed in and players are off-map awaiting him to return focus to them. We already live with that pretty well.In my test game, I probably made this appear worse because I didn't have (big map) -> (small map) sort of setup like you usually do (wisely), so it was more jarring to have to move from one map to another. In reality it should have been a bigger cave map with fog of war instead of lots of (small map) -> (small map) action. Live and learn.
You can work around the world map a little by making a world map a graphical handout, but I agree it would be better in the end to have multiple maps on screen at the same time.
Can you clarify on the grid comments? You can adjust the grid size when you make a map to support world maps, surely. If you ran into issues here, let me know, though.--Mattie-> Every part of the game must be programmed in advance by the GM - encounters, etc.
I'm pretty sure this isn't any more the case than FG (I need to see FG DM-side to be sure). I did mine heavily-prepped (with walls drawn, etc) because it was for testing stuff (and I'm also that kind of "be prepared" engineery type). You can very quickly drag monsters onto a blank/boilerplate map, fog of war everything, etc. I think random low-prep encounters would actually be easier or just as easy as FG.--MattieMattie: How long did your demo take to set up? Considering I've almost retired the game about 3 times in 2011 alone (last night being the most recent), I'm not exactly sure switching to a program that makes the game feel MORE like work than it already does is a great policy unless someone is looking to take over for me.
Many hours, but 60% of that was making pregens because I'm a newb. Maybe I did the whole tool a disservice in my demo. In my case, I was (a) learning the tool and (b) purposely trying to overload the game with crazy handouts, tiled-maps, etc. I really feel it can be run without preparation just as easily as FG, once you (a) have the characters loaded, and (b) learn the interface and where to invest your time. There will be some trade-offs but I don't know the FG2 DM interface enough to compare. I'd love to come to your place and have you show me some of the GM features, so I can see what we'd need to code into d20pro to help cover that. I found a number of quick ways to handle certain things that might also not be obvious at first toying with it. All the expertise you have in FG2 would need to be rebuilt in d20pro, though-- no way around that if we swapped.--Mattie
Ultimately, I think big battles, quick battles, handouts, and maps are just "different" more than they are true unbearable negatives. In most cases they offer so many other features that I think the score comes out in d20pro's favor, but that's a taste thing. They're more an issue of learning what works and what doesn't (just as it was for FG2, though we have a lot of expertise invested there).
Where I think d20pro is really weak is in terms of requiring GM management for in-game character sheet editing + inventory management. Lots more control for GM means a lot more work for him, too. I agree that we need to find ways to avoid this to make d20pro a viable alternative, because we don't need our GM forced to smash up his room in frustration. I wouldn't be able to stomach that too much longer myself. That's why I have a call with their lead developer soon to see what I can swing. ;)
Anyway, just my $.02-- but I do volunteer to be a d20pro DM's assistant if we can figure out a way to coordinate it, and help transport stuff between software, find ways to optimize it, make code changes for the terrible problems, do tech support for players, move characters over, etc. I would be open to some delegation for other things that are burdens for the game, too, and will do my best to avoid OOC conflicts of interest. :) We've invested 3 years into our game, so if it keeps going for 3 more years, this is all time well-spent. :)
As always, thanks for putting up with so many silly players for so many years. It's been a lot of fun and clearly you've inspired a lot!
I mentioned this on Kib's sheet because the Field Marhsall stuff made me think of it, but I want to bring it up for discussion here, too. Basically, does d20pro support area effects? Having to keep track of which of Kib's allies are inside his bubble is something I foresee being a huuuuge pain in the ass in FGII. -Slitherrr
- Nope-- in its current incarnation it doesn't. It does have support for targeting people/allies for the effect, but no long-term radius tracker. (This would be a cool feature to add and I doubt it would be hard. I have an interest in this, too, because of some Paladin similar effects. ) -Mattie
