Thursday, 13 March 2003

Computer Support

The two big companies, Wizards of the Coast and White Wolf, have both attempted to put out software to help people run their games. This has taken various forms, but generally includes a character creation utility, mapping software, cheat sheets, and possibly on-line rulebooks.

Universally, the official tools have utterly sucked. The mapping software has been clunky, the on-line rulebooks are in bizarre formats and hard to access (probably in a bid to protect against piracy), and generally don't include anything even vaguely up-to-date, the character creators don't allow easy customisation with house rules (and it's a rare game indeed that doesn't use any), the cheat sheets are usually better done in Word or equivalent, and they tend to be slow and hard to use in general. (And I haven't even mentioned the bugs that often infest these tools, not the fact that they tend to be released long after the game they're supposed to be supporting.)

There are, of course, unofficial software products to help DMs. I haven't tried any of these, but I suspect some are quite good. Without official backing, though, they're definately labours of love, and likely to be patchy in places.

I was about to say this is infuriating, that companies should do better, or something to that effect. The truth is, though, that I have no idea what I would want from a support product, or at least one that it would be feasible to produce. Other than good character forms, that is :-)

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