hobbygamers ~ View topic

D&D Insider

Has anyone else checked out the previews of what they're trying to do with D&D Insider? It looks pretty damned fascinating, and seems like a great reason for me to get a regular job, a credit card, and a PC upgrade Razz

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The quality of articles and ideas from Dragon and Dungeon hasn't seemed to have suffered any since their shift out from Paizo's hardcopy printing and back to Wizards' online version. And the online format allows for nifty little cute things like Flash cartoons by the creator of Bitey of Brackenwood (Bitey Castle, the animator's homepage). The cartoons are real gems, and "The Tiefling and the Gnome" is a personal favorite ("I'm a monster! Rawr!" Milk and cookies for the shmuck who can spot the Brackenwood reference.) And the DMing articles in Dungeon are still goldmines of game management ideas (in fact some of the tricks here seem to have been implemented by BJ in his recent Bulan game).

The really intriguing segments for me personally are the online tools for playing D&D (which are still in construction). For those of us with really crappy artistic skills, there's the Character Visualizer, which is billed as an intuitive rendering tool for creating a visualization of your character based on the core races and classes. On the mechanical side, there's also the Character Builder for creating both RAW and homebrew characters for the game. For the DMs, there's the Dungeon Builder and the Online Gametable for dungeon and map creation as well as game tools.

It seems that some of these services seem to be usable even if you're not a D&DI subscriber, but in a limited sense. For example, you can use the dungeon creator to build, save, and print a dungeon map, but you have to be a subscriber to port that map from the dungeon generator to the online table. The same seems to hold for the character visualizer. You can build a character in the visualizer, but you can't import the virtual miniature ("V-Mini") into the online table unless you're a subscriber.

Fascinating, all of it. Any thoughts from the rest of you guys and gals?

how much does the subscription cost???

IIRC, it's still free. For now.

Cool. free stuff!!!!!! Twisted Evil

Momentarily. Since there are e-mags that go with it, though, they wll resume charging once it's all online. It'll set back the occasional subscriber $12-15 per month, while someone who commits for a year gets it for about $8. That's actually kind of cheap if you consider the lowering dollar value, but it still sucks for those without a dollar account.

sucks not to have dollars!!!! Twisted Evil

It does. I'm mainly interested in the Dragon and Dungeon e-zines. As a bonus, should I get a better laptop in the coming months, I could use the Dungeon builder to completely eliminate the need for graphing paper/battle grid. But that's the best case scenario.

Update:

http://wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4news/20080806

The projected pricing has also decreased, although this is only the price for Dragon and Dungeon, plus the Compendium (the Dungeon builder/Character Generator will cost more):

Better. Still a bit on the ouch, but much better.

Now, to get a credit card and steady income, else, convince a relative to get it for me...

I wonder if this had anything to do with the decrease in project pricing:

http://kotaku.com/5032443/xbox-developer-dead-in-murder+suicide

Regulars in the IRC channel I frequent are speculating that D&DI is likely to go kablooey, as a result of that incident.

Young Adult Dragon Joined: 08 Aug 2008 Posts: 68

Most of the tools are still under wraps, but some are pretty useful for the fledgling 4th ed player and DM. Ability score calculators have middling usefulness for the premature Alzheimer's patient in you. The Encounter Builder is simple and effective in churning out those semi-random monster battles.

All in all, I may or may not subscribe. Unless some anonymous hacker on steroids copies the Flash progs and posts them on 4chan, I may be swayed to whip out some moolah.

Dragon and Dungeon starts charging come October.

That person should have a credit card.

Or a paypal dollar account. Cool

Goddess Joined: 30 Nov 2006 Posts: 1118 Location: denial

Or both.

yeah, what she said. Laughing

subscriptions have started supposedly according to this article. but i wonder how one can subscribe. i haven't seen any place in the webpage as to where one could. or am i missing something?

Well, it says they'll start the webpage updating at around 8am their time. So I think it's not yet active, because as of my watch, it's only been three hours.

Wait 24 hours is what I say. Wink

I'm planning on using my HSBC card on this baby IF they actually deliver what they claim to be able to do. And i'm talking about the on-line phase of the game. I mean, there are already good third-party software out there that's doing exactly what Insider's promising... and the 3D Character Image Builder's not really an essential tool. Now, if they actually bring in the existing modules as part of the package in the builders, then I'm really going to bite.

I'm hoping they'll link Insider with RPGA to make game-tracking easier. Speaking of which, if any of you are interested, I could GM a D&D 4e PBP of LFR campaigns (which means you'll get official RPGA/DCI numbers to earn rewards points with). It's not as interesting as Bonethrall since everyone already knows the nooks and crannies of this world (not to mention all the Drizzt clones out there in various forms)...

anyway, from what I hear, even if you guys only get to use the "demo/sharware" version of the Insider software, for as long as the one GMing the game has a paid subscription, everyone could still play.

aaah.. for now, I better sleep. I'll give my other cent on this thing for when I wake up. My Muay Thai instructor's relentless T_T

I am finally registered to Insider. One year.

I'm on the mags for now, but I like em so far.

The updated DnD Compendium is awesome! It's updated to include everything until the October issue of Dragon/Dungeon...

Are yo a DM with a player who likes to get feats from obscure (but official) sourcebooks? Just type in the feat name and woop-ti-doo, there it is.

Need to know the exact wording of a power while in game (assuming wi-fi accessibility of course. Perfect for my Photoshop-mapped sessions)? Just type it in. No need to open the ton of sourcebooks. Wink

The Character Builder is now on Open Beta, which means anyone can download it for free. Updated up to Martial Power, it includes the Barbarian as well.

It's only up to level 3, though, and the Companion Statistics, unfortunately, can't be computed by this version yet.

As for us subscribers, i hear we'll get the full 30 levels late next month. Awesome.

Link.

Oh, my.

The full version of the Character Builder is now available. Now I can make a proper CB sheet for Ereth, and make paragon-tier characters on the fly.

Extremely useful if I want to run a Paragon-tier one shot on the OGM, for example. Twisted Evil

Too bad I'm working atm, I'll have to wait til later tonight to download.