Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;330267Case in point:

Evil Hat stops their 4e support line, One Bad Egg:

http://www.onebadegg.com/egg/2009/09/the-egg-goes-dark/

Sucks for them.

That's a really interesting side-effect of the DDI and Character Builder.
So what TCO is talking about when de facto refusing 3PP stuff at the game table is not anecdotic at all.

Quote from: Benoist;330311 Sucks for them.

That's a really interesting side-effect of the DDI and Character Builder.

Not an unpredictable side effect, though.  It's 'lock in', like you get with an operating system.

Quote from: StormBringer;330312Not an unpredictable side effect, though.  It's 'lock in', like you get with an operating system.

Perhaps this was done deliberately from the very beginning, with the turn of events happening accordingly to WotC's plan.

In terms of printed 3pp stuff for 4E, the only stuff I've seen so far at various FLGS:

- Goodman Games
- Expeditious Retreat Press
- Mongoose

Not a whole lot else.

Most of the other 3pp's I've heard of doing 4E stuff, seems to be either pdf or print-on-demand stuff.

http://www.enworld.org/wiki/index.php/4E_3rd_Party_Publishers

The DDI thing does hurt 3PP settings and adventures less than crunch books. Again, that might have been the point.

On no particular evidence, I wouldn't assume it was intentional. But it's a definite side effect.

The Monster Builder does permit import; if Goodman Games wanted they could provide electronic versions of their monster books in a form that can be imported into WotC tools. (I think. I haven't looked closely at the GSL to be sure.) I have no idea if that's an indication that WotC will open up the Character Builder or not; the programming would be somewhat tougher.

Start up a "dead pool", and see which 4E 3pp's will be the next to fall.

Sort of like "dotcom dead pools" from back in 2000-2001.  

Quote from: Thanlis;330341On no particular evidence, I wouldn't assume it was intentional. But it's a definite side effect.

The Monster Builder does permit import; if Goodman Games wanted they could provide electronic versions of their monster books in a form that can be imported into WotC tools. (I think. I haven't looked closely at the GSL to be sure.) I have no idea if that's an indication that WotC will open up the Character Builder or not; the programming would be somewhat tougher.

Not really; it's just a RDBMS...
1) The class lists (which include optional and mandatory abilities)
2) The Race lists (again, just a list of abilities by race, plus att mods)
3) the character list (which contains containers for race, class, stats, name, and 30 levels of special abilities)

Quote from: aramis;330491Not really; it's just a RDBMS...
1) The class lists (which include optional and mandatory abilities)
2) The Race lists (again, just a list of abilities by race, plus att mods)
3) the character list (which contains containers for race, class, stats, name, and 30 levels of special abilities)

Consider dragonshards: they're an item that attaches to a weapon. This sort of required a new item slot when it was implemented, except it's a little more complex because you attach them to a specific weapon.

For classes, you need to be able to define class feature choices -- no big deal -- but you also need some way to vary power effects based on the class features. Note that in the original design, you couldn't make this just a display thing, because the XML files needed to be a source for the virtual tabletop. I'm sure there's a data definition language of some sort, but it's not clearly ready for prime time/public distribution.

Opening up the CB isn't impossible, or at least I'd be surprised if it was, but I think it probably goes beyond what they did with the Monster Builder.

Quote from: Thanlis;330544Opening up the CB isn't impossible, or at least I'd be surprised if it was, but I think it probably goes beyond what they did with the Monster Builder.

Well, to a degree, I will amplify Aramis' earlier point about databases:  Once you have a field for 'powers' and the associated fields (frequency, keywords, etc), it wouldn't be that difficult to open it up at all.  Any forum software essentially performs the exact same function.  Leave an admin only switch to mark it as 'official' or 'contributed', and you have something of a form driven wiki.

Whether or not WotC wants to do that... Well, that is the $64,000 question, isn't it?