Database Chargen tools - pros and cons?

[Justin Marx]

Hi everyone, I'm new to the forge and if this sort of question has been asked before, please forgive my newbieness and link me in the right direction.

Anyway, with that disclaimer aside, I am writing an RPG (obviously) and was thinking of using a database for a lot of the character creation / setting material. The primary reason for this is that I have written a lot of detail for it and I feel that it would be unweildy to print in a PDF, much easier to have a point-and-click DB form interface which shows information as it is required.

Now, I am far from the publishing stage, but as far as a potential release (still a pipe dream at this point) is concerned, is such a tool a benefit? If I posted a DB online like this, would it lead to people pinching the damn thing and whipping up characters without needing to get the actual PDF books? This is an important question at the moment, as if I am going to put it in DB format, better to start now than to write everything then rewrite it into a DB. I also like the idea of hiding chargen mechanics to a certain extent, to avoid min/maxing and following a lifepath system for a more organic character that is integrated with the setting.

In short, what are the pros and cons for chargen tools such as those that were shipped with D&D3E?

Thanks for any potential insight. As I said, am new here and I like what I see.

[Dauntless]

I've been pondering the same question myself.  I've actually thought about having a sort of reverse OGL license.

What I mean by that is that I'll give away the core rules and even the Char-gen system away for free.  However, the way I've designed the rules, it's hard to create a character without a background because I'm using a Lifepath system.  And while the core rules will be free, it'll be difficult (but not impossible) to create characters without the background setting.

In a nutshell, give away the rules (including rules to create your own Lifepath system) and the chargen system, but charge for the settings.  I think that ultimately, anytime you release things electronically, the pirating factor goes way up.  What I'm even thinking of doing is creating my own Computer Aided Roleplaying Game (CARPG) that will load the settings through some kind of dynamically linked library.  The library will more than likely be a simple wrapper around an XML core (I'm not totally evil), but I do want to discourage the casual pirates from hocking the material outright, and I don't believe in the Digital Rights management stuff either (like through Adobe).  So the library will plug in to the chargen system, and all the available options will be there for the chargen to interface with to actually create the characters.  If someone doesn't buy the setting, then part of the chargen program will have a wizard to walk the GM through creating his own Lifepath system.

As for hiding the mechanics, a chargen system is actually better than a book for doing that.  When you write the book, you have to explicitly give out the values and various options, but if you do it by a computer based system, you can encapsulate a lot of that detail and hide it.  By hiding some of the quantifiable details, you reduce the occasions where people will play a numbers game.

Personally, I say go for it and release the chargen system you have, even if you can't divorce it too much from your setting.  From hanging around the Hero System forums alot, I've noticed that quite a few people are unhappy with DOJ's new format of releasing "genre" books, rather than "settings" books.  For the most part, people don't want advice on how to create their own settings, they want prefabbed settings to play in.

[Justin Marx]

I must admit Dauntless that my approach was exactly opposite to yours - release the setting and the chargen system, then charge for the rules.

My idea was this - you browse the website (this is presuming that my setting is inherantly interesting, can only hope on that one), like the material, are interested, download the chargen and make up a character or two. The chargen has the setting built into it, so to speak - I am using a lot of ingame jargon which can be accessed by links into dynamic windows, which will explain the material and hopefully draw people in more. You can completely make up the character, you can print it out on a funky character sheet, but then you cannot play the game at all. You have no rules to run it. All you have is a character which you hopefully like and are interested in exploring, but no game.

You can always convert it into another system of course, but that is a lot of work I hope people are unwilling to do. Also, if you buy the core book, it has all the setting detail on a page, instead of having to navigate through an online library, which while convenient when you are looking for specific details, is less convenient for GMs and players alike who want to acquaint themselves with the setting.

There is a lot of talk for online releases here - economically it makes sense, but I would like to know how frequent piracy for this material is? The big games (d20 etc) can be downloaded pretty easy from WinMX et al, however indie games obviously don't have a wide enough circulation for people to host them online very much. Does piracy of PDFs etc worry any of the developers here?

And I completely agree with you regarding hiding the mechanics - I play more than I GM but when I do play the Little Gamer can't help but min/max sometimes, I have been playing so long it seems like second nature, I barely even notice it.... *slap* bad hand! Hence why I have to hide the mechanics, to stop people like me.

[Clay]

As a professional software developer I can tell you that producing a character generation program can be a very big pain in the tail.  It's not that hard to get an initial program off the ground, but producing something that's polished enough for the end user isn't trivial.  It needs to be easy to install.  It needs to run on whatever crazy hardware and software the customer has (and trust me, you'll find some damned crazy stuff out there).  The user shouldn't need to be a bloody genious and read the source code to use it.

Don't get me wrong, a good chargen program can be a very good thing.  But as a game publisher you should focus first on getting your game out.  Hiring a programmer who will produce a good program is very expensive (four figures if the guy is a relative or close friend; otherwise five, and don't settle for anybody who charges less).  Getting a friend who knows all about Visual Basic or C# will get you a program that looks good on some machines but has a high rate of failure in the field.

To see what a really good chargen program can do, check out Byakhee (http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Haven/4173/byakhee.html).  Note however that it wasn't produced by the game's publisher, but a third party who built it for his own nefarious purposes.  It's a solid piece of software that he wrote as a student, and not surprisingly he has a very fine job as a programmer now.

[Justin Marx]

Been using Byakhee for years, its awesome, especially as it gives you access to source books for character generation that haven't been around for years and are impossible to find. And it was a clean, straight-forward piece of software to use.

Admittedly I am not a programmer, but I do a lot of database design for my postgraduate studies, hence I was thinking about putting it to good use for my game. The whistles and bells I wasn't thinking of just yet - graphics etc. but a neat and easy to use interface. I am aware there is a steep learning curve, but hey, that's part of the fun (does that sound mad at all?)

There are a lot of cheesy (and virtually unusable) chargens that people whip up with Excel, especially for crunch-heavy games like Rolemaster. At least with a DB you can use a form to input/output data. Is this unreasonable?

[Clay]

At least with a DB you can use a form to input/output data. Is this unreasonable?

The number of database packages that provide form input as part of the database are vanishingly small.  They also typically require that the user already has the database application installed, something which is not a safe assumption.

I've seen a lot of "applications" written in Access.  A polished look it does not give.  They also tend to be somewhat non-intuitive.  It's perfectly fine for in-house use, but you won't be doing your game any favor by trying to ship such an application.  

Before you try writing a character generation application, learn to write in a language that lets you write a single executable file that doesn't require the user to have another application installed.  This isn't a slam on your programming abilities, but simply what users are going to expect from you.  Delphi is exceptionally simple to use and highly affordable (there is a version available for Free from Borland).  It also makes very nice looking applications with little effort.

[Christopher Weeks]

You can deliver it by http instead of writing platform code.  It has a different set of drawbacks, but it's almost safe to assume that everyone who buys your game will have net access.  In many ways, it's safer than assuming they have a computer.  And you can deliver it to all operating systems.  Were you planning to code for linux and Mac as well as Windows?  And it is almost certainly cheaper to write.