2. PC character sheet changelog. It’s not that I don’t trust my players, but I’ve seen things on their sheets and thought, when did they add that? Ideally it would ignore temporary changes (using spell slots, HP loss/gain) and alert on equipment/currency adds. Doesn’t have to be a heavy log, something akin to the forum update bell.
I'm actually more paranoid about players "forgetting" to check off their slots, correctly record prepared spells, or stuff just resetting between sessions, even if we left off with a "roll for initiative" moment.
I actually really like the idea of an NPC creator that would generate a monster style statblock for a character built as a PC. I do have to question what you mean by "Rival builds in XGE"?
In Xanathar’s Guide to Everything (XGE), there is a section on Rivals, essentially specialized NPCs that you can create to act as fools for your PCs. Not necessarily a big bad, but more like, say a town sheriff that suspects the party rogue of theft, and always seems to be in his business or a tax collector who thinks the party is hoarding gold and owes taxes. The section talks about goals, plans, and assets of the rival.
I like a lot of what's being said here. I'd like to see a way that during a game I can easily reference PC character sheets with a combat tracker that I can also use to easily track multiple monster hp. And yes, having private and public notes is not a campaign manager.
I want to be able to "register" a magic item to the campaign. Allow it to show up in someone's inventory like it does now but also have a list visible from the campaign that shows all magic items discovered so far and who they're assigned to.
I think it would be good as a part of campaign management for DMs to have a simple feature that allows them to access the purchased materials they own along with the Basic Rules. I know that the way its set up now is to play on our "instant gratification" needs just like the candy bars at check out. I search for something and it comes up as being in something we don't know and DnDB hopes we kneejerk purchase the material. Whatever. As a loyal customer, I want a way to access, look at, search my unlocked material without having to play around with the Advanced Search garbage. I want a button that says "Unlocked Material" and all it accesses is anything I've unlocked.
Experience / Level Control As a DM I want to be able to lock control over gaining experience points, dole out XP or grant levels via the milestone method to my players. I should be able to both say give 500 XP to these people each, or select a number of people and total amount of XP and allow the system to divide it up and dole it out to each for me. I ought to have a log and add a note that explains where all the XP came from.
Treasures: Loot / Magic Items As a DM I would like to plan out treasures - pre-build them including all gold/art/gems and even magic items. I should be able to grant this to the party of my campaign in which they can go in and claim items or have one player select a "Divide" option once I have released it. Magic items should show up as "Sword" and a player with detect magic can click and say "Detect Magic" or "Identify" on an item allowing them to know what it is.
Content Sharing: Handouts / Maps As a DM I need better Control over the all the supplement art/handouts plus the ability to upload art assets (fine if this requires subscription) and then decide when/if I share them with my players.
Encounter Organization: Not a VTT As a DM I want to organize encounters to make them easy to run. A single screen ought to allow me to add Monsters from the sources I see, link some art resources, and build a treasure associated with it. I don't need to run the monsters through the app, but I need to quickly click into its compendium entry so I can check its Armor/abilities like I flipped to the page in the MM. I need to be able to hit a single button to go back to overview so I can click into the map or into a different monster. When its over I'd like to click a single button and be asked if I want to divide the XP from those monsters to those players with the ability to edit it if needed and the note on their XP should refer back to this encounter. Lastly I can click a button and hand that treasure over to the group.
Simple Party View: Customization Optional As a DM I would like to have a vertical scroll of player cards with summary info. I don't know how "real time" this could be to make it useable in combat but even if its just to have an overview at times would be useful. I imagine a small portrait, player name, character name, race/class of each with a toggle/tab to switch all players to a view of their abilities/skill and tooll prof lists/languages/ Hitpoints & Defenses. Maybe a customizeable tab if workable. Maybe I can denote a status if I need to - thats less important.
The idea being is in different situations I want to quickly know "Does anyone speak giant", "Who's proficient in smithing tools", "Who's my party member with the lowest intelligence". Right now seeing that across players is way too much in and out of screens.
Calendar Tool: Matrix of Notes As a DM, its bothersome to keep track of days and some of the stuff associated with it. I'd like to be able to make matrix of just days/weeks and then I can go into each one and give it a name (e.g. Flamerule 18). and maybe select some weather (84 Degrees, Rainy) with possible a randomize that just takes in season/environment. Then I can maybe make some notes so I can go back and look for when they killed the Cyclops of Mount Pointyrock, was that 2 weeks ago, or three.
I am envisioning a very manual tool, but give me the construct and some shallow tools so I can write out the days/weeks/months of my game, prepare ahead of time the next week of weather and hang off references to encounters I built or just hand scribbled notes. I should probably be able to select the current date so any other notes i make in the game can ref that date if needed.
WHY is this my dream list: All of this has one thing in common. It doesn't run the game for me, it helps me run the game. It strips away the piles of books and printed sheets of paper that I need to operate encounters at the table efficiently and speed up play. It allows me to hand information and rewards over to my players. It tracks and records this information for me so that I can find it later. It makes my game portable, it makes my life convenient.
It makes it worth buying 300 bucks in content and a 10$ a month subscription so that I don't need anything else, so I can have easy and simple access to all the digital content of dnd when I prep and when I play. DMs will line up around the block to unlock all the content for their group when it makes their lives this easy.
What ISNT on this list: A messaging tool. - I feel like we have options but mostly because its not needed, it would ask the app to be overly real time and have alerts. A calendar tool. - I know I asked for a calendar but its important to call out that what I want is a glorified excel spreadsheet with maybe some help with some title boxes like so I can put in Week/Year/Month/Day etc. I don't need you to advance the calendar for me but give me the desk planner. A combat tracker - I want the campaign manager to help me structure an encounter, but I can track Initiative, hits points. This could be a future tool I am sure but there's plenty of ways to do this today that don't require tying into the official content I own. A tabletop - I don't need tokens on maps, or dice rolls, or fog of war or vision.
I have to disagree with you about combat tracking. In fact, I’m a bit baffled by the comment. You’ve got full character and monster stats, including homebrew, in DDB. I want to be able to pop that into an encounter builder/tracker without having to double handle it in another app. Each to their own, but it’s pretty high on my wishlist.
I have to disagree with you about combat tracking. In fact, I’m a bit baffled by the comment. You’ve got full character and monster stats, including homebrew, in DDB. I want to be able to pop that into an encounter builder/tracker without having to double handle it in another app. Each to their own, but it’s pretty high on my wishlist.
Agreed. More than almost all of those tools outlined above, the combat tracker would make my games run so much more smoothly. Combat tracker and party view dashboard. These are the two things I want to see more than anything else.
Also agreed. I've tried about five different ways of managing initiative and I've currently settled on Beyond Help to track monster health and character tents on my GM screen for order and player data. I would really like it all well designed in one place.
To me - atleast for now - the app isn't trying to recreate anything other than reference material. I want the campaign tools to help me copy definitive information from place A to place B. Organize the kind of things that would be on pieces of paper at my table.
Combat tracking is totally something I can see down the line as being useful, and as I said - I think its a future tool potentially. Some of the components of a combat tracker are probably simpler than others but to help manage stuff like initiative you need the app to by as synchronous as possible to coordinate across devices. If its just to track the initiative and hps of the monsters in a combat for the DM thats easier, and its just for the DM - meaning it wont convey information back to the players then that is do-able.
As I kind of mentioned before. If you just want to input an initiative order and deduct monster hitpoints - maybe I've just never struggled with those things - thats probably doable. I do tend to not think of it in the vein of "campaign management" though.
If you want to ask for initiative rolls or see what players have currently set their hit points to, if you want to see and assign statuses, let players see some/all of this information during the combat - that would be asking for a much bigger thing. Usually when people say they want combat trackers they want all these things. That would require a level of real time information sharing between devices. There's a big difference between making an update and it might take a minute and a refresh to see something, and having an application auto-update with information to all users. I don't think the synchronous behavior is on the table right now.
I have to disagree with you about combat tracking. In fact, I’m a bit baffled by the comment. You’ve got full character and monster stats, including homebrew, in DDB. I want to be able to pop that into an encounter builder/tracker without having to double handle it in another app. Each to their own, but it’s pretty high on my wishlist.
Agreed. More than almost all of those tools outlined above, the combat tracker would make my games run so much more smoothly. Combat tracker and party view dashboard. These are the two things I want to see more than anything else.
Bortm... as far as i am concerned... tools to help the DM is pretty mandatory. maybe its not to you, but you shouldn't tell people that its not what they want just based on what you want. we're not here to debate what is necessary or not, we're here to make request.
i created my own software to help me, and these things are all part of it. and yes its what i call a campaign manager, because as far as i am concerned... my campaign isn't just images and text. they are encounters, they have combats, they have much more then just role play.
To me, a campaign manager is "tools to help me manage my adventures"
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DM of two gaming groups. Likes to create stuff. Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
Play by Post Games --> One Shot Adventure - House of Artwood (DM) (Completed)
Bortm... as far as i am concerned... tools to help the DM is pretty mandatory. maybe its not to you, but you shouldn't tell people that its not what they want just based on what you want. we're not here to debate what is necessary or not, we're here to make request.
i created my own software to help me, and these things are all part of it. and yes its what i call a campaign manager, because as far as i am concerned... my campaign isn't just images and text. they are encounters, they have combats, they have much more then just role play.
To me, a campaign manager is "tools to help me manage my adventures"
I think that's been the heart of the debate on these forums over this. There doesn't appear to be a universal definition of "Campaign Manager/Management". From what I can tell, there are 3 primary sets of expectations on what this should be.
1) A place to easily organize and manipulate information for use between sessions. 2) A place to easily organize and manipulate information for use during sessions. 3) A place to easily organize and manipulate information for use both during and between sessions.
Obviously, which of the above statements best describe your expectations is going to inform what you think is necessary in a campaign manager. If I recall correctly, when Curse did a poll almost a year ago (10-11 months?), the majority of the response they got fell into category 1. I think that is around the time the forums started referring to the between session functions as campaign management and during session functions as simply whatever it was (encounter builder, combat tracker, etc.), although not everyone agreed with that terminology (otherwise these misunderstandings would not still be going on.)
On the positive side, I have not seen any indication that between session functions will be implemented while during session functions will not. They have just been categorized as something else and have a different priority in terms of development. Again, though, a lot of this is based on what I remember from last summer, so I could be 100% off base. If so, feel free to call me out on it. I don't want to continue believing (and spreading) info that's inaccurate.
I would love to divide the notes section more other then just "public" and "private" I want notes specifically for session one for example separate from session seven. The ability to create npcs in one place much like character creation with stats and notes etc. The same with a location like a dungeon to reference for different sights monsters traps, etc. A table maker to easily make the notes needed for maps. Say you want a trap labeled A with a short description in a certain location on the map having a tool to organize a note like that would be terrific.
On the positive side, I have not seen any indication that between session functions will be implemented while during session functions will not. They have just been categorized as something else and have a different priority in terms of development. Again, though, a lot of this is based on what I remember from last summer, so I could be 100% off base. If so, feel free to call me out on it. I don't want to continue believing (and spreading) info that's inaccurate.
On this note, I would like to see a final prioritization and categorization of planned features/enhancements once they kick off the work on the Campaign Management section. I'm sure they will, at least in some way, as they have been extremely transparent so far; I would just love to see something as detailed as possible in terms of what to expect in what order. Note that I did not say "when" or use the term "date", as I know that is not their MO so they don't promise something and then have something come up that stops that. So just a general list of priority and order of production would be nice.
Plus, that would let us know which features, or style/category of features, are actually making the cut.
A friend of mine, who just a few weeks ago released his first game, used a Trello board to both show his community what the planned schedule was in term of priorities and also to allow said community to vote on what they think is most important.
Another thing regarding notes, I would like to give notes to a single player or a group of players within a campaign. So if characters A, C, and R are the characters with blindsight then they would be able to see that note, but characters A, C, X, and Y were the only characters with the passive perception to catch a different event would be the only ones to see a different note.
I can't stress enough how useful it would be to have a "Party Summary" page for the DM. What we have now in campaign manager looks great, but imagine if it had a summary of the players important stats like Passive Perception and AC. An expandable box with all of their skills and saves would be great.
At the moment I have to flick through 4 character sheets to see who has what passive perception, or alternatively keep a manual list that I have to update regularly. There is no real difficulty in having a quick reference sheet that automatically updates from the characters profile.
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I actually really like the idea of an NPC creator that would generate a monster style statblock for a character built as a PC.
I do have to question what you mean by "Rival builds in XGE"?
In Xanathar’s Guide to Everything (XGE), there is a section on Rivals, essentially specialized NPCs that you can create to act as fools for your PCs. Not necessarily a big bad, but more like, say a town sheriff that suspects the party rogue of theft, and always seems to be in his business or a tax collector who thinks the party is hoarding gold and owes taxes. The section talks about goals, plans, and assets of the rival.
I like a lot of what's being said here. I'd like to see a way that during a game I can easily reference PC character sheets with a combat tracker that I can also use to easily track multiple monster hp. And yes, having private and public notes is not a campaign manager.
--> Been playing D&D since 1987. - - - - My Blog: Children of the Ampersand - - - - Storyteller For Hire (DuBois, PA) - - - - My Stuff at DM's Guild - - - ->
I want to be able to "register" a magic item to the campaign. Allow it to show up in someone's inventory like it does now but also have a list visible from the campaign that shows all magic items discovered so far and who they're assigned to.
I think it would be good as a part of campaign management for DMs to have a simple feature that allows them to access the purchased materials they own along with the Basic Rules. I know that the way its set up now is to play on our "instant gratification" needs just like the candy bars at check out. I search for something and it comes up as being in something we don't know and DnDB hopes we kneejerk purchase the material. Whatever. As a loyal customer, I want a way to access, look at, search my unlocked material without having to play around with the Advanced Search garbage. I want a button that says "Unlocked Material" and all it accesses is anything I've unlocked.
--> Been playing D&D since 1987. - - - - My Blog: Children of the Ampersand - - - - Storyteller For Hire (DuBois, PA) - - - - My Stuff at DM's Guild - - - ->
My Campaign Management Dream:
Experience / Level Control
As a DM I want to be able to lock control over gaining experience points, dole out XP or grant levels via the milestone method to my players. I should be able to both say give 500 XP to these people each, or select a number of people and total amount of XP and allow the system to divide it up and dole it out to each for me. I ought to have a log and add a note that explains where all the XP came from.
Treasures: Loot / Magic Items
As a DM I would like to plan out treasures - pre-build them including all gold/art/gems and even magic items. I should be able to grant this to the party of my campaign in which they can go in and claim items or have one player select a "Divide" option once I have released it. Magic items should show up as "Sword" and a player with detect magic can click and say "Detect Magic" or "Identify" on an item allowing them to know what it is.
Content Sharing: Handouts / Maps
As a DM I need better Control over the all the supplement art/handouts plus the ability to upload art assets (fine if this requires subscription) and then decide when/if I share them with my players.
Encounter Organization: Not a VTT
As a DM I want to organize encounters to make them easy to run. A single screen ought to allow me to add Monsters from the sources I see, link some art resources, and build a treasure associated with it. I don't need to run the monsters through the app, but I need to quickly click into its compendium entry so I can check its Armor/abilities like I flipped to the page in the MM. I need to be able to hit a single button to go back to overview so I can click into the map or into a different monster. When its over I'd like to click a single button and be asked if I want to divide the XP from those monsters to those players with the ability to edit it if needed and the note on their XP should refer back to this encounter. Lastly I can click a button and hand that treasure over to the group.
Simple Party View: Customization Optional
As a DM I would like to have a vertical scroll of player cards with summary info. I don't know how "real time" this could be to make it useable in combat but even if its just to have an overview at times would be useful. I imagine a small portrait, player name, character name, race/class of each with a toggle/tab to switch all players to a view of their abilities/skill and tooll prof lists/languages/ Hitpoints & Defenses. Maybe a customizeable tab if workable. Maybe I can denote a status if I need to - thats less important.
The idea being is in different situations I want to quickly know "Does anyone speak giant", "Who's proficient in smithing tools", "Who's my party member with the lowest intelligence". Right now seeing that across players is way too much in and out of screens.
Calendar Tool: Matrix of Notes
As a DM, its bothersome to keep track of days and some of the stuff associated with it. I'd like to be able to make matrix of just days/weeks and then I can go into each one and give it a name (e.g. Flamerule 18). and maybe select some weather (84 Degrees, Rainy) with possible a randomize that just takes in season/environment. Then I can maybe make some notes so I can go back and look for when they killed the Cyclops of Mount Pointyrock, was that 2 weeks ago, or three.
I am envisioning a very manual tool, but give me the construct and some shallow tools so I can write out the days/weeks/months of my game, prepare ahead of time the next week of weather and hang off references to encounters I built or just hand scribbled notes. I should probably be able to select the current date so any other notes i make in the game can ref that date if needed.
WHY is this my dream list:
All of this has one thing in common. It doesn't run the game for me, it helps me run the game. It strips away the piles of books and printed sheets of paper that I need to operate encounters at the table efficiently and speed up play. It allows me to hand information and rewards over to my players. It tracks and records this information for me so that I can find it later. It makes my game portable, it makes my life convenient.
It makes it worth buying 300 bucks in content and a 10$ a month subscription so that I don't need anything else, so I can have easy and simple access to all the digital content of dnd when I prep and when I play. DMs will line up around the block to unlock all the content for their group when it makes their lives this easy.
What ISNT on this list:
A messaging tool. - I feel like we have options but mostly because its not needed, it would ask the app to be overly real time and have alerts.
A calendar tool. - I know I asked for a calendar but its important to call out that what I want is a glorified excel spreadsheet with maybe some help with some title boxes like so I can put in Week/Year/Month/Day etc. I don't need you to advance the calendar for me but give me the desk planner.
A combat tracker - I want the campaign manager to help me structure an encounter, but I can track Initiative, hits points. This could be a future tool I am sure but there's plenty of ways to do this today that don't require tying into the official content I own.
A tabletop - I don't need tokens on maps, or dice rolls, or fog of war or vision.
This cannot be upvoted enough
I have to disagree with you about combat tracking. In fact, I’m a bit baffled by the comment. You’ve got full character and monster stats, including homebrew, in DDB. I want to be able to pop that into an encounter builder/tracker without having to double handle it in another app. Each to their own, but it’s pretty high on my wishlist.
Also agreed. I've tried about five different ways of managing initiative and I've currently settled on Beyond Help to track monster health and character tents on my GM screen for order and player data. I would really like it all well designed in one place.
Check out all my important links here.
May we live in Less Interesting Times
To me - atleast for now - the app isn't trying to recreate anything other than reference material. I want the campaign tools to help me copy definitive information from place A to place B. Organize the kind of things that would be on pieces of paper at my table.
Combat tracking is totally something I can see down the line as being useful, and as I said - I think its a future tool potentially. Some of the components of a combat tracker are probably simpler than others but to help manage stuff like initiative you need the app to by as synchronous as possible to coordinate across devices. If its just to track the initiative and hps of the monsters in a combat for the DM thats easier, and its just for the DM - meaning it wont convey information back to the players then that is do-able.
Largely I just don't think its "up-there" for me.
As I kind of mentioned before. If you just want to input an initiative order and deduct monster hitpoints - maybe I've just never struggled with those things - thats probably doable. I do tend to not think of it in the vein of "campaign management" though.
If you want to ask for initiative rolls or see what players have currently set their hit points to, if you want to see and assign statuses, let players see some/all of this information during the combat - that would be asking for a much bigger thing. Usually when people say they want combat trackers they want all these things. That would require a level of real time information sharing between devices. There's a big difference between making an update and it might take a minute and a refresh to see something, and having an application auto-update with information to all users. I don't think the synchronous behavior is on the table right now.
Bortm... as far as i am concerned... tools to help the DM is pretty mandatory.
maybe its not to you, but you shouldn't tell people that its not what they want just based on what you want.
we're not here to debate what is necessary or not, we're here to make request.
i created my own software to help me, and these things are all part of it. and yes its what i call a campaign manager, because as far as i am concerned... my campaign isn't just images and text. they are encounters, they have combats, they have much more then just role play.
To me, a campaign manager is "tools to help me manage my adventures"
DM of two gaming groups.
Likes to create stuff.
Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses
If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
Play by Post Games
--> One Shot Adventure - House of Artwood (DM) (Completed)
2) A place to easily organize and manipulate information for use during sessions.
3) A place to easily organize and manipulate information for use both during and between sessions.
I would love to divide the notes section more other then just "public" and "private" I want notes specifically for session one for example separate from session seven. The ability to create npcs in one place much like character creation with stats and notes etc. The same with a location like a dungeon to reference for different sights monsters traps, etc. A table maker to easily make the notes needed for maps. Say you want a trap labeled A with a short description in a certain location on the map having a tool to organize a note like that would be terrific.
hope that helps these are just my thoughts.
A friend of mine, who just a few weeks ago released his first game, used a Trello board to both show his community what the planned schedule was in term of priorities and also to allow said community to vote on what they think is most important.
That was a free thought to consider.
Check out all my important links here.
May we live in Less Interesting Times
Another thing regarding notes, I would like to give notes to a single player or a group of players within a campaign. So if characters A, C, and R are the characters with blindsight then they would be able to see that note, but characters A, C, X, and Y were the only characters with the passive perception to catch a different event would be the only ones to see a different note.
I can't stress enough how useful it would be to have a "Party Summary" page for the DM. What we have now in campaign manager looks great, but imagine if it had a summary of the players important stats like Passive Perception and AC. An expandable box with all of their skills and saves would be great.
At the moment I have to flick through 4 character sheets to see who has what passive perception, or alternatively keep a manual list that I have to update regularly. There is no real difficulty in having a quick reference sheet that automatically updates from the characters profile.