RPG Software

I’m a complete and utter Geek (I scored Major Geek BTW) sometimes its a huge wonder that I actually got married, but then again, my lovely wife is also pretty up there on the geek scale.

Anywho, being the geek that I am, I’ve always been fascinated by using computers to make my RPG games better. And up to this year (2007) I’ve failed to find anything good enough for me to use consistently. I paid good money for the Dungeon Master Assistant for AD&D  back in the 80’s (pure crap) and the D&D Mastertools from WoTC in the 2000s (even worse).

However, my players have found a few decent character sheets and they’ve been happy with them. For DMing however, nothing really was better than a notebook and a bunch of Index cards (To track initiative, Monster HP, magical loot, etc)

However, this year I’ve discovered Wikis and the Google Groups mailing list service. This is good stuff! The mailing list has the potential to be the perfect Game Webpage and has the super extra bonus of being access restricted, so we don’t have to worry about Copyright too much (Most of the cool stuff you want to share about D&D are outside of the OGL and are copyrighted). We have a forum, space to create HTML pages (like a limited-function Wiki) and spaces for files (like character sheets and loot!)

An offline Wiki like Tiddlywiki, I found out, is the also the perfect DMing tool. Since it’s basically a bunch of interconnected pages, it’s exactly like a campaign notebook. I can design adventures and critters and link them all together. And it fits all on a USB stick.

Time will tell if I’ll keep using these tools, but I’m giving it my best shot for the new campaign.

Update (August 24th 2007): The Google Group as been universally adopted by the whole group and the Wiki remains the best tool Ive had for DM prep. I wonder what 4E will offer in terms of online tools?.