Wizards of the Coast pull the E-Tools licence from CodeMonkeyPublishing

[Thorin]

http://www.codemonkeypublishing.com/index.php

Well... the other shoe finally dropped.

Without preamble or holding anything back it's pretty simple:

Effective November 30th, we will no longer hold license with Wizards of the Coast to produce data sets of any kind for any program.

Wizards of the Coast has declined to extend our agreement, initially citing no reason. Then, after speaking with our contact at-length, we got this explanation: "Because of Future Product Considerations."

Whether this means 4th Edition is looming, they're doing things in house, or they've decided to give a license to someone else, we simply don't know.

What this means in simple terms is that as of December 1st there will be no Wizards of the Coast products available for sale from us. No data sets for e-Tools, PCGen or RPG Foundry. No Interactive Adventures or Atlases. No Fantasy Grounds Data Sets. Nothing. (And, yes, that does mean that all RPG Foundry data set pre-orders will be canceled and refunded.)

That does not mean that we're going out of business. We're not! This has no impact on our other publishers. We will still be producing data sets for them, and in fact we're working on adding a few other publishers to the list of those we do business with in order to bring even more data sets to you guys and gals.

This does, however, also mean no more e-Tools program sales. Which is not as big an issue as e-Tools was at the end of its life cycle, anyway. We had three new data sets for release this month, but that's not happening now as Wizards won't approve them at this stage. And we were basically done with e-Tools, anyhow.

So for a couple months we'll be producing and selling data sets for PCGen, only, until RPG Foundry is out.

But not all is "doom and gloom" around the Zoo! So here's the silver lining on those black clouds. We have (so far!):

      Bastion Press and Zeitgeist Games have agreed to allow for our original RPG Foundry Data Swap. So for those products there will be a free data exchange option for RPG Foundry-format data sets from original e-Tools and/or PCGen purchases.


      We're working on adding several other publishers to our list for PCGen and RPG Foundry data set creation, and not just for the D20 system! And things are looking good there. We can't say who at this time since negotiations are ongoing, of course, but we think people will be pleased.


      In the next cycle of releases/updates (later this month) we?ll finally be revising our PCGen data sets to support PCGen Stable Production Release 5.10.1! Testing was finally concluded without any major changes (primarily to game modes settings since PCGen code changed a few things there - more details/comments at release time on this) and all is looking good.


      We'll be continuing to sell Bastion Press product PDFs and we're working with a few of our other publisher partners to sell their PDFs as well.


      And we've got a few other things "in the works" that we can't detail just yet... but when we can say more we will!


As a final note on data sets: The "2 years of support" will officially begin as of December 1, 2006, and end December 1, 2008. We'll still be doing updates, bug fixes, etc on both the e-Tools and PCGen data sets. That hasn't changed. You'll still be able to download the files that you've previously purchased (all data, the e-Tools Program itself, the Interactive Adventures and the Fantasy Grounds data sets) until that date.

I'm sure some of you are wondering by now if this is going to impact RPG Foundry in any way, so let's address that. Only slightly. Some of you may remember that we said we were basing our initial data sets for RPG Foundry by importing our PCGen files, since they were text and easier to manipulate. But it's still a monkey-ugly conversion with lots of work needing to be done to massage that data into RPG Foundry format, so we've been saying we weren't going to do any type of converter to release to folks because of those reasons. Well... we're revisiting that option given the new circumstances. We're looking at making a slightly higher-functioning converter (though it still won't ever be perfect) available that will at least get the data massaged in such a manner that it's usable in RPG Foundry from PCGen and e-Tools. When we do, we'll release it as a standalone, "alpha test," unsupported application for folks.

There isn't really much more to tell. Those are the highlights of things, as we can tell them to you.

No punches pulled, no lies, just the plain, painful truth. As much as we can tell, anyway, because of NDAs.

We're not going anywhere, we're not folding shop and running away, RPG Foundry isn't dead and neither are we.

So you're stuck with us Monkeys for a long time to come yet.

-The Code Monkey Publishing Team

Nuts!  Datasets that are out already will be updated for another two years, though.

Stupid Wizards, acting like Microsoft again.

[Mr. Analog]

I'm calling Wizards... @%&#ERS!

[Ustauk]

Damn it, I wanted my Player's Handbook II dataset! B#&(@rds

[Shayne]

This is something that has always sucked about D&D is the lack of advancement technologically.  I understand that its a Pen & Paper RPG, but with laptops and PDAs and computers being so prevalent that it almost seems like a no brainier to have a verbose digital suite of tools.

The program that CodeMonkey made wasn't all that great but it worked, how hard could a database system like this with some simple formulas be to make?

[Mr. Analog]

the difficulty lies in acquiring Wizards of the Coast rights to publish their stuff, something which as been problematic since the earliest days of Magic: the Gathering (anyone remember Magic Suitcase?).

I intend to call them and write them a letter. As this is crapola.

Corporate Contact Information

Location:
Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
1600 Lind Ave. SW, Ste. 400
Renton, WA 98055

Mailing Address:
Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
PO Box 707
Renton, WA 98057

Phone: 425-226-6500
Email: corporateinfo@wizards.com

[Tom]

Maybe this means a decent program is coming out that doesn't rely on ODBC for connecting to Access .mdb "databases".

[Mr. Analog]

Maybe this means a decent program is coming out that doesn't rely on ODBC for connecting to Access .mdb "databases".

DO YOU want to PAY for a new piece of software? Supported by God knows who?

[Lazybones]

Tom should just start writing his own that works with the basic D20 system and allows users to input all the stuff there self.

Really we have all the source books... A program that lets the user input just what their character has would still be useful.

[Thorin]

This is something that has always sucked about D&D is the lack of advancement technologically.  I understand that its a Pen & Paper RPG, but with laptops and PDAs and computers being so prevalent that it almost seems like a no brainier to have a verbose digital suite of tools.

To be fair there are others, like DM Genie/Player Genie, DM's Familiar, PCGen, etc.  Some include combat-management software to help you speed up how fast combats occur - a listbox showing initiative order (top of the list is the character/monster whose turn it is right now), quick-roll Spot/Listen/saves/Initiative for all monsters or all characters or all of both...  There are also online systems that let you play remotely with others that include fog-of-war effects separately for each player and still preserve most of the d20 rules.

I used to use DM's Familiar but my players complained I was looking at the screen too much.  Keeping all of the abilities of several demons in my head at the same time, though, was sort of a pain

The program that CodeMonkey made wasn't all that great but it worked, how hard could a database system like this with some simple formulas be to make?

It's not the simple formulas that are difficult to add, it's the hard formulas.  Look into templating, and try to figure out what all of the modifiers for the Swim skill are when a character is an Ogre half-dragon weretiger.

CMP didn't make E-Tools, they just improved it after Fluid had made a half-assed attempt at it, and spent time entering all the data into datasets.  CMP *is* making RPG Foundry from scratch - it promises to work a lot better.

But the big problem is that Wizards suddenly said that CMP isn't allowed to provide any new datasets for E-Tools and isn't allowed to provide *any* datasets for RPG Foundry that include closed content (anything not in the SRD).  Pretty much everything in the expansion books is considered closed content.

[Tom]

DO YOU want to PAY for a new piece of software? Supported by God knows who?

No, but if its WOC sure.

Tom should just start writing his own that works with the basic D20 system and allows users to input all the stuff there self.

Was planning on it, we'll see. I'd take a fair bit of work to get the ui design right.

[Lazybones]

Was planning on it, we'll see. I'd take a fair bit of work to get the ui design right.

How about basing it around character sheets and class. Once you select a class it gives your a blank character sheet with all the fields for the class. Each section would have selections for adding your stuff.

Without a computer that is how the player does it anyway, the whole system is based around character sheets.

[Tom]

That is pretty much the idea so far, but there much more to the app than just the sheet itself, dialogs, data storage, etc. It tends to take me a while to come up with a decent ui design for things that isn't hard to use (for anyone) or confusing.

It'll e pretty easy to not only make it look like a real char sheet, but print it out as well I love Qt4. Theres even some code laying around someplace on teh intarwebs/tubes for accessing (tee hee) Access database files. *cough* As long as you have a license to use the files it should be OK right?

I still have a couple projects in my queue that are rather important before I start on something like this. Neither have all that left to do, but the current one (not much of a design, but I'm mainly just doing it for myself...) needs some clever ideas to interface with MusicBrainz correctly.

[Thorin]

*Much* more important than the UI at this point is figuring out how to store the data.  Trust me, all of the information contained on a D&D sheet and in all the books is *not* easily stored in a few database tables or a few lines of XML.

Accessing mdb files (Access database files) via an ODBC or OLEDB or even DAO connection does not require any licensing in and of itself.

Here's some thoughts on the data you might need to store for D&D.  This is just for skills:
- name
- category (for skills like Knowledge, Profession, Craft)
- usable without ranks (untrained)
- what ability it's based on
- total score
- ability modifier
- racial modifier
- ranks assigned
- what level those ranks were assigned at
- whether the ranks were assigned as a class or cross-class skill
- whether to apply an encumbrance/armour modifier
- encumbrance/armour modifier
- whether the encumbrance/armour modifier should be doubled or not
- modifiers for tools
- modifiers for masterwork tools
- synergy modifier
- miscellaneous modifier (and probably what gave it)

Now keep in mind that you'll want to make the system flexible enough that new skills can be added in, as well as new feats that might provide other modifiers to skills...  And you've only covered skills at this point, not the equipment list, the spell list, the abilities, the ACs, the hit points, the equipped weapons, the classes and class levels, the feats, the class special abilities, the special mounts/familiars/animal companions, etc.

It's when I think about all this that I realize that CMP managed to make a pretty good product.

Speaking of which, it's entirely possible to use the House Rule Editor or ET Helper to add in new data, so we don't have to suddenly abandon E-Tools.

[Tom]

Its a lot of data, no way around that. But that ui is nearly as bad as WinMX. IMO a good UI is VERY important.

First step I'd have to do is actually learn all the specifics of D&D. That alone could take more time than it would take someone else with that knowledge to create a new application. Like I said, I was thinking about it.

[Thorin]

Like I said before, the UI was established by Fluid Entertainment.  And at the time that Fluid released version 1.0, it had so many bugs you couldn't make a Paladin!

RPG Foundry, the product that CMP created from scratch based on lessons learned from E-Tools, will be slicker.

Keep in mind, though, D&D character sheets are very information-dense, and the UI to create one will never be simple.  There's just so much stuff that needs to be considered; just look at the list along the left side in an E-Tools character generator screen.

And for others thinking about making their own character generator, I can tell you I've tried over a dozen and so far PC Gen and E-Tools were the most complete; there's lots of half-baked ones that aren't properly supported.