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More information and discussion on the Content Calendar Changes can be found here. Also, Steve Winter talks about the new vetting process and for Dung…

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So instead of sending me the broadcast message, I get a truncated notice that I should read a the new broadcast message on the Community site.  So, so wrong — even Facebook sends you the entire message and includes the sender in the subject.  So next I click the “click here” to be taken to the broadcast message and instead of being the content that I would care about, I get:

More information and discussion on the Content Calendar Changes can be found here. Also, Steve Winter talks about the new vetting process and for Dungeon and Dragon content and recent article delays in his blog.

You have to be kidding me.  So not only does the email you sent me not have the interesting content, the email just links to a page that has a couple links where the interesting content was posted to the forums and a blog (which at least can now be followed via RSS).

You shouldn’t force your customers to read an email and then visit three web pages just to get some important information.

In Digital Insider (#18), Bill Slavicsek includes the first page of the character sheet and one page of power cards for a level 30 ranger. And while the demonstration that the app goes that high is nice the pages clearly show that the Character Builder does not generate useful data.

1) The Feats, Race Features, and Class Features sections:

The first failure here is that Wizards is trying to combine two sets of useful data resulting in a useless blob:

1. List of all the character’s abilities and selections
2. Quick reference summary of available abilities or bonues

When constructing a character or referencing the build it is always useful to have a list of all the feats (or any other selections) made for the character, but during play this information can be largely useless.  For example, under class features Prime Shot is listed and under Feats Improved Prime Shot is listed — but when in combat all I care about is that I have a +2 bonus to hit with ranged attacks if no ally is closer to the target.  The result is that even with ~30% of the page devoted to these sections, there is still not enough space to include the full list of feats and features and the necessary descriptive text to understand what the feat or feature provides.

Second, this information is also frequently a duplicate of data stored elsewhere on the first page of the character sheet: the bonuses for Defensive Mobility and Combat Anticipation are in the Defenses section, Sneak of Shadows is reflected in the Skills Section (training in Thievery) and should create an additional power card, the bonuses for Improved Initiative and Skill Focus (Perception) are included in the Initiative and Skills sections.  Space on the first page is very precious and should not be wasted on unnecessary duplication.

Third, the data is not categorized in a way that makes it useful during play.  During play grouping abilities by origin is not useful.  This requires me to look in several locations on the character sheet to find a particular ability which at high level might be modified by data that has another origin.  As in the example above, Prime Shot and Improved Prime Shot are listed in two different sections of the page instead of being grouped together or, preferably, combined into one line item.  Wizards seems to partially recognize this, because as I point out above much of the information is duplicated in domain specific sections, but they failed to follow through.

2) Wasting space with Addition

The current character sheet is the same sheet that was designed to be filled out by hand, thus it has boxes to add the expected bonuses for a particular score to ease computation.  But for a computer generated character sheet this becomes wasted space. The skills section takes up about 1/6th of the first page of the character sheet but it could easily be reduced by half with the removal of the unnecessary computation space.

I do appreciate being able to see where a particular score comes from (such as a +29 to Acrobatics), but that can be accomplished by a separate printed page that can be carried with your character sheet and referenced as needed.  This reference page would also be able to have significantly more space to explain all of the applicable bonuses and their origin.

3) Healing Section is too small

In 4E encounters take longer, which results in more damage taken and healed during combat.  This means that it is necessary to have a large box for tracking the character’s current hit points.  The box on the WotC Character Sheet is very small, which requires that the player write very small or make frequent use of an eraser — both are suboptimal solutions.  Several classes also make extensive use of temporary hit points (Helllock, Barbarian, Battlerager Figher) and will need significantly more space than is provided.

Even at the start of the Heroic tier of play, characters will encounter numerous temporary conditions (buffs and debuffs) with short durations.  The single Current Conditions and Effects line isn’t even close to be able to track your buffs let alone your debuffs — which means that the DM has to keep track of the debuffs and several of the buffs can fall through the cracks unless someone remembers.  By providing a large space with room for info on a condition and its duration players are better armed to track their own state.

4) Conditional & Additional Effects

On each attack power card there is an Additional Effects section that includes some optional or conditional bonuses/effects that could be applicable to the power.  Unfortnately this space is quite small.  There is room for three short lines of text, which is sufficient for the first few levels of play, but it will quickly become inadequate.  This 30th level ranger has 10 feats/features that provide conditional bonuses or optional effects (3 attack bonuses and 7 damage bonuses).  There is no way to know about most of them from the tiny provided space, and as I pointed out in my first point above, the character sheet doesn’t display that information either.

It is far more efficient to have your conditionals stored in a single easily referenced location rather than trying to repeatedly cram them onto each power card.

5) The Senses Section

Wow this has to be one of the most pointless sections of the character sheet.  Even the most math-illiterate newbie can add 10 to get the passive senses score — and more importantly this is info that the DM should have on hand without having to ask the characters for their score.  It just needs to be cut.

Doing it right

Soon I’ll follow up with a post showing my current character sheet and how I resolve these issues.

Let’s look at each element of D&DI:

1) Dragon and Dungeon magazines. These are up and running and I have been happy with the content and presentation. I really like the landscape page layout because it minimized column length and allows for better inclusion of sidebars, stat blocks, and resources. Good work Wizards!

2) The D&D Compendium. This has been a bit of a let down, but they are making improvements (posted by our favorite gnome) and soliciting feedback. But it looks like you still can’t search by keyword — such as “at-will”. [CORRECTION: You can! This makes the compendium much more useful.] Doing search right and satisfying everyone is hard as long as Wizards keeps improving the functionality, I won’t get too ranty.

3) The Bonus Tools. I suppose for “bonus items” I shouldn’t complain, but both the Encounter Builder and Ability Generator while having some limited usefulness are pretty clunky and not very friendly. If I had made them for myself I would be satisfied, but for a product for customers they need some more work.

4a) The Character Visualizer. I have never cared about the Visualizer. Creating a portrait of my character really isn’t important to me. I only have the vaguest impression of what my characters look like — it is the personality and effectiveness that I care about. Additionally since this is a Windows client application, I won’t be using it.

4b) The Character Generator. This is the application that I have been fairly excited about — to simplify my desire to find an build for optimal flavor and efficacy, and to simplify the process for those that I play with so that they don’t have to invest time into meticulously copying powers and computing bonuses. But the latest update dashed my hopes. I finally noticed that this is a Windows client application. WTF?!?! There is nothing about generating a character sheet and power cards that prevent this from being a web application. This also explains why this isn’t ready yet. Looks like I may be using what I learned creating spellbook to create a character generator of my own (for my personal, not public, use).

5) Dungeon Builder. It would be nice if this was also a web app, but since it isn’t I probably won’t be using it. Wizards believes that it is “mostly done” but since the Game Table (below) isn’t ready the primary use of the application is negated. Wizards should let people give this a try so that DMs can discover bugs now so they can be resolved before there is a crush of bug reports for the Game Table.

6) The Game Table. Another Windows client application that seems could be significantly more simple as a 2D web application. The minimum set of functionality for on-line playing of D&D is chat (voice chat would be great), a 2D map that players can interact with via their character and DM can add monsters, traps, etc. While 3D is neat-o, it is entirely unnecessary and is only add-on eye candy. But since this is a Windows client app, I doubt I’ll ever use it.

7) Pricing. Since none of the client applications are ready they’ll be staring with a “web-only” price of $4.95/month (with a 12 month commitment). This price is fair (for Dragon and Dungeon alone) and I will pony up the cash. I do hope that Wizards has thoroughly though out on-line payment — they don’t want a crush of people trying to subscribe only to fail because of some bug in the process. If after the client applications are available the web-only option is eliminated it is highly likely that I will be unwilling to pay $9.95/month (with a 12 month commitment) for D&DI — there is just too much that I won’t be able to use.