This week I am coming off of a short little vacation, mostly of the mind. In essence, I needed to take a few steps back and look at some issues from a mind that was not dragged down with progress. I escaped from the constant grinding away at the code and design elements and did next to nothing for several days in regards to working on DPnP, or E-RPG as a whole. It paid off.

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The DPnP system so far is developed primarily for two purposes: creating and managing campaigns, and creating and managing characters. One of the first future expansions to the suite will be to create an adventure creator. However, I have found that DPnP is still quite useful in the creation of adventures out of the box (per say as there is no real box).

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I was hoping to have some good screen shots to show concerning this article. However, I spent the better part of last week engaged in a serious migraine battle that threatened to put me back in the hospital. I think we have the problem identified with this and should have it resolved this week. However, that slowed down some progress. However, the Digital GM Screen is a huge addition to the CRM. Its potential is immense. It not only handles basic information, but it also has tools to allow you to run some amazing scenarios that would just be too cumbersome to do without it.

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There is on element of DPnP’s success that is somewhat out of my control. That element is community involvement. Ironwood has a community forum that receives some lurker traffic but not much discussion. That forum is really just a placeholder. While all of the forum is a valid community forum, there are large sections that will be or is dedicated to growth through DPnP. The idea is simple, you create content, then you share it with the community. This is an important feature as it makes a potentially limitless library of content available for free. (more…)

As promised in last week’s post I will be expanding on what you will be able to accomplish with DPnP. Today we start with the most obvious: Campaign Building. (more…)

There still seems to be some confusion about the exact roll DPnP will play in your gaming. I am going to try to lay that out quickly here. I will also be compiling a PDF on all of the features concerning the release products and the potential of the system.

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I know I have been a poor blogger. I have not kept up these past weeks as I should. There are some good reasons for it, but the main reason is not important at all. You see, I found twitter not long ago, and I have been updating very frequently through there. This leaves me with very little to actually blog about. Not much of an excuse, but there it is. Anyways, onto thing you really want to know.

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It seems like forever since we released anything new. Its an unfortunate side effect of being a small company with a huge amount of ambition. Unfortunately there must be a focus somewhere, and currently that focus is DPnP. But when will we get back to the business of creating and release game content? Soon, I hope. And the flood gates should open wide!

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The DPnP Character Management System is another component of the Digital Pen n Paper ™ suite of Role-Playing tools developed for PCs. The character manager allows you to create, edit, and manage Player Characters, Non-Player Characters, and Archetypes for any campaign created with the DPnP Campaign Resource Manager (CRM).

Character Creation

CRM Campaign files contain all the resources, rules, and formats used in a campaign. Using these created elements, the Character Management System (CMS) you can create fully compatible characters within the rules specified by that campaign. This easy to use application takes you step by step through each aspect of the character creation process. It even makes suggestions for character creation by looking at your character’s selected attributes, skills, etc. to easily help you make the best choices.

Break the Rules

You are not restricted by your chosen campaign’s rules. You can break them. For instance, while a campaign may allow only a certain amount of starting money, you may spend as much as you like. A report created with your character sheet reveals the steps you took in the character creation, including where and how you cheated. This feature allows for you to build characters that may conform to your Game Master’s rules, but not a specific campaign’s.

Manage Your Character

Game Master’s, through the CRM, have tools that will update your character from game sessions (including offline play). These updates take the form of money, equipment, and EXP. You can take this update and apply it to your character. Then, through character management you can quickly update your character by spending skill points, money, sell equipment, and more.

Additional Features:

• Journal Management: Keep your character’s story up to date with threaded journals.
• Development Logs: The character manager logs your awarded and spent money, exp, and journals so you know how, when, and why you spent, changed, and modified the way you did.
• Focus Measurement: Easily track how focused your character build is with focus tracking bars that dynamically adjust during character creation. They measure your level of focus between Combat, Knowledge (which includes magic, psychic powers, and computer skills), and Social ability. The larger each bar, the more focused your character is in that particular aspect.
• XML and XHTML: export characters to XML format and use XHTML character sheets. This allows for easily created community character sheets that can take information directly from a character’s XML file. Familiar with XML and XHTML? Create your own character style sheets and share them with the community!
• Focus Tracker: as you create watch as each step will reflect the focus of your character. This shows you how much of your character’s potential is focused on groups such as Combat, Physical, Technical, and Social.
• Character Packs: Purchase character packs that are included with books such as Fantasy Sagas Paradigm, or printed adventures, or download community characters from the forum to build your own library of characters.
• Will come free with any Player’s Guidebook and will include the 5 character Archetypes from that guidebook.

Screenshots

(Background artwork and character artwork by Marco Morte for the upcoming adventure “Desecration”)

The main interface shows your basic character sheet on the right. Buttons on the left reveal as you advance through the character creation process.

Here we see the basic character information. Upload your own images, and create custom stat blocks called traits.

The attribute generation wizard allows for you to go from random dice, to point buy at the click of a button. Also notice that wherever your mouse points, the rules for that element appear in the lower text box.

The Item Purchasing wizard shows a Suggested Items tab, which pulls information from your created character (so far) and determines the most likely equipment your character will use. Also notice that we can overspend our money as evident in the red remaining money value in the top right.

This image shows the recently added focus bars (bottom left of the screenshot) that track your character's level of focus between Combat, Knowledge, and Social concentration.

I have to be really careful here as I have a bunch of stuff I want to spill, but I have to be very careful about what I can actually release information wise so I don’t blow it for the future. Let it be said that the past two weeks have been HUGE on production, development, and overall goodness. (more…)