Topic: Who would use a random character generator

[Arcane]

Hi everyone,

I am pretty knew to HARP, but I have been playing Rolemaster and MERP for quite a long time.
Designing my own RPG, I have chosen to adopt the HARP rule system for the game mechanism.
Being a webdesigner, I plan to design a random character generator using the HARP rules, as I haven't find anything of that sort yet, and I am curious to know if any other GM would use such a system, hence this poll.

The site would allow anyone to randomly generate a character, or choose as many aspects as s/he wants (profession, race, traits) and let the other aspects to random.

Considering that I will develop the site using the Java Language, as that hosting projects using this language is far from being free, I also plan to develop a membership section with a very small fee (like $10/year), which would allow members to save their generated characters (and order them according to campaign/region/city), create custom professions & races, share their charaters with other users, etc.
I was therefore wondering if anyone would accept to pay this small fee as a support for further development and hosting fees.

I am open to any comments and suggestions.

And thanks to ICE for this wonderful set of rules!

Kind regards to the community

[-Dain-]

Hi,
As a GM, I would love to see a NPC gen. program for Harp.
Like you many of us have probably their own setting to play with and it would be great to have an offline program, with the possibility of changing some stats here and there. This way, you would get more feedback and would please more people.
More, you would save the fees involved with the programming in java, which is by the way the best language i know, as it works both on pc and mac

Good luck with your project

[Arcane]

Dear Dain,

Thanks for your answer.
It is quite possible, as you may know, to produce a graphic offline interface with Java too.
However, I think an online service would be more interesting, as anyone could catch a glimpse of other GM's characters, and therefore fetch some ideas for themselves.
My aim is actually to provide custom areas for members, like custom races and professions (as well as spells), and follow the line of further development of the Second Edition of HARP, which is easier to do with an online service (rather than providing new version of a software).

However, thanks for your interesting remark. If people feel more attracted by an offline program than an online service, I will think about it and develop it this way, although I find manipulating and querying files less efficient than manipulating databases.

[RandalThor]

I put voted for the free service, because the only use I would get out of it would be to make some totally random NPCs. I would not use it for making PCs, or even specific NPCs.

[Erik Sharma]

Well it would all depend on what is included in the free service and how much the fee is. But normally I wouldn't mind some random character generator. Especially if I can just pick Race, Profession & Level and with just a click an instant NPC. But I voted the free service since anything free I would at least try out.

[Arcane]

Thanks for your answer Chorpa.
Would you prefer an online service (website) or a program you use directly on your computer? (with no installation needed, but requiring Java)

[Turbs]

I voted free service.
If you were to charge for a members area there are some things you need to consider;

Firstly; copyright and legals.  If you are going to make money off it, I am sure there is some form of formal negotiation that will need to take place between yourself and ICE.

Secondly,
it would need to be a fantastic design. A simple NPC generator wont cut it as a premium service. I get get one of those just about anywhere for free. (sure it may not be for HARP but that is easily modified)

The worst thing I can see in your whole design is the term "Random"
I can't see myself using a character/npc that I want to be a fighter that gets rolled up with 40 Str and 50 Agi and 98 Pre

[Roll 3d6]

With Rolemaster it isn't so much that we need a character generator as a sheet that does most of the calculations.  There are numerous character generators out there so if you were to charge for the service, it should be one HELL of a program.

[Onirim]

I don't need any generator for my roleplaying games. My players and I use pen and paper, because it's a part of the art

[Magistrate]

Hi Arcane,

I've developed RM Office the last two years. With plain Java with Swing.
After this time, I can say that Java rich client is a good decision for developers but not for users. Java is a beast on the users computer.
I have provided a self executing jar (just one file the includes all libs) and many (really many) users could not execute ist because their java installation was broken or not complete. On Mac the users have to install Java 6 first, because Java 5 is default and so on.
Ah, and the money. Don't expect anything or expect everything but money. The german publisher donated me one book (45 Eur) and one user donated 10$ (thats all in two years and I have about 300-500 users, daily about 15 startups of my progam since one years --> very active)
But the worst thing is that only 1% of the users report bugs and wishes, so you develop like hell but you'll never get any feedback. I have 2 or 3 key users that give me bug reports. (And I have PC and NPC generator, not only NPC)

I've started an online web platform with Java/Vaadin (check http://open-role.appspot.com/ for a very first impression).
If you like to develop open source and for free you are invited to develop HARP module. I've started with RMU and Aborea(simple german beginner rpg) last week. Drop me a PM or E-Mail if you are interested. I'd be very happy.

Cheers!

[Sknt]

For my friends and I now we would just roll dice, but for npc we might use it for speed and to bse how its played from gm view point.

[LonePaladin]

Here is my take on it. First, my résumé. I'll put it in a quote box if you're in a tl;dr mood:

I'm the creator of HeroForge, an Excel-based character-creator for the third-edition D&D rules. (I'm assuming there are some people in the audience who haven't played it.) I started working on it in 2002 for my own use; when I passed it to a couple people, they spread it around and it snowballed on me. At its peak, it had somewhere around 40,000 users worldwide; the RPGA -- the group that handles tournaments and organized events -- unofficially backed it (they couldn't admit it on paper for legal reasons, but if you turned up at an event with a HF sheet, you could guarantee they'd accept it).

HF started a trend of Excel-based character sheets. There had been a few floating around from time to time for one game or another, but it really took off after my project got into the wild. (This wasn't the first time I'd used Excel for a character sheet -- my first was for RM -- this was just the first that went public.)

Wizards of the Coast (the company currently producing D&D) tried to make their own character-creator program. Development got stalled, however; I learned that the coders were being shown my work whenever something wasn't quite good enough. There was never an official char-gen program for 3E, so a lot of people turned to HF -- even at WotC's offices.

One of HF's strengths was ease of use. You could just walk your way through the pages in order, filling in color-coded blanks, and at the end have a filled-out character sheet. It was also moddable; I left the code where people could see it, and left it open for tinkering.

When the 4th edition of D&D came out, I tried making a new version of HF, as a stand-alone program, in the hopes of finally getting something for all my effort. The problem is, I partnered with people who had even less business sense than me, and nearly every step we took included a bad decision. The end result was a defunct company, and a horrible piece of software that was impossible to troubleshoot.

(Don't bother looking for it; the site's down and the software has zero support.)

Anyway, with all that covered, here's my take on the question.

Most gamers, in my experience, will only pay for a piece of software once, and only if it's really worth it. They don't like paying for character-generation software ("I'd rather do it by hand") unless it clearly stands out.

WotC had a good idea with their current iteration of D&D. They actually managed to put together a usable chargen program, and bundled updates with the subscription to their online magazines. (Basically, you could buy a month or three, catch up on the issues and software updates, and you're good for a while.) Currently, however, their character software is web-driven, uses a cloud, and requires an active subscription to access. This means you have to pay them a monthly fee to access your characters. Their rules have been errata'd so much that the physical books are next to useless. (They initially promised that each book would come with access to a PDF of the same, and that errata would be reflected in these; they never bothered.)

If you feel that you need to charge for a char-gen program, you'll need to make sure that it's worth it -- and provide a limited demo. I would recommend against a monthly fee.