Hands-On With D&D's New Digital Companion DungeonScape
As the character creation finished, the game dropped you into a digital character sheet made up of information filled boxes. Swiping across several screens saw large boxes that were filled with numbers fully generated and ready to go - from skills to attacks and spells. If you pulled out from that view you were able to position the boxes in any way you wanted, allowing a customizable character sheet. For example, I grouped all my attacks, spells, and abilities on one page so I could quickly do any combat, and my abilities, skills, saving throws, and vital stats like HP and AC on the next page - so I could pull those at a moment's notice or a have a good base screen for roleplaying. Another page housed my game notes and my character's traits, flaws, and bonds. I chose to play a melee combat focused Wizard, so that I could really pull at the most complex character available, and the system handled it with aplomb. In play, it was like having every rule I needed at my fingertips in moments.
From the dungeon master's end of the table, DungeonScape promises to be profoundly useful. The full text of published D&D adventures will be available, but it's not just that - it's fully integrated. Tapping on an important NPC's name pulled up game art of the character, allowing the DM to show it immediately to the players. Same with maps, which got pulled up as soon as they were needed. Hyperlinked game sections moved the DM effortlessly from area to area in a dungeon or town. When a combat came up, an initiative and hit point tracker for not just the monsters, but the players, could be pulled out over the adventure. Tapping on a monster in that view pulled up the creature's full statistics without leaving the tracker, allowing you to maximize or minimize any stats at a moment's notice. That function is networked to the players' copies of DungeonScape, if they're using it, so that individuals could roll initiative and push it immediately to the DM.
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In the future, Trapdoor will be implementing a "Forge" function that allows creators to make their own adventures and have them work precisely like official modules. Matney hopes that the community will quickly share their creations with each other, and hinted at hopes for a process to convert community content into premium official D&D work. They'll also be making tutorial videos, allowing people to learn easy. They're going to release in three stages: A player's release very soon, a DM's components release after that, and a creator's release by the end of the year - at which time DungeonScape will be 'complete' and new features will start getting worked on. The various D&D books will be available on DungeonScape as soon as they release in flesh, and they'll get errata updated to them within hours of that being available. Neither Trapdoor nor Wizards was ready to discuss pricing on DungeonScape, but after the experience I had with the software it'd have to be a pretty steep price to scare me off.
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As the character creation finished, the game dropped you into a digital character sheet made up of information filled boxes. Swiping across several screens saw large boxes that were filled with numbers fully generated and ready to go - from skills to attacks and spells. If you pulled out from that view you were able to position the boxes in any way you wanted, allowing a customizable character sheet. For example, I grouped all my attacks, spells, and abilities on one page so I could quickly do any combat, and my abilities, skills, saving throws, and vital stats like HP and AC on the next page - so I could pull those at a moment's notice or a have a good base screen for roleplaying. Another page housed my game notes and my character's traits, flaws, and bonds. I chose to play a melee combat focused Wizard, so that I could really pull at the most complex character available, and the system handled it with aplomb. In play, it was like having every rule I needed at my fingertips in moments.
From the dungeon master's end of the table, DungeonScape promises to be profoundly useful. The full text of published D&D adventures will be available, but it's not just that - it's fully integrated. Tapping on an important NPC's name pulled up game art of the character, allowing the DM to show it immediately to the players. Same with maps, which got pulled up as soon as they were needed. Hyperlinked game sections moved the DM effortlessly from area to area in a dungeon or town. When a combat came up, an initiative and hit point tracker for not just the monsters, but the players, could be pulled out over the adventure. Tapping on a monster in that view pulled up the creature's full statistics without leaving the tracker, allowing you to maximize or minimize any stats at a moment's notice. That function is networked to the players' copies of DungeonScape, if they're using it, so that individuals could roll initiative and push it immediately to the DM.
[gallery=3010]
In the future, Trapdoor will be implementing a "Forge" function that allows creators to make their own adventures and have them work precisely like official modules. Matney hopes that the community will quickly share their creations with each other, and hinted at hopes for a process to convert community content into premium official D&D work. They'll also be making tutorial videos, allowing people to learn easy. They're going to release in three stages: A player's release very soon, a DM's components release after that, and a creator's release by the end of the year - at which time DungeonScape will be 'complete' and new features will start getting worked on. The various D&D books will be available on DungeonScape as soon as they release in flesh, and they'll get errata updated to them within hours of that being available. Neither Trapdoor nor Wizards was ready to discuss pricing on DungeonScape, but after the experience I had with the software it'd have to be a pretty steep price to scare me off.
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) OK I'm digressing, it's a very boring day here in my office.
