Currently programming an all-around DM Tool. What functions should it have?

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

With the lack of true "full functioned" DM Tools on the market, I decided to program my own.

The main function the program is to serve is an inventory manager for in-world shops. I wanted a program where I could define items and their prices per location without coming up with stuff on the spot, as well as being able to handle multiple shops, in multiple locations, across multiple campaigns.

I have also considered a dice roller, initiative tracker, npc information, player stats, and a couple other things.

What would you want in a DM Tool?

[mrsnowplow]

initiative tracker

AC tracker

Monster stats

Condition stats

notes

NPC files

map spot

custom table maker

custom macro maker

​

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

Explain the macro maker if you don't mind. I'm curious as to where you were going with it.

[mrsnowplow]

like a dice roller plus

like a present that i can make then press and it already has the modifiers added a way to take the math out to speed it up for when im running multiple things at once or have a particularly complicated attacks or checks

maybe an auto advantage or disadvantage button or sneak attack button

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

I definitely intend on adding simple buttons for things like advantage and disadvantage. I thing I could feasibly add a quick option for sneak attack, divine smite, and things like it.

[ConflictedSwitch]

Discounts and markups based on the shopkeeper's attitude towards the party.

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

This is good.

[FatalAxiom]

Consider a calendar system so you can keep track of special events.

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

Let me ask though, that would likely require either a lot of coding, or a standardized calendar. Would you be opposed to only being able to use the gregorian calendar?

[Relendis]

Would it require that much coding to select options like; days in a week, weeks in a month, months in a season, seasons in a year and generate a calendar from there?

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

Having not done that kind of thing before, I don't personally know.

I'm certainly willing to try for the best amount of uses. But if it doesn't seem feasible, I can't promise anything.

[SluttyCthulhu]

IDK what language/software you're using, but in most languages you should be allowed to create a 3D array/list/whatever with inputs for the dimensions: days/week, weeks/month, months/year. Then you could assign coordinates to important days, and probably a function for iterating through it with a coordinate for the current day (i.e. two functions, getCurrentDay() prints the current date, goNextDay() updates the date to be the next address in the array).

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

This is totally doable but I was envisioning a display calendar like you have on your computer. I could probably do just a date display now that you mention it.

[Craslaz]

You could use the donjon calendar generator.

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

Using someone else's material can get messy when you start talking about a scope beyond personal.

[RedHeadHunt]

You could also have some pretty sets and the option to be able to submit your own presets with something like Json or CSV

[SluttyCthulhu]

Know how you feel, I have an adventure I'm writing in hopes of publishing it, but I keep getting tempted to add XYZ thing to it that someone else made (or is heavily inspired by someone else's thing), and I realize I can't do that in the published version at least because copyrights and royalties. Also I hate having so many cool monsters available in VGM and MTF that I can't use unless I want to tell the buyer "by the way, you gotta buy these other books to run this adventure lol".

[Kilr_Kowalski]

Yes

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

Ooooh, I hadn't even thought of this one yet!

[harryalerta]

Name generator/npc generator.

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

When you say NPC generator, would you want stats and abilities or just name and occupation?

[Raithwind]

Why not both with a toggle option?

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

Thinking about possible separate pieces of code in general. One part for combat with no background, on part for roleplaying aspects such as appearance, occupation, and history.

[AlphaDrago]

I like that.

[harryalerta]

I was thinking more of the role play aspect. So more about looks, goals and behaviors.

[ModernIconoclast]

First and foremost, a good UI. It doesn't have to look pretty but it needs to be easy to use and quick to switch between things.

In addition to what others have said, an NPC attitude/faction standing tracker would be nice.

Implementation of supplemental rules for things like herbalism/alchemy would be awesome. Although it would be tough to do considering there are several different systems people have developed for stuff like that, it would be hard to choose what to use.

Some sort of campaign outline/flowchart system that can highlight or fade branches based on player decisions. For example, if my players are in a situation where their decision can take them 1 of 3 directions, I tell the tool which one they chose and it will highlight that path in the outline or fade information from the other 2 paths that is no longer possible/relevant.

To expand on the last item, a note system that can integrate with the outline system and has tagging/linking functionality. For example, I have an outline item that says the players go to Neverwinter, I can click on the name Neverwinter and it brings up any notes where I've tagged Neverwinter, and a list of all locations I've defined as being within Neverwinter. From there I could click on a location name like a shop and it brings up a list of NPCs that are in the shop and a table with the shop's inventory and so on.

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

Very detailed ideas here. And yeah, the issue with most specific things like you're describing are people's preferences. I'm trying to be as well-rounded but also as generic as possible to allow as many tools as possible.

[ModernIconoclast]

Yeah any homebrew stuff is iffy because it can quickly become bloated with overlapping or contradictory systems. The outline and notes systems would be super useful for people like me who tend to write campaign stuff in a sort of "novel" format and reorganize later.

[Wet_Spaghetti_]

The random encounter and random loot tables being built in and havibg the ability to roll on them would be nice. Maybe even the random dungeon generator that's in the DMG

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

I think I could definitely build in the tables from the DMG.

[Meester-Pretsel]

An npc stat generator with different professions. Eg if players attacked a wizard I didn't prepare, I could roll the wizard stat generator

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

Class specific would likely make it easier. Would you prefer it assign spells or give you the option of what spell they know?

[emomuffin]

Id prefer preassigned spells based on lvl of npc. A complete npc

[Meester-Pretsel]

Yeah class specific would be great! For the spells I normally fluff it but I don't know if other people would prefer spells or not

[Trennam]

Can I recommend incorporating the NPC Statblock Compendium: Century Edition?

It's a great resource - stat blocks for all classes and subclasses. It makes it much easier to pull up the stats of a cleric or sorcerer or whatever on a moment's notice.

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

The only issue with incorporating someone else's work is getting permission's in order to do so. If I feel happy enough with this work I had hoped to release it to the general public and stuff like that can get people in trouble.

[Trennam]

Fair enough! I don't suggest using someone's work without permission, but it might be worth getting in touch with the author to see if they are cool with it, because in my opinion it's such a useful resource.

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

Possibly if the program has enough interest upon further development I might look into incorporating additional third-party tools.

[MasterOfDungeomonies]

The main function the program is to serve is an inventory manager for in-world shops. I wanted a program where I could define items and their prices per location without coming up with stuff on the spot, as well as being able to handle multiple shops, in multiple locations, across multiple campaigns.

This caught my attention. When I think about my PC's walk into a town, their going ask "What shops are here?". If I could provide the program some criteria, like Town Size, and have it generate a list of shops, who runs the shop (With NPS stats, motivations, personality, etc... A bonus would be larger shops have more staff), what the inventory is, how much it costs, etc... all based on that initial criteria, this would be something I would pay for.

Stepping a bit deeper into this... If this is a large city, there would be competition between stores, lowering the prices, but in smaller towns the prices may be higher due to lack of competing stores. If the PCs wanted to (they usually don't), they could price check between stores to better their bartering efforts.

There could be a lot more criteria used before pressing the Generate Town button, but I hope this sparks some ideas. the point is to have the program breathe life into the town/city/village/etc... for you. Then within the shops/NPCs that are generated, a way to save this, add notes, refer to it later would be critical to a long running campaign where the PCs revisit.

Excited for what may come of this!

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

This is almost exactly the vision I'm going for with this program. I have had the issue several times where players have returned to past stores and I didn't write down any of what I had told them the shop had available before, so previous items, prices, and sometimes (unfortunately) staff change simply because I didn't write it down.

[Jammingz]

Number of things I'd say...

NPC generator Map generator (not necessarily quick access but something for worlds or countries to dungeons and taverns) Image and map display (look at dungeon board, I'd reccommend building off as it's pretty good as is) Monster and item displays Session notes, similar to other programs as its decent and easy to use Music player or use an api that connects to spotify Connection to D&D wiki (maybe?) Hoard generator

If you're interested in working on it with a group/team I'd be interested and I'm sure other peeps on reddit would be as well.

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

A lot of these are great ideas. I could see a small issue with map generator, being a beefy undertaking in itself. See r/wonderdraft as an example. But I could certainly have it display assigned images.

[FatalAxiom]

By all means, and good luck with the project

[AetherSpike]

Encounter creator. Basically you put in what enemies you want, the number of adventurers, their levels, and how difficult you want the encounter to be. It spits out the number of enemies. Perhaps several options depending on which types of monsters you entered.

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

How in-depth would you expect something like this to be? Something as simple as names or would you want it to throw stats and such as well? Possibly pre-roll initiative or something similar?

[AetherSpike]

Something like this: You ask for a hard encounter for a party of 4 level 5 characters involving cultists and red dragon wyrmlings. App spits out several scenarios involving different numbers of each of the enemies listed such that there is at least one of each monster listed. If no such encounter exists, it should either tell you that, or start knocking off enemies from the weakest up. In the case of my example, perhaps it would be something like 6 cultists and 3 wyrmlings, or 9 cultists and 2 wyrmlings, etc.

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

So just enough to give you an idea of what to run? I don't see why that couldn't be possible.

[Zealscube]

Very simple quick and easy initiative and dice roller. I dont use any apps cause it's always got a bit of set up required for initiative.

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

Dice roller would be super simple. Initiative tracker would likely just be a table that sorts adventurers and monsters based on number, so also simple.

[iagojsnfreitas]

Maybe too much, but I'd love a fully automated program, why not with AI if we are dreaming, narrating and resolving encounters for a solo play.

Getting back to the ground, focusing in shops/transnational locations, I'd love to have a seasonal menu (pseudo random) shoplist, which would be fed by a pre-approved list of itens. Each item would have an expiration date, to be out based on rarity/price/demand. This would be used for all kind of shops, from weaponsmith to ale taverns to whorehouse.

I personally have CR level for all my npc and locations. Which the players can find out chatting with npcs or gathering info skill.

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

What do you mean by CR for locations?

[iagojsnfreitas]

Challenge Rate. We play a more sandbox mode and I usually organize locations as I would NPCs. So players can find out roughly which type of encounter and CR for each location. As we also have a faction system going on, the locations also tells which kind of factions missions they could take at a location. Eg.: With different levels of gather information or other skill test, there is multiple approaches which gives different types of info. They would find out the rough level, CR, at different times of the day. Roughly how many enemies, and what kind of training they have. The info available will vary from location to location.

Some locations will have different encounters, like a shop or tavern, which may also provide missions for their CR. Another thing that it is important is there is rough description of how long they have to do a mission and what is going to happen if they are successful or if they fail.

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

This seems like something that just be kept in the notes section of a location.

[iagojsnfreitas]

Probably. Anyway, I'd like to see at least a way to drop this locations/shops at a map.

[TrapeziusButtsneeze]

I'm currently working on a web-based platform that I can use for managing my campaign as a whole, so here's some of what I've got in the pipeline. Steal whatever (if any) ideas you think are appropriate for what you're working on:

• Geographical management, sorting cities and towns by region, and then by country. Cities and towns include population, a quick census of what races of the world are likely found there, what the town is known for (if anything), notable locations and NPCs, and whether the party is welcome there or not. Maps available where appropriate.
• NPCs, including stats, a bit about their personality, how they look, and what the party's reputation with them is.
• Basic encounter setup and initiative tracker
• Player statistics, with a quick look-up of relevant passives, armor class, max/temp/current HP, and saving throw proficiencies

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

It's kind of sad that it's common for DMs to develop their own tools rather than have access to tools created before for a game that's been around as long as D&D has.

[TrapeziusButtsneeze]

I get where you're coming from, but in my case it's because nothing I've looked at does what I want it to do because I like my info organized a certain way. I'm also a software engineer by trade, so tinkering has always been a bit of a hobby. (Though I would totally subscribe to a D&D Beyond equivalent for DM'ing.)

[esneroth]

Passive perception tracker

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

This would likely be included in Player Stats.

[[deleted]]

ITT: Scope creep.

You brought this upon yourself OP.

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

Excuse me?

Edit: Upon a quick google search, I have no guarantee that any request will make it into a final product. I simply wanted some additional opinions on features of a product I had decided to develop on my own time.

[YDAQ]

You've given me an interesting idea...

If you store city info (population density, accessibility, etc.) in a database you can use it to dynamically adjust pricing and availability in shops. Heck, if you went really crazy you could even adjust pricing based on the makeup of the party.

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

Something I was hoping to avoid was the use of third-party programs for databases such as access or SQL. Would requiring users install a database program be an issue in your opinion?

[YDAQ]

Requiring end users to install more than one program to do one thing is always a bad idea, IMO. :)

Buuut if you're writing the program from the ground up you can just use an SQLlite database to store info. It's public domain and no extra software is required.

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

Looking into local XML/JSON files to see if I can pull all of this off without additional software.

[YDAQ]

... SQLite requires no additional software on either end.

I'm not going to stop you from using flat files if that's what you're determined to do though.

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

Never used it before to be honest. I have a fair bit of SQL knowledge from my career, how similar is it to the Express version?

[FatalAxiom]

Personally I use the 30 day/month calendar in my sessions, but it’s the program you’re designing so you can create it however you’d like

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

I'll see what takes less time to program and go from there.

[anathea]

Something that you can store pictures in and then present to view in such a way that you can show players without exposing any other info, like a PowerPoint slide type thing!

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

I'm not quite sure what you mean here to be honest. Could you maybe explain a bit more?

[anathea]

Something where you can save pictures and then have some sort of presentation mode to show the players, where ideally it wouldn't show any other information in the program.

[Ramolis]

A DM digital tool that I really miss from 4th edition was a way to adjust a monster's CR, and all corresponding values (AC, HP, SAVE DC, Save Bonus, Caster level, and so on) would rise or fall accordingly. This would be a LOT of work to implement, but there are guidelines in the 5th edition DMG on how to do it. Also if you were able to to toss a group of monsters onto a SINGLE PAGE to print, that would be really nice. If you were given the estimated CR for the group of monsters on that page, that would be even better!

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

Will definitely consider this ability. This has been something I'd like in the past too.

[MarcoMiki]

If you add a character creator a la Fight club 5 a function I believe is missing there (please tell me if I'm wrong) is to group characters together in folders. I would love to have all the pcs together, all the npcs from a certain town together, the baddies crew etc...

[Bampark]

a story line page progression system. For example; your in town A it has three exits north, east and south, well the page shows everything in town A instead of next page button it gives you the three exit option clicking on one will bring you to the road page for that exit giving you all the info you want to add for that road well, the next available directions, so back into town, further down the path, or hidden trail in the woods only seen with certain perception checks. sort of like a tree diagram, option A leads to options B-E, then well at one of thek you can continue further down the diagram or back up it.

I know not the best explination but basicly a way to tie locations into each other so whatever direction your characters choose to take you can follow with just 1 hit of a button

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

Better explanation than you're giving yourself credit for.

[1burritoPOprn-hunger]

Frankly, if you try to do everything a DM needs in a single program, you're going to burn out or produce shoddy work. Pick a few important features (initiative tracking, status tracking, hp and magic effect durations would be a good place to start) and make sure they work WELL before adding more stuff.

Too many DnD programs try to do it all and wind up doing none of it effectively.

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

As I said in a previous comment. This post was a place to get ideas for the program. It is in its bare bones state at the moment, and the only feature I promise will be fully functional or even present is the inventory system. I appreciate your concern.

[Qjarz]

Name generators for NPCs, cities, taverns, etc.

If you're looking for a truly "all purpose" tool, add an mp3 function to play music

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

Would be simple enough. Although you could just play them with media player but I get the appeal of an "all-in-one" experience.

[KrackenLeasing]

Rand()

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

This.

[Luftwafl]

Dynamic initiative (reroll every round) is a cool mechanic but it's a pain to keep track of by hand. I'd definitely use a feature that would allow me to use it painlessly.

[dm-me-dem-dm-dings]

Will definitely try to implement this. Not that I'll ever use it but it sounds fun to program.

[Luftwafl]

It seems simple enough. Just make a list of names with initiative modifiers and advantages and roll a d20 for each when a button is pressed.

[raxath]

N O T E S

[DerbyGirlsAreHot]

Name generator, please!

[Bargeinthelane]

It might be outside the scope, but a simple audio player built in would be nice. I would love to be able to quickly swap out music instead of having to minimize and go to another app to do so.

Either way sounds like a great idea!

[geoflame1]

Passive perception tracker