We’ll be making an announcement about the Alpha Omega character creator tomorrow but to kick things off we wanted to set up an official thread to get your thoughts and suggestions on how we can make the best character creator possible.  Let our development team know what you would like to see or not see in the final product!

The only thing I really want to see is a simple way to make AIs and buying gear.

I’d like to see a slightly better summary page for the first page.

Including active segments in the reaction box would be nice as well.  Pretty much I’d like to see a printout like the summary page you guys were handing out at Origins and GenCon last year.

The ability to output stat blocks in word, wiki, and forum code maybe PDF as well. That way people and GMs can post their characters and NPCs to the forums and wiki. as well as posting the saved file. That way sharing NPCs and PCs is really easy. And if you make a section of the wiki for NPCs I am sure that it would fill up with NPCs really fast. It should be able to have character portraits and character background and notes.

Might be nice to have a play mode so those of us with laptops can go paperless at the table.

For the future it would be good for it to be able to do creatures and full blooded Seraph and Orphanum. As I think it will see far more use by GMs

First page boxes for Health and Endurance should show recovery times per the contributing qualities and reference to threshold for losing dice from the dice pool. (same with bleed rate)
Similar boxes should be added for weight, managable weight, and all those calculations… modified by height and such.
CDP box should show Total, spent, and remaining.
First Page should show LEGAL if character conforms to Evolutions rules.
Skills page, should have some way to highlight fields/skill with purchased ranks… aka Bold or Color. Prefer bold for B/W printing.
Wielding should have a similar bold option as Skills, to easily highlight purchased ranks for easier reference.

Put in a simplified printout option, so you can print and submit only the relevent options to a GM or online without 4 pages of mostly empty lines.

That’s what I have for now

A wiki-formatted output is good…a one-click button that posts your contribution in the right place on the wiki is even BETTAR.

I think the readability/usability of the output is a big thing.

JDCorley - 08 March 2010 02:28 PM

A wiki-formatted output is good…a one-click button that posts your contribution in the right place on the wiki is even BETTAR.

I think the readability/usability of the output is a big thing.

I wouldn’t hard code something like that. 1 you will end up with the Wiki getting filled with garbage every time some one accidentally hits the button and 2 that forces the Wiki to be rigid when it shouldn’t be. Wiki output and then we can post it to the right place wherever that ends up being.

If the save file for it was an XML file it could easily be formatted to just about anything.

I don’t think it needs to be said, judging from the quality level of what’s already been released by MSL, but I think we’re all looking for the beautiful graphics to be there. 

On my wish list would be a the ability to create both PC and NON-PC’s.  In other words, incorporate some of the Creature items from The Encountered.  While assigning stats have the character gen suggest a threat category, and attack damage, adjust the DR / HP according to the size chosen, incorporate the creature templates, etc…

I am not sure they will encorporate creature stuff in the Character Generator, but a simplified sheet for NPCs is nice.
And please base a threat category similar to what you have in creature manual though, that would be useful for those custom baddies made with the character generator

Hecubus - 08 March 2010 11:20 PM

I don’t think it needs to be said, judging from the quality level of what’s already been released by MSL, but I think we’re all looking for the beautiful graphics to be there. 

On my wish list would be a the ability to create both PC and NON-PC’s.  In other words, incorporate some of the Creature items from The Encountered.  While assigning stats have the character gen suggest a threat category, and attack damage, adjust the DR / HP according to the size chosen, incorporate the creature templates, etc…

I agree though I think creatures can come later. I want to see PCs and NPCs first.

I would love to see integration with Obsidian Portal, either through direct hooks or an OP-friendly export.  I think they use Textile, which has a very limited subset of the full Wiki capabilities.  That’s what I’ve been using as the campaign portal for the games I run, and it seems to work pretty well.

A history/auditing listing for GMs would be great.  Something like:

500 CDP - Initial character build
+200 CDP - Added 2 ranks in Skill1, 1 rank in Skill2, etc.

and so on.  That way, the GM could quickly see what’s changed and what direction the player is heading with their character.  I run sandbox-style games, so knowing what skills or areas the players are interested in pursuing is very helpful.

Maybe they could do something like the change tracking system in word wear a player spends CDP and send off to the GM and the GM approves the changes and sends back…

Unfortunately I think we may be asking for features beyond the scope of a free tool provided as a courtesy to the community.  At least I’m assuming the tool would be a free download.

Then again I’d be willing to pay a nominal fee for a robust character generator and advancement tracker.  It’s been done before in other systems.  Something like Hero Planner or Heavy Metal Pro.

Yeah, I’m thinking the tweaks to the character sheet, the simplified sheet, and the CDP tracking are the best we can hope for.
I just want it to work right and not have to worry about whether my genetic deviations are included in my xxx score.

Feature creep is awesome!  And the bane of developers around the world.

Realistically I’m hoping for the ability to create and track advancement for PCs, possibly NPC quick generation and if we’re lucky, creature generation.

I’d also like to see the character sheet get cleaned up a bit.