Anyone play any White Wolf RPGs?

[Wiggster]

This is partly Off-Topic, partly Development-related, so I'll hedge my bets and post it in Software...

Anyways, every weekend, my pals and I get together and play some pen-and-paper RPGs. Lately, it's turned to some White Wolf games. Games such as Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, and Mage: The Ascension (or World of Darkness, if you want one without "The:" in the middle). I've looked around for any sort of character sheets for the Pocket PC for these games, and I can't find any. So I've almost decided to poke my head into developing my first Pocket PC application, a character program for some of these game systems.

So, my questions to you, the populace of PPCT, are: has anyone played this game system? Do you think a Pocket PC character sheet would be a good thing, or just a waste of time? What sort of features would you like in this program?

If I decide to go through with it, I'll be selling it for the low, low price of $0.00, but if I don't get any feedback, I might just let this be a passing interest, and use the much easier pen and paper.

Oh, and while you're here: anyone have any favorite Pocket PC software they use for RPG sessions?

Thanks for the feedback :mrgreen:

[yslee]

White Wolf's d10 system is fairly simple, yes? see the number of dots you and add up them up appropriately. I didn't see much of a need for special software when playing a variant of it.

[sheik]

I've never played White Wolf, but the idea of a character sheet on a PPC is not a bad idea.
It would need an interface that allowed easy switching between pages, and ideally players could create their own, with the ability to sketch notes on each (for people that like doodling or making maps). The sketching area should have a simple "clear" button and possibly an eraser tool and different coloured inks if you wanted to get flash.

The only obvious problems I could see is that the program would have to be very reliable and allow sheets to be saved - if a character sheet became corrupted it would cause all sorts of problems.

Once you've got a workable system, you could go for feature bloat. One thing that would be excellent would be a private messaging system over bluetooth. It would allow players to make deals without anyone knowing ;).

/\dam

[yslee]

Once you've got a workable system, you could go for feature bloat. One thing that would be excellent would be a private messaging system over bluetooth. It would allow players to make deals without anyone knowing ;)

You know, that is a fantastic idea. I think a suite of DM/Player tools would be even better than a simple character sheet. Of course there'll be a whole ton of work behind that..

[Wiggster]

Thanks for the feedback and encouragement. I've never dabbled in .NET until recently, so there's still a lot of stuff I'l lhave to learn before I can make a good program, but so far I have the basic layout and workability for all the dotted stats. Here's some preliminary, pre-alpha layouts:

http://www.wiggster.com/pocketwod/Werewolf_0.0.1a.gif

In case you can't figure it out, it's for the game Werewolf. I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to make it for all the World of Darkness games. They're similar enough, but they're different enough that they each have their own unique features (Mage uses Magic cast from one of nine spheres, in Werewolf you can change form and do minor magic, and in Vampires you have to... be a vampire).

I'm not sure what you'd want in a general Player's Tools set... any further info? I was intending this to just replace my character sheet and possibly dice... not sure what else it needs.

[sheik]

I think players would like a journal feature on their character sheet. That way they could easily keep a record of what they'd done. If this could be easily exported that could be used as the basis of an online RPG blog too.

Dice rolls are easy to add, but I still think most players would prefer to physically roll their own - that is my experience anyway ;).

Regarding the character sheet, the most important part of it will be the ease of use. I think the mock up you've made looks really nice - having up/down buttons to quickly change stats etc is ideal.
I assume the app remembers all the original stats? A summary screen showing original / current values would be nice too, so the player can see where they've improved.

If you know how to hook into the PPC microphone, you could allow audio notes to be integrated into the journal too. That way, dilligent players could record important clues as they are narrated by the GM. Apart from being useful in the campaign, they would make for some nice memories when the player becomes an adult and no longer has time to play... (sense the bitterness there? ;) )

Good luck anyway, you have the potential to write an absolutely killer app - there must be plenty of roleplayers who have PDAs.

/\

[Wiggster]

I think players would like a journal feature on their character sheet. That way they could easily keep a record of what they'd done. If this could be easily exported that could be used as the basis of an online RPG blog too.

Dice rolls are easy to add, but I still think most players would prefer to physically roll their own - that is my experience anyway ;).

Regarding the character sheet, the most important part of it will be the ease of use. I think the mock up you've made looks really nice - having up/down buttons to quickly change stats etc is ideal.
I assume the app remembers all the original stats? A summary screen showing original / current values would be nice too, so the player can see where they've improved.

If you know how to hook into the PPC microphone, you could allow audio notes to be integrated into the journal too. That way, dilligent players could record important clues as they are narrated by the GM. Apart from being useful in the campaign, they would make for some nice memories when the player becomes an adult and no longer has time to play... (sense the bitterness there? ;) )

Good luck anyway, you have the potential to write an absolutely killer app - there must be plenty of roleplayers who have PDAs.

/\

Hmm, I like the idea of a journal. And I'll see what I can do about the map stuff... honestly, I've never, ever used a map in a White Wolf campaign. They're designed to be rather loose, and as such, rather vague. But I know I'm not the only one who plays games, and I highly doubt most people play games like me.

The audio notes thing, though? Seems like a bit of a memory hog. If people wanna record messages on their PPC, seems to me like they'd use the built-in one (I've never been a fan of the quality of audio recording capabilities of PPCs).

But thanks for the awesome suggestions. Your suggestions will help me make this project more robust than I had imagined :mrgreen:

[sheik]

I've never, ever used a map in a White Wolf campaign. They're designed to be rather loose, and as such, rather vague. But I know I'm not the only one who plays games, and I highly doubt most people play games like me.
Yeah, I'd never use a map either, but I know some players like them. If you let people doodle they can use it for whatever they want (drawing pictures of their new weapons etc ;) )

The audio notes thing, though? Seems like a bit of a memory hog. If people wanna record messages on their PPC, seems to me like they'd use the built-in one (I've never been a fan of the quality of audio recording capabilities of PPCs).

Yeah, you're probably right - it wouldn't be worth the effort to integrate it into the app. I can assure you the audio recording on some Pocket PCs is great though. I use NoteM to record extremely clear MP3 Cantonese examples for my website, and I've also used it at higher bitrates to record acoustic guitar and vocals - the results really aren't bad.

But thanks for the awesome suggestions.

No problem at all, please let us know how you get on.

/\dam

[Jordan Rosenwald]

Any further progress on this app? It looks intriguing.

[stevelam]

for the low, low price of $0.00


That really is a great price!!! (I copyied it into notepad to see the value)