Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Tangent: D&D Insider Monster Builder Upcoming Beta

Word is that the new Monster Builder application (part of the D&D Insider Campaign Tools suite) will see a beta release tomorrow for all subscribers. I like the look of the tool a lot, and everything I've heard so far describes it as extremely powerful and flexible. I'll need to see what the options for exporting finished stat blocks are, but it's possible that I will eventually switch over to that format. It won't happen immediately, though. I want to wait for similar tools to be made available for the creation of magic items, traps & hazards, skill challenges, etc. so that the formatting remains coherent throughout my finished compilations.

That doesn't change the fact that I may occasionally make use of the tool to build monsters in the meantime, since it takes care of much of the math for you. I may also release packages of all my custom stat blocks in whatever proprietary format the Monster Builder saves its monster files as. I'll have a lot more information available once I have a chance to fiddle around with the tool tomorrow evening.

Stay tuned!

1 comment:

Craig said...

That's cool news. I actually had no idea that we were anywhere near having anything like an "open" beta. Here's hoping for something more in line with the quality of the Character Builder! *crosses fingers and crosses eyes*