I got a chance to look at Digital Squire, a tool for use at the table by players. It allows a player to load their saved character file from the DDI Character Builder and track game information within the application, replacing a printed character sheet. Digital Squire has a built in dice roller, allowing you to do a quick roll, where you can type what you want the app to roll, or you can choose the die icon next to many of your characters stats and it will roll using your character’s modifier. The app also has the ability to track damage, healing, healing surges spent, powers expended, and short and extended rest.

When spending a healing surge it allows you to specify an additional modifier to be added in, easily taking into account any healing kicker from your party’s leader. Power’s that you have expended, automatically refresh after clicking the rest buttons, encounter powers after a short rest and encounter and daily powers after an extended rest.

The feature I found incredibly handy, was the tie in with the DDI Compendium. Once a character is loaded, the Compendium menu at the top allows you to quickly open the Compendium to your character’s class or race. There is an option to have the Compendium info open in an external browser or by default it tries to open the info in a window created by Digital Squire. I could not get the info to display in Digital Squire, but once I set it to open in browser, I was prompted to enter my DDI log-in for the web page and was seeing the entries in no time.

The tie in with the Compendium also works with equipment and powers, allowing you to quickly get the full description for any item, ritual, or power you have. The one thing I wish you could see in the program is your character’s feats, with the ability to look up in the Compendium.

In the Powers screen, you can see all of your powers broken out into At-Will, Encounter, Daily, Utility, and Extended. You can select a power and choose to use it, which brings up a dialog where you can pick what weapon or implement to use with the attack. From there, it will make an attack roll with your modifiers and display the results. The results show a break down of  attack and damage rolls, as well as show any misc. modifiers you may be able to add from class features. For example, I loaded a copy of a rogue for a player from the last DnD game I ran. When using a power it would roll the attack and damage for the standard power, but it would also list +3d8 once a round for sneak attack. I don’t like that it doesn’t roll this damage, I would rather it roll the damage and keep it separate to be added if needed, but it is nice to have these things shown as a reminder.

It will be a while before I get a chance to try this at the table, but I can see this being something I would use. Our current gaming setup involves players from out of state, so our setup includes several players with laptops out at the table. I think having the Character Builder open to make any permanent changes, like xp or new items, and Digital Squire open as my character sheet, I will enjoy not having to shuffle around several pages of character sheets and power cards.

As I look over more of the tools created by Asmor, I may post additional posts if they seem as handy as Digital Squire appears to be.

-Matt

This episode runs about 67 minutes.  Send any questions, suggestions, or feedback to podcast@runningdtw.com

I ended up watching Taken with Liam Neeson and I still loved it. Now all i need to do is remember to take that to Matt and Dead Like Me to Andrew…. I doub that’ll happen.

Right now my plans are to take a small nap/sleep for about two hours as a reward for getting my character leveled up for what might be the climax and finale of our D&D campaign. Once this campaign is all done and over with it’ll be up to me to carry on the torch, in spandex, cause our next game is Mutants and Masterminds.

The biggest challenge I have today is going to be getting up from this short sleep in time to get done what I want to get done before D&D. I have a few things I want to get done but meh, we’ll see.

Have fun kids.

-Jason-

… maybe I’ll get on WoW instead…. no… sleep…. WoW… crap.

Instead, the Monk has become a Psionic character, a striker no less. My first thoughts were something along the lines of “Really?”, but once I thought about it more it started making sense.  To me the Monk was always about obtaining perfection in mind, body, and soul, which seems like a perfect fit for the Psionic power source.

Then I went through and read the Design and Development article about the creation of the Monk. It talked about how they thought the Ki power source seemed to be getting thin. They didn’t want to just dump all of the Asian themed classes into it, just to fill it out. As Jason put it, “We don’t need the Asian power source.”

We will talk more about some of the mechanics and powers of the Monk in our next episode of the podcast.

If you have a DDI subscription and haven’t looked at the Monk playtest yet, I would definitely check it out.

-Matt

This episode runs about 69 minutes.  Send any questions, suggestions, or feedback to podcast@runningdtw.com

In this episode we talk about what it means to be a munchkin versus min/maxing, how they are different and how they are the same. We also discuss how they have changed over the years, if they are necessary, and the morality of both.

This episode is done in reverse format by accident, blame Jason, so if you were wanting to listen to our ramblings first, then you should skip towards the end. We apologize if this throws anyone off, but once again, blame Jason.

This episode runs about 39 minutes.  Send any questions, suggestions, or feedback to podcast@runningdtw.com

This episode runs about 72 minutes. Send any questions, suggestions, or feedback to podcast@runningdtw.com

Supernatural
The Dresden Files
Heroes
The Unit
Burn Notice

This episode is a short one, coming in at 36 minutes.  Leave a comment below or visit the forums if you want to talk about the episode.  Send any emails to podcast@runningdtw.com.

We go over our weeks and talk about the recent BSG episode. I talk about our up coming LAN party and how I have been playing some FPS games for the first time in a long time.

We start in on our main topic, the Character Builder. We go over our first impressions and do a walk through of creating a character.

Check out the demo for the Character Builder here.

This episode runs 72 minutes. Leave a comment below or visit the forums if you want to talk about the episode. Send any emails to podcast@runningdtw.com.

With all four of us on the mics we get off the main topic a lot but what’s new. Editing also my seem a little below standard as we tend to talk over each other a little more.

Our topic of discussion is Campaign Settings: Published vs Homebrew. We all give some pros and cons for each and we each state which is our prefered type of setting. Tim and I come at this from mostly a DMs view point, while Jason and Andrew talk mostly from a players view.

This episode runs 57 minutes. Leave a comment below or visit the forums if you want to talk about the episode. Send any emails to podcast@runningdtw.com.

Here are the links to the couple of side topics we start out talking about.
A Different Point of View
Radio Rivendale

This episode runs 56 minutes. Visit our site: www.runningdtw.com To discuss this episode or anything else, head to the forums or email us at podcast@runningdtw.com

Do a search for “ddi” and delete those files, simple as that.

The character builder will toss files not just into the Wizards of the Coast main program folder, but also make folders in your “My Documents” and “My Pictures” folders as well. Uninstalling will get rid of the main Wizards of the Coast folder but the two DDI folders in your “my documents” and “my pictures” area will remain intact. From what I can tell if these folders stick around it’ll cause the character builder to grab it’s head and scream and cry a lot. If you just uninstalled the beta and find yourself not able to update, it’s probably due to some beta files left over in these folders.

I’ve got mine fully up and running now and I wish you all the luck, let me know how it goes for you all.

-Jason-

First upon downloading the file to download the actual setup file it told me that I did not have the downloaded file that my downloaded file downloaded in order to setup the actual program, which was odd since I was staring straight at it. I go to re-run the downloaded programs download program and then it works fine, not sure why it did this time but thats cool. 

After installing it tells me there is an update for it, umm… okay? I go to get the update and the updater screams and cries at me, insisting there was an error of sorts, then it crashes, but not fully. I close out and start it up again for it to do the exact same thing. I go and delete everything thinking maybe I just had a weird install, so I uninstall and do it all over again… and it all happens again.

As of right now even though the character builder is telling me there’s an update, it also won’t let me get it. 

So far I haven’t noticed anything major when actually using the program and am glad to see it out now. Personally this thing is going to be a friggin time saver.

-Jason-

-Matt

In the meantime a new article has come out from Wizards regarding the next new class from the players hanbook 2. If you read carefully, you might have noticed this class listed in the minotaur article. That is now 3 out of 4 roles with the primal power source. In case you’ve forgotten you have the druid for controlling, barbarian for striking, and now this class for defending. There weren’t a lot of nature based classes before, back in the 3.5 ed days, and I really wonder exactly what they’ll use for the leader class role. Hmm… speculation time!

We talk a lot about TV shows and just in case you might have forgotten, a lot of them are finally in swing again after the holidays. Namely: House M.D., Dexter, Sanctuary, and the final episodes of Battlestar Galactica. Now these are really only the shows I watch heavily and almost religiously for some.

I’d talk about exactly what I’ve come to love and hate about the Clone Wars series, but I’ve been talking too long already.

Have fun kids.

-Jason-

Banter:
Jason talks about his week of things breaking on him.
We talk about our recent holidays.
Supernatural
World of Warcraft
Death Knights
QuestHelper – quest addon
Lightheaded – show comments for quests from wowhead

Topic:
Does DnD 4e = WoW?

This episode runs 53 minutes. Visit our site: www.runningdtw.com To discuss this episode or anything else, head to the forums or email us at podcast@runningdtw.com

-Matt

We start off talking about the shows we have been watching recently.
Eureka
Supernatural
House
Dexter
Sanctuary
Strange Wilderness

On to the topic of Magic Items in 4th Edition.

This episode comes in at about an hour. To discuss this episode or anything else, head to the forums or email us at podcast@runningdtw.com

-Matt

Current:
Dungeon and Dragon Magazines
The Rules Compendium
Bonus Tools: Ability Generator and Encounter Builder

Future:
Character Builder
Character Visualizer
Dungeon Mapper
Virtual Game Table

Here is the picture of the shifter in Speed Racer, Jason was talking about.

This episode runs a little over an hour. To discuss this episode or anything else, head to the forums or email us at podcast@runningdtw.com

-Matt

-Jason-

We change it up a little this week and start out with some banter talk. We talk about, Mario Kart DS, Battlestar Galactica, the Dresden Files, Pineapple Express, the Clone Wars movie, and the new James Bond coming out later this year.

Our topic of the week is Battlemats and Minis.   We discuss the various options we have used over the course of our gaming. We also discuss the importance of using a battlemat in Dungeons and Dragons through the various editions of the game.

We get a little off topic in a few places, but manage to bring it back around to topic.

Episode runs about 1 hour. Head to the forums or email us to discuss this episode or anything else.

-Matt

Character Sheets:

WOTC’s character sheet
Shado’s landscape character sheet
Mad Irishman’s character sheet

Power Cards:
Ander’s Core Complete Set
Magic Set Editor
Kiznit’s Combat Crib Sheet

Condition Cards by Jim Goings from Dragon’s Avenue

The episode runs about 46 minutes long. Head to the forums to discuss this episode or anything else.

-Matt