DnD Adventure Tools: Monster Builder a Critical Success
Wizards of the Coast recently released a new beta application in the D&D Insider section of their website. It’s called “Adventure Tools,” and accompanies the powerful Character Builder. If you had messed around with a D&D Insider account you might have seen something like this before as a Flash-Based tool, but this one is much more well developed. In fact, they have little in common besides the name and overall goal.
Adventure Tools looks like its going to do for the DM what Character Builder did for the player. Right now, upon starting the application, there are five circles at the bottom of the screen. Only the leftmost one is highlighted and reads “Monster Builder.” Monster Builder has a built-in library of almost all the enemies introduced so far into 4th edition, including named bosses and unique monsters from the different modules. They’re easy to find thanks to a great search engine that lets you search for names, keywords, level ranges, and more. Beyond viewing them, there’s option to copy and edit existing monsters to better suite your needs. That said, some monsters are missing from the program. I’ll have to admit, I’m disappointed that I couldn’t de-level Tiamat to level 5 out of curiosity, just to see how the program would handle it.
More impressively, there’s the option to create new monsters from scratch. I’ve included a unique monster I’ve made (The Living Grove) along with a monster edited from a pre-existing template (Freleton No Neck). One of the coolest features of the monster builder is the ability to print your new monster, export him as text, or as a CLIPBOARD IMAGE. So far the most economic way to build encounters using this tool is to export a clipboard image and use an image editing program like Photoshop to put them all on the same sheet, which is something that should be improved in future editions.
There’s also a “Monster Pen” area on to store monsters, but it’s unclear how to use it and you are unable to export the monsters in the pen together or print them all out on one sheet of paper. It seems that the ability to print more than one monster on a single sheet of paper would really be a benefit to this program. However, this might not be a problem if one of the remaining circles to be filled in Adventure Tools main menu will be “Encounter Builder” and let you import your custom monsters from “Monster Builder.” Sure, there’s already a flash-based “Encounter Builder,” but Wizards can do better than that.
They are slowly phasing out all the need to carry a bag of books and promoting these powerful tools that give you entire libraries full of classes, races, powers, and monsters. It’s like the wikihikers guide to all of Dungeons & Dragons. I would not be surprised if the published Dungeon Tiles make an appearance in a future “Map Builder,” further eliminating reliance on physical products. All of my players have been using Character Builder for months, and I am truly excited to see what else Wizards has in store for the DMs. Stay tuned to find out if “Encounter Builder” and “Map Builder” come to fruition, or if they’re just products of my imagination.
Unlike the Character Builder Beta/Demo, Adventure Tools is not available to non-subscribers in any form, meaning there’s no way to demo it without paying a few dollars for a subscription. You can check it out here.
Jon R says:
I’m somewhat disturbed that WotC is claiming copyright on your own creation there. What’s up with that?
August 5th, 2009 at 3:51 am
FemJesse says:
I think they are copyrighting the format mostly. It’s like Trade Dress infringement.
Either way I’m not upset about it. Its not like my job is making rival monsters. Plus, WOTC has already laid claim to any creation being made as a source or in reference to 4th edition. Their whole attitude about it has been “That’s fine, go ahead and make it. We might use it, too.”
If WOTC wants to steal my living grove, awesome. Maybe they’ll recognize my genius in other ways. Poop Dragon here we come!
August 6th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
lucek says:
Basically from my understanding is that they are putting a copyright on things created with thees tools just so that you can’t sue them for using your work. However to my reading they also give a royalties free rights to the creator so that even given you can’t sue wizards for using it you can still publish your creations in anyway you want to. This goes hand in hand with wizards attitude to third party creators.
“If you want to do all the hard work and it helps us sell core books then go right ahead.”
April 1st, 2010 at 4:09 pm