About

As I’m sure you’ve noticed we are well shy of our funding goal. Why is this the case with such an awesome product? We’ve received and heard many opinions about our product offering and it really boils down to 2 things:

Subscription – People in this space really hate subscriptions. I’ve posted about this in the past but the reason for subscriptions is 2 fold.

1. Keeps the initial price down. If we just charged a flat fee it would be too cost prohibitive for most people to be interested.

2. Yearly overhead. To sustain this type of cloud environment we have to pay recurring costs for server usage, space, and everything else that comes with it.

Demo – Over the years many have become skeptical of these types of kickstarters in this space. I’ve personally lost out on hundreds backing KSes that have never delivered. It would seem most people want some type of assurance before forking over their $25 bucks, or whatever their preferred pledge level would be.

So, without us showing an almost finished product no one wants to trust us that we can deliver. To me, this adverse to the purpose of a Kickstarter, we would like to use funds received to pay for developers to build the application.

A distant 3rd reason may be that some were confused as to what this product could do or what benefits it has over existing products. These are numerous, and different potential users have different preferences as to the features most important to them. When compared to other products I think some of the biggest advantages are:

1. Mobile Device Support – Having the ability to bring only your mobile device to the table and interact with others and the GM is not something that has been done well to this point. We built this with that scenario in mind.

2. Better UI/UX – Other programs have a pretty ridged and set layout. RPGsmith would also you to customize your screens and features to play the game you want, the way you want.

3. Other Complete Feature Sets – Other items such as Random Tables, Combat Management, etc. round out the feature set and allow a GM (and players) to make RPGsmith the one tool needed to run a game at the table. We’ve written a number of blog articles on our site to dive into the specifics more as well if you’re curious as to what might have been.

Other points thrown at us were basically people trying to push their niche ideas and preferences behind the logic of “we’re not doing well so they must be correct”.

To address the subscription issue we could look into selling the application with a 1 time cost then have a yearly maintenance fee of 5 bucks or something to cover overhead.

As for the demo, why not just pay to have the app developed out of pocket and then launch a kickstarter when ready to recoup those funds? There were 2 purposes for the KS. The primary was to raise funds to get the application built. If we did not receive enough funds our 2nd purpose was to gauge how much interest would be in this application, if we perhaps received half of the goal then we could consider fronting the funds to build the application and go from there… but, from the amount of people actually backing us in KS we can’t justify this option.

So, to save ourselves from further work and stress we’re withdrawing the KS and moving on to other projects. I would like to give a huge Thank You to those that did back us and try to help get this made. Perhaps this might inspire others to create better, more complete apps for use in this area. Thank You!

Original KS Posting

If you're like us, you love playing RPG games! There is nothing quite like creating an immersive and interactive story about fantastic lands filled with intriguing NPCs and wondrous creatures and exploring that world with friends.

Looking back, our most memorable moments include exploring dank caverns, carefully plotting through the darkness hoping to avoid waking the huge unknown monster snoozing in the distance; attempting to track down and slay an adult Blue Dragon that we "accidentally" freed and set loose on the land; or the time we narrowly avoided a TPK by tricking a fire elemental into slaying its summoner instead of our party.

What I choose not to remember is the time spent wasted on the "chores" of the game: jotting down items collected, updating character sheets, performing calculations to track encumbrance, or constantly spending time trying to find and decipher poorly written notes. The amount of time wasted getting to the good parts of the game is far more significant than any of us would like to admit.

Running a Table-Top RPG takes a lot of effort from players and the Game Master alike. What if there was a tool that could streamline and automate much of the “non-game” aspects that come with gaming? What if there was a tool that could:

Import thousands of pieces of pre-created content in minutes.

Keep track of all items given to player characters.

Selectively share searchable, linked, and tagged content easily with others.

Record and display character information in a completely customizable manner.

Allow players to inspect other characters, both PCs and NPCs, to see visible characteristics and items.

Provide a streamlined trade interface to exchange items and currency with others.

Contain GM-created shops for players to make purchases and sales. Each shop is configurable by the GM for random or manual inventory as well as a set markup value.

Manage combat by tracking order with the ability to dynamically insert monsters or other combatants on the fly.

Automatically create unique and/or custom foes complete with inventory, special attacks and other details.

Record abilities or skills associated with a character.

See and associate Effects or Buffs with characters and monsters .

Create and execute custom dice configurations for common roll combinations.

Access random tables to quickly obtain and inject details into the campaign.

Track spell usage and availability. Sort and filter by key words or attributes such as damage type or range.

That’s the toolset you're helping us forge! A toolset that includes all these features and many, many more. Customizable for virtually any game system, usable on any device, and available to use anywhere. RPGSmith will turn the time wasted preparing your game into time spent engaging with friends and experiencing new content. RPGsmith will help you forge an EPIC game!

Base Feature Set Offering

The base goal of this Kickstarter is to raise $55,000. This amount will allow us to create the core feature set of this application. Included in the Core features are:

Campaign Management – GMs can create campaigns which serve as the sandbox that all game content will reside. GMs can build a party by granting or revoking player access to a given campaign. GMs also configure Campaign wide settings to control the type of game being played.

Campaign Overview

Character Management – GMs and players (if allowed by the GM) can create characters based on campaign or game system templates. These templates allow the GM complete flexibility on the format and content of the character sheet, allowing the configuration of what fields the characters in their campaign will have. This flexibility allows the GM to quickly configure RPGsmith to be played with any tabletop RPG system.

Character Screen

Import / Export – Don’t want to spend time setting up, or creating content? GMs can choose to import or export campaign settings and content. Share the content you create and enjoy content created by others. Want to import 500 items for use in a Pathfinder campaign without having to create any of them? Done!

Item Details

Items / Inventory – Characters can see an interactive list of all items on their character. Within this interface the player can drop, trade, use, delete, give, and even equip appropriate items. Total weight calculations occur and the GM can configure thresholds for encumbrance rules based upon a given character stat such as strength vs total weight carried.

Character Inventory

Notes & Content Sharing – We’ve designed an intuitive and friendly way to share information around the table (virtual or physical). GMs and players alike can selectively share or hide notes, images, and story elements. All of these items can be tagged, tracked, searched, sorted and managed in the player’s Notebook.

Character Screen

Multi-Device Support – RPGsmith will be available for use through a web interface built using responsive design. This means the application will resize to work from a computer, tablet, or mobile device. No more forgetting to bring your character sheet, dice, notes, markers, etc. Just remember your phone.

Mobile Character Screen

Add-On Expansions

The GM pledge levels offered are limited to 3 campaigns and 5 Gigs of cloud storage space. The Standalone Player pledge levels are limited to a maximum of 3 Characters and 1 gig of storage space. For those looking to get more we have some add-on options for you.

Simply "over pledge" your amount to include the extra features and we'll send out a survey after the Kickstarter completes so you can make your selections.

GM Pledges

+3 Campaign Expansion (+$15 /year) – Increase your maximum number of campaigns to 6 total with this expansion

+7 Campaign Expansion (+$30 /year) – Increase your maximum number of campaigns to 10 total with this expansion

Standalone Player Pledges

+3 Character Expansion (+$4 /year)– Increase the number of Characters you can have created in your account at any given time to 6 total

+7 Character Expansion (+$8 /year)– Increase the number of Characters you can have created in your account at any given time to 10 total

GM & SA Players Pledges

+1 Gigabyte Storage Expansion (+$1 /GB /year) – Increase the maximum amount of space your content can take up by purchasing more. Purchase as many of these as you like to increase your space even more.

Pledge Levels & Expansions

Stretch Goals

This is where things get really interesting. Spells, Abilities, Monsters, Shops, Loot, NPCs, Random Tables, Combat Management, Logs, Buffs/Effects, Inspection, Trade, Campaign Map, & tons more. Help us make our Stretch Goals and really watch this become the complete app for your tabletop game.

Have an opinion of the order in which these Stretch Goals should be released? Let us know here.

RPGsmith

Relate-able Humor

Does any of this ever happen at your table?

More Detail?

Want to learn even more about how we've designed RPGsmith? Check out our website at RPGsmith.com.