Some Virtual Reinvention: The potential of RPGSmith
This article started with an invitation to write a review of RPGSmith. Don’t worry if you don’t know what that is, all will be clear by article’s end. After an introduction, and a summary of what the product was, the co-founder who made the offer threw in a provocative statement:
“I would like to note that we feel this is much more than a single purpose niche app for gamers, this could be a game changer for how games are played both at the physical table and virtually.”
Now, I normally tune out hyperbole without even being consciously aware of it, or react to it with extreme cynicism. When a TV advert for some food supplement uses weasel hype such as “[product x] may help treat [condition y]”, my initial (and often verbal) reaction is “…but it might not.” Now, I understand why the pharmaceuticals and supplements industries have to be careful about the promises that they make – there simply isn’t room in a 30- or 60-second advert to ring their pronouncements with all the protections and disclaimers that our excessively-litigious modern society demands, and it would hardly make for a positive message, in any event. With any advertising, you can never forget that it’s primary purpose is to get you to buy something, whether that something is a new product, or an existing product, a message, or an attitude – in general, to do something that will benefit the people paying for the advert.
But most RPG writers and GMs have as developed a sense of nuance and cynicism as I do. It comes from the deeper understanding in human nature we have to have to portray the greedy and opportunistic and criminal. They tend to eschew the overblown statement. That makes the excerpted statement singular – either the tip of an unwelcome trend of hyper in RPG advertising, or an announcement of something in which the writer has a genuine belief as a potential (and quite literal) game-changer.
First Impressions
Let me be frank – I had trouble seeing what justified the excitement and the hype; and I was fully prepared to write an article deploring the new depths of hyperbole to which the industry had sunk. If the hype was really unjustified, that’s what you’d be reading about in this article. It was an interesting product, but a game-changer? Maybe in a few small respects, but nothing fundamental. I wasn’t even sure that the convenience that the product offered would be commensurate with the inconvenience of setting it up for use.
At this point, I wasn’t even completely clear on what the product was, what it did. And I have deliberately refrained from describing it so that you’ll be feeling the same way about now, unless you have some prior knowledge.
So I decided to check out the product’s website in search of answers. I soon found enough to intrigue me, but noted that there were several cogent questions that didn’t have answers in the material supplied. I responded with those questions, and David – the co-founder who had reached out to me in the first place – was good enough to put quite a bit of effort into answering them.
As I did my research and due diligence, and the answers to my hard questions started to sink in, the potential for what this product could be, and what the creators intend it to be, started to open my eyes. I’m still not ready to drink the kool-aid, but I’m ready to ask what flavors it comes in.
I have to be explicitly clear – this is not a review of what the product currently is, or even what it could be in the reasonably near future. I am going to assume, for the purposes of this article, that all of the features that the designers want to implement are available, and as easy to use as they sound, and a few that possibly aren’t even on the horizon. This is a review of the potential of RPGSmith, unsullied by real-world compromises – at least until closer to the tail end of the article – about what impact it could potentially have, five or ten years from now.
What is RPGSmith?
The first thing that came to mind when I heard the name were memories of a piece of software from maybe twenty years ago that I never found the time to master, Tablesmith (I did get as far as installing the architecture needed on my old Windows 98 machine, but that’s about it). That’s a program used primarily to generate random tables for RPGs. It has a healthy, even near-fanatical user base out there, happily generating content for each other to use – and pushing the development of the software.
It’s an association that got in the way, at least in the beginning, because it’s not correct. Not yet, anyway.
RPGSmith is a virtual character sheet, when you get right down to it. If you start with that understanding as your bedrock, you’ll avoid much of the fog that I had to fight my way through before gaining understanding.
But it’s a character sheet unlike any that you’ve ever seen before.
Each page is referred to as a Dashboard – and yes, you can have multiple dashboards for a single character. The content of a Dashboard consists of tiles, which display various things like stats, modifiers, spells, and so on. The interface to the dashboard is web-based, so the whole thing functions like an interactive website. There’s a die roller, and of course (being software) it can do all your calculations for you.
The results certainly look very pretty, as the screenshot at the start of this article shows. You can click on the cropped version for a larger image (or click – opens in a new tab).
But it’s not what you’d call game-changing at first glance.

All images provided by RPGSmith. I’ve enlarged most of them slightly.
The Funding Model
What’s more, it’s not a free service. It’s free to players, but not to GMs, and without GMs, it will never be more than a virtual character sheet – with some nice customizability features, and the ability for one person to copy another’s design as a template (and then customize it for their own character).
If there’s one thing that I dislike about the whole thing, it’s this. When the plan for RPGSmith was for nothing more than a virtual character sheet, this makes a reasonable amount of sense; but the evolution of the product is toward a campaign-centric model, and without the GM, there is no campaign.
At the same time, I understand the designers’ problem; they’ve put a lot of time and effort and money into RPGSmith, and not only deserve the opportunity to recoup that investment, but to make a reasonable profit. Making the current version free for players establishes a user-base, and players outnumber GMs at almost every RPG table you can point at. What’s more, the GM usually pays for the supplements and tools used by the group. I have 160-200 immediately to hand (not counting general references and resources), another 400 or so a few steps away, and probably 250 or so beyond those that are actually packed away. Not to mention thousands of supplements downloaded from RPGNow and other online sources.
But now, things are moving in a different (and more exciting) direction. And moving fast – the current version only launched back in December 2018. They’ve barely ticked over the three-month mark – not enough time to really build that player-based foundation, or to get the word out.
And it’s not all that expensive. $50 a year – roughly the same as a core rule-book plus p&h – once a year, which also adds multiple players. And discounts for longer-term commitments to the platform. If you can afford it, for a limited time only, there is also a lifetime subscription.
But, if I were to seriously contemplate making this the central interface to one of my campaigns, I suspect that I would first persuade my players, and then ask that they pay a share toward obtaining the service for all to use – just as we all used to kick in to hire the gaming space our club used, but GMs were often subsidized by the players – because without the GM, there was no game. It only came to A$1 or $2 a week – and at that rate, would have cost more than doing likewise for RPGSmith.
Let’s do the math: assume 4 players and 1 GM paying equally, once a week, for 40 weeks a year – that’s 5x40x$X. You need $50 a year. So $X = $50/200 = US$0.25 a week, each. If you only play once a month, that’s about US$1 a game session.
The first purchase would need to be made up-front – US$10 each would cover it. Most people could cover that – at the current exchange rates, that’s about what it costs per head to get a takeaway lunch. You might need to give people a week or two’s notice out of politeness. After that, everything that you collect goes toward paying the next renewal.
If the GM is to get a free ride on the player’s contributions, we’re talking $0.30 instead of $0.25 a week, and $12.50 instead of $10 for the up-front subscription.
I’m not recommending that anyone arrange things this way – that’s up to individual groups. What I want to demonstrate is the viability of this approach, which in turn shows that there will be other practical solutions.
The History Of RPGSmith
This is not RPGSmith’s first time at the rodeo. Back in December 2015, they launched a Kickstarter to obtain funding for their anticipated development costs, and had to pull the plug when it became clear that they weren’t going to achieve their funding goals.
A lot of soul-searching went into analyzing the reasons for the failure at the time, and those involved in this initial version of the project came to the conclusions (1) that without a functioning prototype, there was little confidence that the product would be delivered; and (2) that people really hated subscription pricing models.
They’ve addressed (2) by reducing the fees dramatically, to the point where it’s a relative pittance. But problem (1) is probably the more serious. David (yes, the same guy who reached out to me) began to refine the specs and commissioned bits of code off his own dime – in fact, off quite a few dimes, and more than a few dollars as well. This time around, they have a demonstrable product, and what they want to fund are enhancements.
There was probably some justification to the hesitance of backers at the time; in his blog post on the subject, David admits that he has personally invested a great deal more than the original fundraising effort was supposed to raise. This was a question that I raised with him, because it wasn’t resolved by that blog post:
Q: The page (I think it’s a blog post) announcing your campaign raises one important question that it then fails to answer. You state that you have actually invested more in code than your original fundraising effort would have raised. Did the excess go on bangs and whistles that weren’t part of the spec that you were fundraising for, or were people right to be suspicious that you wouldn’t be able to deliver? How have you modified your planned fundraising this time around to take those lessons into account?
A: “There were a couple of reasons as to the amount of money spent thus far. In part you are correct that the scope of our most recent development effort is much larger than the original, this expansion was done to better compete with other tools that have come into the marketplace since that initial Kickstarter.
“The other reason is that the original Kickstarter funding amount (and this one too) was never meant to fully fund the whole effort, just to supplement our existing capital.
“A separate reason for the Kickstarter was to test the waters to see if there was a market for this application. At the time we correlated the lack of backers to a lack of interest. We’ve since learned that without having a good Proof of Concept in place, people are very weary to hop on board or believe we can deliver. This time we have a very functional and useful tool already built that would give backers a better idea of what to expect.
“That particular blog post comment was meant to convey that we are committed as we have a lot invested in this effort and not intended to instill a lack of confidence. Perhaps a rewording is in order?”
Actually, I think he was a little shocked that someone could read this interpretation into what he had written. It’s a lesson that most bloggers learn the hard way!
I raise it here as others may have the same impression. The fact is that David was effectively commissioning code for his own use in the form of enhanced functionality, as implied by my question, having falsely correlated the lack of backing with a lack of interest. What that Kickstarter would have delivered would have been a far simpler and less functional application than the one that now exists – though it may well have evolved over time to the current spec, anyway.

All images from RPGSmith.
The Fundraiser
Which brings me to the that’s now underway. This is essential to unlocking the vision of the potential future that I foresee for RPGSmith; it’s designed to link and integrate PCs into a campaign view, with additional functionality for running a game with RPGSmith as a hub.
When you look at the RPGSmith features page, everything that’s on the left-hand side in plain orange boxes is functionality that’s already in the product; everything on the right hand side with the pretty pictures is what the Kickstarter is to fund.
Let’s run through them quickly:
– A high-level “GM’s Campaign View”
– Chat functionality with the option of showing die rolls
– Icon-based display of buffs and effects impacting a character
– create or import tables useful/central to the campaign
– monster generation
– configurable group-view screen with information from multiple characters
– Build and track NPCs
– Collections of Loot which can be distributed to the players when recovered
– Currency and ways for characters to spend their money
– Combat manager
– Inter-character trading of items
– Ability to group specific items like particular shops into towns and cities
– GM can control what the players can see of other players characters
– …and what they can see of the opposition
The Implications Of Success
Aside from a justifiable sense of vindication, and becoming a poster-boy for perseverance, success in the fundraiser is only the beginning for RPGSmith – if everything plays out the way it could. In particular, it will bring the concurrent benefits of a large subscriber base, putting further enhancement on the road-map.
There are a number of carrots for people to sign up – mostly in the form of discounted initial subscriptions. If you want to try the product out for yourself and find out whether it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread for your campaign, this is your chance to do so on the cheap!
Doing so will help fund enhancements that are likely to make it even more useful to you, so it’s not only a win-win for the people behind RPGSmith, it’s a win-win for you too.
The Setbacks Of Failure
The Kickstarter doesn’t really talk about what will happen if this fundraising goes the same way as the last one. It would obviously be a setback, but not necessarily a fatal one.
The difference is that there is a functional product and service there already; David and his gaming group can simply sit back and grow the subscriber base through reviews like this one for a year or two, spreading the word, before launching another attempt.
Or, they could give up on the idea of RPGSmith as a commercial operation and take the whole thing open-source. That wouldn’t be ideal, as they have “Skin In The Game” as David puts it – they have funded getting the project this far themselves, money that will be lost if they take this route. So there would no doubt be considerable angst about the decision.
Or perhaps they could walk through door number three, and sell their IP to someone like Roll20, recouping those costs – but losing control of the project.
Ultimately, the failure of this particular campaign will not be the end of RPGSmith, in my opinion. David and Co have come this far with the project, despite the fundraising failure of 2015; I can’t see them folding up their tents now, whatever happens.
So it’s just a VTT without the TT?
Not really, it’s much more than that. But to see why, you need to stop and think about what a character sheet actually is.
When we start out as players, we think of the character sheet as a collection of numbers that describe our character. When we become better players, we find ways of reading more deeply into those numbers, and start adding additional information that isn’t mere stats.
When you become a GM, you start thinking of character sheets in a broader sense; they are the focal points of your campaign, the most tangible expression of that campaign. That thought often leads us to create bespoke character sheets, in particular to reflect house rules.
Both these perspectives are correct, but limited in their comprehension. It’s only when you start thinking as a Game Designer that the real truth comes out. Character sheets are the player’s primary interface between character and rules system, as filtered through the lens of the campaign.
In and of itself, that doesn’t seem to mean very much at first glance; but it makes a massive difference when you look a little deeper. For example, if you have two different versions of a character sheet, both downloaded from somewhere like RPGNow (where there are dozens of them for a popular game system like D&D), trying to decide which one is better yields different criteria and different standards when viewed through each of these different perspectives on what a character sheet is.
As players, you start with the superficial – the better character sheet design “presents the stats clearly and in an organized manner” – proceed into characterization – “prompts characterization input and presents the results in a way that can be quickly assimilated for play”. As GMs, you think about the way the design “reflects your particular campaign”, “enhances and delivers the flavor and atmosphere of the campaign to the players”, “gets them in the right mood or frame of mind”, and “accommodates your house rules” as they inevitably accumulate. But as game designers, the best character sheet design is the one that “optimizes the interaction between, and accessibility of, the rules to the players.” This design has more space for skills than you want, but the alternative doesn’t have enough? This design makes you look up a table in the rule-book, the other one has a space for you to write the relevant information directly onto the character sheet?
Suddenly, the criteria for which design is best have become at least somewhat objective.
Now, factor in that every character is different. If you’re running a mage, you want your spell list to be easy to access. For any character class without spellcasting abilities, space dedicated to that is a complete waste – and is doubly-counterproductive, because something else useful could be in that space.
But all these character sheets have one property in common: they are static, fixed, unchanging.

You can choose between RPGSmith’s own clip art gallery, upload an image of your own, or even search for an online image – one way or another, you should be able to find the perfect representation of your character.
Dynamic Character Sheets I
RPGSmith is different. It’s Dynamic, and that has four major impacts.
The first is that it means that the Barbarian and the Mage no longer have to compromise optimum character sheet designs to accommodate each other. You can start from a common template and customize the layout as necessary.
Dynamic Character Sheets II
The second is that it means that the sheet content can be dynamic, changing as the in-game circumstance changes – more like a computer-game character interface. Complicated tables and calculations can be carried out but hidden from view, displaying only the part that you really care about – the result.
The same character can have a completely different presentation by day, and by night, for example – reflecting the character’s specific abilities that are available to them at the time – if that’s deemed desirable. By keeping track of the damage the character takes, the system can automatically tell you that you’re stunned, or unconscious, or dying, or delirious, or whatever, AND to automatically apply whatever modifiers result from those conditions.
Dynamic Character Sheets III
As implied by the previous paragraph, the template can be updated to incorporate house rules. If, in your campaign, you want characters to lose half their movement when they’ve lost half their hit points, you can make that happen – without being an uber-coder.
Dynamic Character Sheets IV
Right now, the templates are fixed – you copy a character from someone else and it gives you a blank version, but with all the behind-the-scenes functionality intact. I anticipate the capability of crafting “modules” that automatically check the master sheet for updates to that functionality each time the “character sheet” is loaded. That’s one function that’s not even on the development horizon at the moment, but I see it as inevitable since it means that you don’t have to reenter the whole character each time.
Modules and Master Developers
Even though you don’t have to be gifted at computer coding to implement house rules within RPGSmith, it’s inevitable that some people will be better at it than others. A logical consequence of the “module” development I describe above is that those people will flourish – a better mousetrap, i.e. a more communicative way of reflecting a particular condition can be listed by its creator and added to character sheets by others, copying that specific piece of code into their own master templates, from whence it is automatically applied to player’s character sheets. The individual GM can even ‘tailor’ a “module” to suit their specific needs.
Simplified Rules Sets
Contemplate the impact on an RPG that has been designed to function with RPGSmith. Nine-tenths of the game mechanics (okay, that might be a slight exaggeration) can be incorporated directly into the character sheets for the game; the principles have to be explained within the rules, but not the mechanics themselves. That not only kills min-maxing, or at least maims it, but it severely shrinks the size of those rule-books – and that means that they can cost a lot less in overheads to produce, lowering the price without compromising profitability to the game designer.
Since the designers have to put the design hard-yards in anyway, they can still produce an “offline edition” with all the mechanics and tables intact if they want to – but it might cost $60 instead of $20. The price differences would be profound, would reset the standards in fact – and that would be reflected in the sales.
Mix-and-match rules
What’s more, if you liked the way one game – let’s call it “Cranks and Shafts” – handles its auto-fire rules, since these would be in a module like any other rules segment, you could import those rules directly into the basic “Space Elephants” rules that are to be used within your campaign. You might need to tweak them a little, but half the work would already be done – and instructions within the module would guide you.
The RPG Campaign Distribution Channel Of Tomorrow: A Hypothetical Scenario
Let’s turn on the crystal ball and focus on what setting up an RPG campaign ten years from now might look like. You buy the basic rule-book – “Space Elephants” – for a relative pittance, something comparable to the price of an electronic edition from RPGNow (refer Value for money and the pricing of RPG materials – Part 1 of 2 and Value for money and the pricing of RPG materials – Part 2 of 2 for a comparison of the considerations that go into the respective pricing).
That gives the GM a set of rules, a set of principles that those rules embody, a basic adventure, and a list of RPGSmith modules, plus a suggested layout. Those modules come with a bunch of nice pieces of eye candy, a “Space Elephants” logo, and half the game rules coded into them, with up-to-the-heartbeat errata and corrections.
The GM reads the material he’s been given (well, okay, he skims it) and gets an idea for a campaign. He logs onto his RPGSmith account and grabs the modules, available as an official bundle – one click, and he’s got them all. He then spends an hour or so arranging them according to the recommended layout (and tinkering with it a bit) and looking over the eye candy – some of which was also in the rule-book, some of which is new to him. Once he has a character template, he makes some notes about the campaign background and the first few adventures in the DM’s module, in particular deciding how many players he can accommodate.
He spends a little more time customizing some of the built-in rules with house rules that he thinks will enhance the unique aspects of the campaign that he has in mind, making notes as he goes, then writes up a campaign blurb with a link to the character template he’s put together.

All images from RPGSmith.
To identify his specific Space Elephants campaign, he gives it the name “The Ivory Nebula”, and using that as his headline, he posts a notice of a new campaign open for 6 players for 3-6 months of weekly play on a noticeboard reserved for the purpose, adding a number of tags to the bottom that describe the campaign. He also indicates that two specific past players of his should be explicitly invited to the campaign. While he waits for the system to do its thing, he creates a short player briefing with more information on the proposed campaign and the sort of characters that would be suitable.
Those two players, and a number of others who have indicated an interest in the tags, are emailed notification of the campaign opening. Before too long, the GM notices downloads of his template and player briefing, and in a day or two, he has his six players, and expressions of interest from three more. They get automatically placed on a waiting list to join if someone else drops out – a list from which they can opt out at any time.
The GM has one player from Lima, Peru, one from France, one from England, one from the US, and his two former players, one of which now lives in New Zealand, the other still living close by in the same small town somewhere in the US.
Each of them has generated a character, submitted it to the GM, and customized the layout of their character sheets to suit their character’s capabilities and their personal needs. A time sync is set by the GM to tell everyone when the first session will commence (date and time) in their local vicinity…
Whoa – That could change everything!
There isn’t much about the RPG industry that isn’t being fundamentally altered in the above scenario. GMs are no longer restricted by geography – though language would remain a stumbling block. The way games are created and physically distributed is fundamentally changed, and the way games are consumed and administered are radically transformed. And yet, the fundamentals remain the same, comfortingly familiar.
Some of it is functional within VTTs now – but not all of it. Some of it is functional within RPGSmith now – but not all of it. And the two have only a partial overlap. Even if the Kickstarter is successful, and the current list of planned features is implemented, that will still not be enough for the above to become a reality; that would take more enhancement to RPGSmith (some of it on the agenda, some not currently). And then you would need time for the market impacts to influence the industry.
And there would be knock-on effects. Some games would have “Official” distributions through RPGSmith, others might have only amateur “unofficial” packs. Licensing and copyright would have to evolve slightly, though the OGL has shown the way forwards in that respect. Every game that is played using a particular “system” could be designated a play-test by the publishers – if they get reports that eight out of ten GMs have replaced the Psi rules with something else (or just removed them altogether), that’s a fair hint that there’s a problem in that area of the rules. If someone reports strange results from the enhanced healing rules, an errata can be noted and an update released “live” in minutes, hours, or days for all users who want it.
Game rules would evolve a lot more quickly, and probably be released in far more preliminary form. Game development would become more interactive – and there would be little-to-no chance of developers ignoring the feedback they were getting, the way WOTC has admitted they did with 4e D&D play-testing.
The Impact of Real-World Compromises
Okay, that’s the rose-colored glasses view of the future. The reality is that not all these changes are sure of getting through – some are, so far as I know, not even on the development horizon at the current time. Some are, though, and some are logical extrapolations of what RPGSmith either can do now, or will (hopefully) be able to do in the near future.
So this forecast is a case of what the maximum possible impact might be. Let’s take a step back and look more closely at how much of this is plausibly in the pipeline, by quoting some more of the questions I had for David and the answers that he supplied.
Q: Can a blank character sheet be saved as a template and then used as a foundation by other players, or does each have to be customized from scratch?
A: “A default dashboard, or ‘template blank character sheet’ if you prefer, is defined and associated with a given Rule Set level. This is true for all Rule Sets whether created from scratch, added from RPGSmith’s ‘Core’ Rule Sets, or imported from another user’s RPGSmith account.
“You can also create multiple dashboard configurations, hundreds in fact, on the same Rule Set. Each time you create a character and select a Rule Set for the character to be created in, the defined dashboard associated with that Rule Set is duplicated as used at the starting layout for that character.”
So the core functionality is there, it’s only the distribution mechanisms and the integrated RPG publishing/development that is needed – plus the GM/Campaign focus that they are currently trying to implement.
Q: Can graphics be uploaded or are you restricted to those provided by the site?
A: “Yes, graphics can be uploaded, or selected from our stock images, or even searched and imported from the web without ever having to exit the interface. This same image interface is used throughout the tool any time you want to insert or change an image. RPGSmith is built with the intent to allow you to customize anything, replace all the images in the provided pre-created ‘core’ rule sets if you like.”
A dedicated zip interface is all that’s needed to “bundle” things, in that case, enabling a consistent base look-and-feel for particular rules sets. That’s an important element in the publishing part of the process that I’ve described.
Q: Your website keeps saying things like “nothing else will let you do what RPGSmith lets you do” but I’m still not entirely clear on what the differences are. Lots of hype, not many specifics. Can you provide a couple of examples of unique functionality? What are the features that set RPGSmith apart?
A: “Prior to the launch of the Kickstarter, I would direct you to the features page on our website, the ‘Coming Soon’ section would serve as the current best source of things to come from the Kickstarter and the planned stretch goals. This section on the site isn’t heavy in the details by design.
“For better or worse we’re trying preserve the newness and excitement for a lot of these boons when we launch the Kickstarter. As we just launched the player version this month, we thought it would be better not to showcase the future features we have in store as most people are just discovering the current feature set. We didn’t want someone to feel misinformed if they go into the existing player version and not find what they thought was already included.
“With the significant amount of features in the current released version, we’re challenged enough conveying all of what the app does in a succinct and digestible size. Adding adding a bunch of other features not yet in place we fear would cause confusion.
“To answer your question as to specific examples of the unique features coming:
In-Game Random Shop Creation: “RPGSmith will have what we refer to as the ‘randomization engine’ that will be applied to a number of different features. The ‘RE’ allows a GM to pre-configure a range of criteria into a template that can deployed later with random results in the specified range. Using in-game shops as an example, a GM could create a shop template named ‘Small Apothecary’, in this template he can specify the shop will have:
– 10-20 Items tagged with the word ‘potion’ and the rarity set to ‘common’;
– 5-10 items with the tag of ‘potion’ and the rarity set to ‘uncommon’;
– 1 item tagged with a ‘potion’ tag and the rarity set to ‘rare’.
“Then when the GM is ready to deploy a ‘Small Apothecary’ they click a button, provide a name for this specific shop, and the randomization engine pulls matching criteria from the Rule Set items list generating the inventory for that shop. The GM can also configure a markup/markdown value which modifies the cost of all items in the shop, or this can be randomized as well. The GM can at any time overwrite any of the random elements if they choose, from the markup value to the inventory itself, both at a shop wide or individual item level.
“Once the GM marks this shop as ‘open’ to the Players they can then interact with shops without the GMs further direct involvement. The GM makes the shop available to the players and they can go and purchase, or even sell items (if the item is something the shop would purchase, also GM configured) to the shop and have the currency exchange, inventory updates all seamlessly handled by RPGSmith. The GM can still Role Play the shop owner, and raise or lower costs accordingly if the group ticks the owner off for example. This would streamline a lot bookkeeping, and consequently allow the group to get through more content, and improve the immersion. If this is been done elsewhere, I’ve never heard of it.”
And buying items automatically adds them to your inventory, updating encumbrance, etc.
Monsters: “Also using the randomization engine, the GM can configure a monster template and provide some similar logic. A ‘goblin’ template can be created to deploy a Goblin with:
– 2d4+2 Hit Points,
– AND have a 30% chance of carrying a short-bow;
– OR 25% chance of carrying a short-sword;
– OR 45% change of a dagger;
– AND carry between 1 cp and 2GP.
“Then the GM can deploy 15 goblins and get a unique result for each one. This has been kind of done somewhat with other apps but not to the extent of what we’re planning.”

All images provided by RPGSmith.
Combat Tracking: “The combat tracker is another one that perhaps no individual feature is unique, but I have never seen the total incorporation of all the features pulled off to the extent we have designed. [It has] features like:
– Monster insertion from templates, again utilizing the ‘randomization engine’;
– Assigning color coded teams to easily track sides;
– GM controlled visibility of combatants allows the GM to show or hide turn order of other combatants to the players;
– The execution of monster attacks, spells, all linked directly to the dice rolls or to more details;
– Configuring general initiative settings such as Shadowrun style, re-roll init each round, or group initiative;
– The tracking of round metrics such as in-game time (configurable), real time, round counters, etc;
– Placing traps, effects, or buffs on a round or game time counter that can auto expire or auto activate, or both.
“All of this can be pre-configured and saved as a template to allow the GM to prep in advance.
Encumbrance: “The current player version has what I believe to be a unique feature with regards to container weight reduction and how that effects your inventory weight.”
In other words, if you can fit something into a portable hole or whatever and you designate that as where it is being kept (as a player or GM), it automatically adjusts the encumbrance of the character accordingly.
“Combine that with a ‘condition’ character stat to track encumbrance and you’ve got a pretty nice way to automatically see if you’re carrying too much, based upon a variable derived from a character stat, typically ‘Strength’. All of this is can be created by the user through the interface. This isn’t something we’ve coded behind the scenes, we’ve instead built it through the interface to ensure any user can do the same and tweak the formula.”
You can definitely see the beginnings of what I’ve described. But what about what David foresees?
Q: Your email talks about large-scale impacts on RPGs without suggesting what the impacts that you foresee actually are. What’s your vision of the RPG future?
A: “I envision more automation, more features, and better interfaces to facilitate those. When I GM I strive to achieve as much immersion as I can for the players. Having to pause to look up stats or flip through a book/website to find the details of a spell has been a source of frustration in the past. We’ve built RPGSmith to allow the user to store and retrieve the information they need quickly.
“This is evidenced by the dashboard interface and allowing a user to create tiles linked directly to dice rolls, or spell details, or counters to track numeric values, or simple and rich text, all of which are stored, color coded, shaped, and sized in a method that makes perfect since to the end user, because that’s how they set it up.
“I touch on this in the intro video somewhat; many of the tools in the market place are nice, but single purposed. Or they’re are robust, but the interface is too complex. The good and bad thing about RPGSmith is that it looks simple. That’s bad in that at a glance people may not feel it’s feature rich, but if they take the time to peel the onion a bit, they would see it’s well structured to suit both games like Fate with not many built in stats or records, to Pathfinder which has over 2500 spells alone.
“Perhaps I’m delusional, or overly biased because I’ve poured so much into this project, but I truly believe – given the proper exposure and support – this could really simplify and speed up the non-fun aspects of gaming for people by expanding the tool belt both the players and the GM have at their disposal.”
And perhaps our respective visions aren’t that far apart, at that.
Speaking of ‘more automation’, there’s another feature that I’d like to put on David’s radar: auto-compilation of narrative session summaries.
Let’s say that the GM’s adventure notes contain the following:
“One goblin on guard, smoking a saram – a type of curving tobacco pipe that goblins use.
Actually, this ‘guard’ is an illusion. At the start of each shift, the goblin Sargent casts Invisibility on a pair of guards who position themselves 15 feet to either side of the pre-programmed illusion.”
When the players reach the appropriate point, the GM selects the “One Goblin on guard” line to copy it into his chat session with the players, annotating it as necessary. He ticks a box beside the resulting paragraph in his chat feed to indicate that it is to be made part of the synopsis.
Each of the players then describes what they are doing about the guard. The GM takes these actions on board and describes what happens – ticking first a player response and then his own comments, so that they will appear in the synopsis in that order.
This feature, in other words, lets you select part or all of a line of text in the chat feed and incorporate it into a synopsis of the day’s play, which you can then download and further edit in a word processor if you want. It skips over the irrelevant details and focuses only on the parts of play that will be relevant next week, next month, or next year.
The Inevitable Coming Of Rivals
If you build a better mousetrap, someone will copy it, change a small feature, and start selling it. Or make it out of something cheaper and start selling it for less than yours cost.
If RPGSmith is successful to anything like the extent that it could be, it will indeed be a game-changer, and the various purveyors of VTT services will undoubtedly try to imitate it.
If that happens, I don’t think they will find it all that easy to catch up. RPGSmith would have two huge advantages over any rivals: First, the amount of development that’s already gone in will put them years ahead of the development curve; and second, the ease of customizability is not something that can be superficially slapped on top of an existing interface, it has to be baked deeply into the operational code, or it will be prone to breaking down.
I’m sure that they’ll try, though.
That brings me to the last two questions I posed to David:
Q: There are already a number of online RPG mechanisms out there, like Roll20. Your character sheet seems more graphic than my perception of theirs, and the customization of rules and characters is a definite plus that I’m not sure they offer. Do you hope to lure campaigns over from those platforms, and if so, what is the bait you intend to use? If not, can you foresee some mechanism of integrating the two technologies?
A: “There are a couple of different factors that come into play with this question.
“The gaming style of the group will play a significant factor I think. If you have a more ‘theater of the mind’ game where the GM trusts the player with their roles and upkeep of their stats, RPGSmith is already a great solution even without the GM tools. The style of game that Chris Perkins runs with the Waffle crew come to mind as one that would be well suited.
“Other groups are very tactical in their game and rely heavily on a Virtual Table Top. We do have aspirations to build a VTT, that will be one of our higher stretch goals but honestly we don’t anticipate being able to unlock it with this particular Kickstarter. We do see groups using RPGSmith in conjunction with other VTT solutions which works well due to the fact that RPGSmith is built responsively, meaning it will function with any screen size and orientation. Since you also have the ability to build your dashboard and position tiles where you like, it can fit whatever screen real estate you provide.
“Another attractive quality that I feel has been overlooked by other solutions is the inclusion of independent game designers. There are a ton of game designers out there that put out high quality products, but maybe too small to have a ready integration into these other applications. We’ve already reached out to and are working with a number of these to create Core Rule Sets (pre-configured games) which their customers can add to their RPGSmith account and gain instant access to game content. It’s a great boon to not only be able to provide your customers with a PDF or physical book of their creation, but now they can provide a no-cost method to get their content to the consumer through a gaming application.”
Given the confidence that I have that RPGSmith will continue along this path even if the Kickstarter fails, this answer gives a lot of confidence in that vision of the future…
Q: I can foresee some major impacts on RPGs – liberation from the limitations of geography being one. A campaign could be truly global with players from all over the world. The biggest hurdle to these impacts – and the reason none of the existing platforms have managed to have this level of impact – is the difficulty of finding and recruiting interested players. Do you have any plans for addressing this situation with RPGSmith, or are GMs still required to do the heavy lifting of finding and attracting players? Will there be a campaign marketplace of some kind, in other words?
A: “To me the very core of this industry is connecting people of similar interest to have fun in a collaborative shared experience. We’re all about facilitating this.
“Yes, we will have a marketplace, not only to provide a method for people to share their content (Dashboard creations, Art, Rule Sets, Item/Spell packs, etc.) so that others can enhance their gaming experience, but also to facilitate players and GMs looking to join a group that fits their schedule and interest.
“Speaking personally, this is my hobby, of which I’m passionate. For me the most rewarding thing I could get out of this is providing a set of tools that would make running a game easier and less stressful on the GM, allow players to quickly understand their character in a method that makes sense to them, and ultimately improve upon the immersion, realism, and fun for all playing.”
The gap from now to tomorrow
The first hurdle is the immediate one – the success or failure of the funding campaign. To date, the campaign has raised a little over 6.8% of their target. And most of the backer tiers are relatively low cost, meaning that they will need to sell a lot of them (or have a lot of add-ons from different backers) to reach their target. With 20 days to go as I write, that’s a tall order – but entirely doable if people find out about the project and see its potential.
Most of what I’ve forecast seems inevitable to me, under the circumstances. Even the failure of this particular fundraising campaign, should it occur, will probably not be fatal to RPGSmith. But it would be a delay, and could well force further compromises with reality into existence.
If you want the best possible future for RPGs, you have to at least think about .
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April 3rd, 2019 at 10:55 pm
Extremely early days yet, obviously, but I am intrigued.
One thing I see definite value in having are presets for ***specific*** systems. Some systems are, let’s face it, very “admin-heavy” in terms of all the stuff carried on the typical character sheet. ‘Pathfinder’ is just one example. This approach would seem to me to be quite a time saver, rather than having to assemble a Character … portfolio (?) completely from the ground up every time.
April 4th, 2019 at 1:41 pm
Pathfinder and D&D 5e are two of the systems that they presets for, ready to go right now :)
Thanks for your thoughts, Ian :)