Introduction

Gameslave is a tool to help players and GMs of Dungeons and Dragons(tm) 3.5E manage the data associated with the game they are playing. It is very suitable as an aid during gameplay, or to easily create characters and calculate their stats between sessions. It mainly targets dungeon masters who want to produce stat blocks for monsters and NPCs, and to that end it is less strict and fussy and tries to allow you create characters as much 'all in one go' as possible.

Why you want gameslave:

• Speed - gameslave stores all files in a high-performance database that allows it to have an unlimited number of books loaded without degrading performance. If you're as frustrated with PCGen's performance as I was, you'll be very happy to use gameslave.
• Flexibility - gameslave uses the Groovy scripting language to implement the rules for feats and items, so far more can be added and customized without changing the source code.
• Web Interface - Use your tabbed browsing to multitask between characters. Use browser search to find what you need in long lists!
• Non-strict Editors - No, you don't have to choose an alignment in order to select a class. Invalid selections are simply flagged as warnings - finally you can just make the character in any order, and worry about correctness later (assuming you even care). Dont feel like fleshing the skill points out over all the levels? Dump'em into level 1, it'll still work fine!
• Smart storage model - instead of storing current attributes, it stores the history. That way you can go back and change things about your character and the calculations will always be correct (attributes, for example).
• On-line Rules Editing - Type in the descriptions that are not distributed with the program yourself; no ugly text files to wade through!
• Stat Block Display - The output looks like a statblock from the Monster Manual, including descriptions of all the special qualities and abilities (if available). A life-saver for absent-minded GMs like myself.
• Shortcuts - I've tried to add useful shortcuts wherever I think of something handy. For example, when viewing a Race entry for a monster, there's a quick form to instantly change the number of racial hit dice, allowing you to make a more advanced monster with a few clicks and keystrokes.

Status/Roadmap

The majority of features are working - gameslave is useful for me right now.

The next steps for me are:

• Create a war file and executable installer for distribution
• Create a default database suitable for distribution (e.g. remove copyrighted material)
• Write documentation and add it to the distribution
• Add all open content items, spells, feats, classes, races, etc. to the default database
• Polish the user interface, replacing the really long lists with some kind of dynamic javascript doohickey, and eliminating some cases where you have to 'Save and Continue Editing' in order to finish your work (e.g. when a feat or class has a parameter).

Screen shots

Click here to view the screenshots on sourceforge.

Help Wanted

I'm about ready to start a GURPSv4 campaign and a Fusion campaign, so I've gotta roll those rules into here, too. If you want to help take some load off by working on any of these three systems, adding to the base database or coding in Java, contact me here.