While I empathize with Chadarius' rant I find myself a chronic Microsoft user.  I am hugely disappointed with the .NET requirement.  It does seem shortsighted and suggests a design flaw long term with Wizards other digital products.  I think that scares me more than just this one product being handicapped.

Until they get their heads out of their nether regions...I'll stick with a 4th Ed Java based generator.  http://pathguy.com/cg4.htm

3.5 ed... http://pathguy.com/cg35.htm

Dragonlance... http://pathguy.com/krynn.htm

rook103

Creating a better world through medicating and fear

It would seem that corporate America is still very much in the Microsoft camp these days even though common sense would tell them to be otherwise. This attitude harkens back to the old days when IBM "Big Blue" was king and no self-respecting IT manager would ever dare stray from the fold.  One would think that a company whose job it is to produce such highly creative products as D&D, Magic, Star Wars and the like would be stuck in such a mindset but I suppose one shouldn’t be surprised.  Perhaps Wizards simply doesn’t have someone like Chadarius to point them in the right direction and slap sense into a few executives from time to time.  Whatever the case, it is disappointing.

The Dark Lord of Bartlett

In general I am a much bigger proponent of Microsoft products than Chadarius (which is to say I am a proponent of them at all).  That being said, I am very disappointed to hear that Wizards of the Coast is using .NET in their Character Builder.

It just seems foolish to me to limit their potential audience for D&D Insider at this point in the game.  Or to put it another way, as far as I know Chadarius and DLOB are the only members of the Lords of Tyr who have signed up for D&D Insider at this time.  Chadarius is a fervent Linux user, while DLOB's primary desktop is a Mac! 

If Wizards continues to use the .NET framework to implement their software solutions, there is a good chance they could lose these two clients down the line. 

While losing the Lords of Tyr to D&D Insider is far from a crippling blow, I have to wonder how atypical our group is.  I am willing to bet there is a signifigant number of gamers out there using Linux or Mac as their primary OS.  In fact, I bet that a far greater precentage of gamers use these alternatives than is the average in the general population.

My favorite character creation program for D&D Third Edition was PCGen.  One of the things I liked about it was that it was written in Java.  I'll be the first to admit that Java can be a bit slow compaired to a native implementation.  Still, considering that several members of the Lords of Tyr run Linux and Mac, being OS agnostic made it an easy recommendation.

Ah well, that's just my two coppers.

Sincerely,

Lólindir Inglorion

aka

A Hero Twice A Month