Old AD&D 2nd Edition Character Creation Software, & 3rd Edition Demo Disk

High folks, well I'm back with some stuff I've dug out of my CD collection.  Now many years ago TSR put out a CD for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons that contained not just a character generator for the 2nd Edition of the game, but it had access to all of the books.  An expansion CD was also produced that added more to it.

I wasn't sure if my PC would be able to run it, but it turned out that it still could.  Unfortunately after playing around with it, it looks like a few features just don't work anymore.  Obviously the TSR and Evermore books are actually web links, and they don't work.  However ProFantasy is still around and still making cartography software for your RPG map making needs.

One of the great benefits of the software is that so many of the supplement books as well as the core rule books are apart of the software.  It's a no-frills type thing, so there's no pictures, but their functional.  I'm not sure if its all of the books, but it's easily enough to be helpful if my gaming group were to ever to play 2nd edition again. (Highly doubtful though.)

This section is very different if you were to just have the first disk and not the expansion disk.




The DM Toolkit is a helpful section.  Clicking on the chest brings up this screen where you have a number of helpful options for your GMing purposes.

And the treasure allows you to generate random loot for a Lair or Individual.

Table rolls references any number of tables, that you can click on and allow for something random to be rolled for it.

Clicking on the glob next brings up the cartography software built into it.

Now the map maker still works, however the campaign mapper doesn't work at all.  It's possible that I just never figured out how to get it all to work together, like having to make maps first then you open up the campaign mapper and things come together from there.  But I never GM'd 2nd edition D&D and likely won't.  But the map maker may see some additional life now that I am a GM.




As you can see in this picture the creator is certainly very basic, and it has a number of flaws.  For example the tiles continue on the bar for eternity, they don't wrap to the screen at all.  This makes it impossible to find the exact tile you may need of course.

Graphically don't expect anything too impressive.


Of course what sort of software would this be without some sort of virtual dice roller.  Perfect for GM's who just need a metric ton of dice to roll, but don't have the time or hands to hold all of them.

Next up clicking on the knight statue will bring up the character generator. It starts with picking your dice roll method and moving through the various other steps to build your character.








Dice rolls are easy to figure out and assign.  you just drag and drop.








Then choose your class, and your race.

Then you go through a number of other options and eventually you'll get to your gear.  For the most part the software will automatically assign your starting gear, but you can add or take away from there.

Finally when you're all done you'll come to this screen where you can make adjustments as you gain levels.  Then you go back to the character selection screen and can view/print off your character from here.







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Now we move on to 3rd Edition.  Back when D&D 3rd Edition came out, if you got the PHB you also got a surprise in the book - a Character Generator.  This was a demo disk however, but it allowed you to create any character in the book, but lacked the later additions of the warlock and psionic classes.

After a time this disk round be replaced by the Master Tools software and then it would again undergo a name change to be E-Tools.

This was a fantastic tool to have at the time if you were willing to buy into it.  While it did have its share of flaws, it was still immensely helpful.

In the original Demo Disk you were taken to a screen that allowed you to easily drag and drop the class(s) you wanted to play, select their level, and choose your race and alignment.  Then of course you would just name your character or use on of the random names generated.

The next screen took you to the meat of the character.  Now attribute rolls were just that in this demo.  There was no point buy option, instead you just rolled your dice here or input a roll you had previously done, (or if you used point buy you could simply input the score you got that way here as well).







From there you just go down the list on the right, clicking on each icon in turn to assign skills, feats, and any class features.  To save you would click on the orange gem at the bottom of the screen which would then pop up the "save" and "print" options.

However as time worn on, Wizards discontinued the character generator option around the time when 4th Edition came to be a massive disappointment and the choice to move onto the NEW D&D was made.

However this would not be the end of the character generator.

Many people have taken to using Excel or Adobe to create character generators that come in the form of character sheets that one can fill in and have it auto fill in different aspects of the sheet for you.

In my quest to tell folks about character generators of the past I uncovered something that some people may already know, and something others probably don't.

The folks that created the E-Tools upgrade eventually went open source and makes use of the SRD for various version of D&D to create the PCGen character generator.  Its free and while I have yet to use the software you can be sure I'll be checking it out as it seems to cover not only the old 3rd Edition rules but 5th Edition as well.

I hope you all enjoyed this and I'll see you all again next time with something else.