I need to update this page with tips and FAQs etc., but for nowere can use the comments to chat about suggestions/bugs.
Thanks!
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I need to update this page with tips and FAQs etc., but for nowere can use the comments to chat about suggestions/bugs.
Thanks!
Old School DM 
The ability to change # of party members isn’t working. Nice upgrades otherwise.
What device/iOS version are you using. It seems to be working fine on my iPhone 4S. What’s not working specifically? The buttons or the calculation?
Thanks!
Sorry I was so vague. I’m using iPad ios5. But you fixed this issue long ago. Thanks.
Thank you so much for adding thac0!!! Make a character generator next!!! Please.
Thanks for the encouragement. I appreciate it. I actually wrote a bare-bones 1st ed. character generator in Perl (just a command line interface) a couple years ago. I’ll look into working that into a iPhone app at some point. I see that being a quick and simple app rather than a do-everything super app. To make a truly user-friendly track-everything-you-want-to-know-about-your-character app would be a big job (for a very small market). But an app that generates a random 1st level character with the tap of a button would be pretty simple. Thanks for the suggestion.
If you do an adnd 1/2 edition character sheet/ generator please don’t forget the B/X people.
This would really be cool with a treasure chart to go with the monsters. It would also be awesome to have a. Weapons chart available for the humanoid monsters for a faster reference than books.
The back button is missing from the top left after you roll to attack/dmg to get back to the rest of the encounter.
Well that’s not good! In my testing, it appears that this happens if the Encounter doesn’t have a name. I’ll fix it, but the work around is to go back and edit the Encounter so the name isn’t blank.
Can you confirm that the problem is limited to nameless encounters?
I named the encounter and it still doesn’t have a bak button.
Ok nvm it works after you name the encounter, i thought the adventure name worked too. It works when named.
I’d like to second any suggestions you’ve already heard to make an AD&D spellbook app. Even a quick reference would be great.
Thanks for the suggestion. I would be severely limited by copyright concerns of course. I’ll think about how I might address that. Specific suggestions are very welcome.
Well, as I understand it you could avoid names like “Bibgy” and “Mordenkainen” to prevent infringement in the same way OSRIC does.
My only suggestion for functionality (at first) would be a way to get to full spell descriptions quickly. Sorted by class, then level, then name. Also a way to pick spells to your daily spellbook and track if you’ve already cast it. Eventually if it made my iPad look like a old leather-and-parchment book as I thumbed through it, that would be awesome 🙂
Love your app, make it so you can have 3.0 though that would be really cool! Thanks 🙂
Then it would hardly be “old school” right? Frankly, I’ve never played 3rd or 4th edition. They tell me the mechanics are completely different and there are apps for the newer versions of D&D anyway. Never say never, but 3rd edition support is unlikely.
Ok 🙂
For the spellbook you could even make a template so we could fill it in ourselves. Also for the osdm could you make it so I could override hit points for the monsters?
You can override the HP of the monsters. That’s one of the things you can do when you Edit on the Encounter screen. Or am I misunderstanding what your suggesting?
At the moment I’m focusing on the Hex Map app (the more fully featured “pro” version that’ll cost a few bucks). It’s coming along nicely. Once I get that done, I’ll come back and add more edit options to OSDM as have been suggested. Then… Who knows. Maybe a quick free character generator and a spell book. If I publish it without spells but allow you to export and import, that’ll let the community solve the copyright issue.
Nice app. Bonus hp for monsters need to be higher. AC needs special for defenses like attacks has. Attack special comment box could be larger. Comment section at bottom of monster would be nice. Still handy app thanks.
Ok I think I need to play arOund with it some more before I ask for anything else. Once again great job!
First of all, thanks for an awesome app, second, thanks so much for remembering us old schoolers that use Basic & Expert (for some reason or another me and my buds just never got into AD&D or beyond). So far everything has been working perfectly except for one tweak I’d like to see. When writing a description for an encounter, which so far seems almost unlimited in words, which is great, but once I type past a certain point the dialogue box continues to type below the keyboard and I can’t see what I’m typing. I end up turning the keyboard off, then scroll down to see what I’ve typed then I go back to the keyboard and continue on guessing what I’m typing. If there’s anyway you could address this in a future update I would greatly appreciate it. It would truly make this a flawless five star app.
MSG Young
US Army
Excellent point. I should be able to figure that out.
I may regret asking this question because it’s probably a simple solution. But I can’t figure out how to reset rounds after I’ve clicked “next round”. I clicked “next round” while experimenting with the app and now I’m up to round 23 on an encounter with one human with 4 HPs. Also, I can tell you’re swamped with a full time job and multiple apps, but was still hoping you’re gonna fix the issue with not being able to see what you’re typing after a certain amount of words. Again thanks for an awesome app for us old schoolers out here.
Not a dumb question, but I have a dumb answer: I haven’t given you a way reset the round count.
I’m working on a significant overhaul of Old School DM (slowly), so I’ll see what I can do about the blind typing issue. Thanks for the encouragement.
I know I know, it’s crazy that I’m still waiting and hoping for an update, but I am. I just love the app and hope you pick it back up again. Do it for us schoolers man!
Love the app so far. Would really like to have the ability to import monsters/room descriptions/character stats/etc. Also, a random encounter generator would be highly useful. Looking forward to the pro version of the hex mapping app. I would love to be able to import maps into that as well. Keep up the good work!
Thanks for the suggestions. I’m focusing on Hex Map at the moment, but when I get back to Old School DM, a random monster generator is “on the list.”
Cool. But what would really help for me would be a random encounter generator that would be based off of the apps’ monster list. With the ability to select which monsters i would want to include. Hence the desire for an import feature. Kind of tedious to populate the monster list on a phone… Thanks for the response!
Right. Sloppy language on my part. I didn’t mean “random monsters” I meant a way to generate a random encounter from existing monsters based on some probabilities that you’ve set.
Do you mind if I follow up via email about your ideas for importing monsters? It’s challenging because I don’t know how much work you (or the typical user) is willing to do on their PC/Mac to prepare the data for loading. I have an XML specification that captures all the data, but a) XML isn’t all that fun; b) it would be easy to submit invalid data; c) I don’t know what hoops you’d be willing to go through to get your data file into your phone; and d) I don’t yet have any experience with type of functionality. So it would be helpful to bounce some ideas off someone (you) to see what’s feasible.
Hi,
I would like to heartily cast a vote for the “import from something with a proper keyboard” idea from GrognardianGM! I have just bought Old School DM and was thinking the same when I was scrolling through the comments and saw his. (Damn GrogDM for being the first!!! ^_^)
It doesn’t matter if it will be a simple web app with data validation for creating the adventure/encounters/descriptions/monsters and then the output to a simple file that could be imported via iTunes, DropBox, Evernote, a web site. Or if it will be something that borders on telepathy. We *need* to be able to enter data on a computer and then easily import to the app!
pretty please…..?
This app is going to do so much for my game session bookkeeping. Thanks!
Message received 🙂
I’ll see what I can do.
Great app! Love it! Would it be possible for you to add a treasure calculator for the encounters? If so that would be a huge help!
Thanks again for a very usefull app!
I bought hex map pro and I think it’s pretty good. I’d really like to add solid lines for walls and possibly a different type for doors or secret doors.
Great idea. I have so many suggestions/ideas, it’s hard to prioritize them, but I’ll try to move this one up the list. Ultimately I expect you’ll be able to do free hand drawing as well as color/change the individual grid line segments.
I think you should add a character sheet
Logbook so I don’t have to make them in
the adventure sections it takes to long and
a marketplace where I can easily add or
Subtract the number for prices, effects, or
the duration of the effects.
I really like the Old School DM app and Hex Pro.
Here are a couple of of suggestions:
Consider just making an Old School Character Sheet App. It doesn’t need to even be a generator. Just holds your characters’ information. It would be cool if it looked like line notebook paper and you could write/draw all over it too.
Consider making an app that rolls random table results from tables input or imported by the users. Could be used for treasure, random monsters, character names, …
Love the app. Any chance of an ACKS (adventurer conqueror king system) ruleset?
I hadn’t heard of ACKS until you mentioned it. How different is the combat from b/x and first edition AD&D?
Combat is fairly similar, being a Retroclone. ACKS uses an ascending Armor Class, similar to pathfinder and 3.5. The attacker’s class and level define their base attack throw (example, 1st level fighter has an attack throw of 11+), add the enemy’s AC to the Attack throw to determine what roll is needed to hit.
Excellent app! Any chance of a ruleset for ACKS (adventurer conqueror king system, from autarch.co)? Also would love a simple hireling/henchman generator and tracker.
Keep those updates coming. Still looking for walls in hexmap. 😉 😉
Walls? We don’t need no stinkin’ walls!
(That was a joke. A play off a line from a movie that I’ve never actually seen.)
I have three other forks in the fire at the moment (not counting my day job), but I certainly intend to get drawing capabilities add to Hex Map Pro as soon as I can.
Please make a random genorator and exisisting encounters maybe even some back ground stories
Random encounter generator is “on the list” (which means I get it and will try to get it done). Can you clarify what you mean by the other points?
]Hey, Kirke, have you ever thought about making a more comprehensive version of the app for lion/mountain lion? There is surprisingly little D&D software tools available in the App Store, so I think you would have the niche market covered at the onset!
I’d pay $4.99-$5 for a tool that brought all of the functions of the iOS app to a desktop environment and maybe included some light dungeon drawing software, or an adventure outline guideline, or maybe a turn tracker similar to this: http://www.rpgnow.com/product/78618/The-Turntracker-%28Labyrinth-Lord%29 or some other resource management/character tracking tools.
Anyhow, just a suggestion!
Maybe. I’ve been programming for decades (SAS, SPSS, SQL, Gauss, MATLAB, Perl, VB, Cold Fusion, PL/SQL), but iPhone development was my first foray into modern application development. Now, it turns out that there isn’t THAT much difference between iOS development and Mac OS X development, but I just haven’t made that leap yet. And frankly, the market for iOS apps is much bigger than the Mac market. It’s also not impossible that the Mac will run iOS programs someday.
Keep them coals burning my friend. I’m still using your apps every Monday night with my gaming group. Happy holidays!
Hi,
Bought HexMap Pro yesterday and used it for a session of B/X D&D and it was great (I loaded an image of one of my pre-made maps). Thanks!! So today I bought Old School DM, mainly for B/X support. I like the app, but it really seems to be a 1stAD&D/OSRIC app with a couple of nods to B/X. Don’t get me wrong, I like those nods, I just would like to see more. Also, the fact that you produced this app for these earlier editions is awesome!! So my remarks are simply a fanboy wanting to see a little more. For example, monster THAC0 is still set to 1st Edition when using B/X ruleset selection. I can select the button to see all the THAC0s from various versions, but I cannot select B/X to be listed by default for the monster entry; instead, I have to manually override. Also, I would like to see an entry for creature Morale (another biggie in B/X encounters). More space for Move entry (I still use 120′ (60′) B/X notation as opposed to 12″ (6″), and perhaps the ability for various moves (e.g., swimming, flying, etc.) Like others, more space for describing special attacks would be nice. I really like the Monster Database, and clicking more info. Again, however, this is set for OSRIC. Could users add to this database? I know I can add a monster (had to do this since the Xp values for Monsters are calculated differently in B/X), but it would be cool to add to the More Info Database in order to have an entry reference from B/X or Labyrinth Lord. I know the differences are not huge between editions, but there are some (mostly xp values for monsters and THAC0).
Thanks for the great suggestions. Frankly, I never played B/X, so I rely on people like yourself for guidance about how to support it. Don’t expect an update soon, but I’ll see what I can do. Thanks again.
More scroon shots? I just see one in the store, and I’m curious, but not enought to buy.
screen shots. so full of typos. 😦
Good idea. Stay tuned.
I don’t know how hard this would be, but if the user could rename, add, and delete the categories it would make it useful to a wider variety of gamers. For example if I could rename AC to Rep then I could use it easily for table top games. I know it’s probably out of scope, but its just an idea. As it is the app is a solid five stars from me anyway. Thanks for writing it.
Can you give me a better idea what a tabletop game app would be like? Maybe it could be a new app entirely. Simplified but more flexible?
Tabletop games like warhammer, warmachine, flames of war etc. all have points to buy units. Unit are all base with numbers for attributes and can buy extra equipment/abilities with more points. Then there are special characters and monsters that you add as well. If you are going to do a new app then my vote is for a battletech app that you can keep track of heat/damage/ammo for multiple mechs. Also have the ability to design and enter your own mechs.
Like your app
Bit of constructive criticisms
Could you enable a reset rounds button so I may use encounters multiple times
This a big ask, but could maybe add more monsters:)
Good suggestions. I’ll see what I can do.
Kirke you many any progress? Haven’t heard from you in a while.