Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 vertaelin Jul 01, 2010 16:10:29	Hello all,   As a recently aspiring new DM, I have been given the great tool known as Masterplan from a fellow DM.  My good friend Mark, who has been DMing since 1992, found Masterplan and told me about how much of a great tool it is.  The tool was given to me as a free application that allowed the user to map out an entire campaign both literally and metaphorically.    What I don't understand is that the Masterplan tool website was given a cease and decease order from the Wizards of the Coast.  As a tool that only works well/at all if you subscribe to DDI, it makes no sense to why the Wizards of the Coast would not allow the tool to continue.  Why not just talk to and add on Masterplan to the Adventure tools.  There are three other vacant spots next to Monster Builder... just throwing that out there.  The compendium for the Masterplan worked only if you had a DDI subscription... so... yeah.    So wondering what everyone else thought about on the matter.  Also, if there are any Wizards of the Coast admins out there reading this whether or not they could give me a decent argument on their respective reasons to why they did not embrace this tool.  Thanks!
#2 Jharii Jul 01, 2010 19:14:03	Masterplan is currently in version 9.2 I believe.  They have removed the mechanics of the program that conflicted with the GSL.
#3 bone_naga Jul 03, 2010 8:05:57	The problem was that masterplan downloaded information from the compendium to your computer. So your subscription could expire and you'd still have access to the information. Now granted, if you really liked that feature you probably wanted a subscription to keep getting the most up to date information. Or you could use one of the various other programs out there that will automatically save web pages to your hard drive (the only reason masterplan was singled out was it was made specifically to download compendium data whereas other legal programs can work on any website). And let's not forget that someone really dedicated could just use the good old "save as" feature in their web browser (it may sound tedious, but if the option is that or entering all the data by hand, that save as feature starts to look pretty good). So basically, I don't agree with the decision at all, but it wasn't my call, it came from the WotC legal department. Personally, I think of WotC legal a lot like I view politicians who want to interject their opinions of how to run a war.