Thursday, March 8, 2012

PCGen The Best "Free" Character Generator.



PCGen is a FREE Open Source character generator and maintenance program for role-playing games. It currently supports the d20 RPG system and includes data sets based upon gaming material from Wizards of the Coast, Paizo Publishing and dozens of other publishers. The project's current focus is on gaming material released under Wizards of the Coast's Open Gaming License (OGL) but the PCGen team also works with publishers to get permission to include limited Closed Content as well. PCGen runs on Windows, Mac OS X and Unix/Linux using Java (see Technical Requirements section below).

Mission Statement

To be the worlds most flexible d20 character generation and maintenance software.

Major Links

Get PCGen - Download PCGen
Roadmap - Find out when you get your next fix!
Project Wiki - This is a good source of project information

Publishers

Are you a publisher, concerned about how PCGen may affect your product? Your concerns are understandable. You may be reassured to see the list of other publishers which have chosen to improve their game by allowing its use with PCGen. You can also see the Publishers Wiki page for more details

PCGen Features

  • Allows you to Create and Maintain multiple Characters.
  • Is FREE and works on all major operating systems (Windows, UNIX/Linux and Mac OS).
  • Data and character files are operating system independent.
  • Supports d20 based Game Systems including D&D (3E, 3.5E, 4E), d20 Modern and Pathfinder.
  • Supports Tons of Publishers and their products.
  • Is highly configurable, allowing the user to add or remove races, classes, feats, and house rules such as unusual class or race restrictions.
  • Supports level advancement, with configurable progressions of feats, skills and ability score bonuses.
  • Supports Deity/Domain selection and the granting of the appropriate level dependent abilities.
  • Produces numerous customized character and party sheets in HTML, TEXT and PDF formats.

GMGen Plugin Features

  • Track combats, including damage, spells, and can even roll attacks. The current combat state may be saved for those game sessions which end in mid-combat.
  • The combat tracker has a full stat block for loaded characters/enemies. If you want to see how your abilities look, you can pop up GMGen if you don't want to export a character sheet.
  • Assign experience based on defeated combatants' CRs and the party level.
  • Create encounters, generating the monsters on demand.
  • Manage a campaign world through a notes system that allows word processing, as well as the ability to attach files to particular notes and the ability to launch those files/characters from the note.
  • Generate random names for people/places/things.
  • Calculate travel times and inn costs according to the SRD.
  • Create 'dice bags' with any dice expression (such as 1d6-2d4+3).

Technical Requirements

  • All versions of PCGen need Sun's Java Runtime Environment (JRE) which is available for all common OS's, including Windows, Mac OS, UNIX and Linux.
  • PCGen 5.14.x, 5.16.x needs to run under Sun/Oracle's JRE (Java) 1.5.x or 1.6.x (1.7.x or above is not supported).
  • PCGen 5.17.x+ needs to run under Sun/Oracle's JRE (Java) 1.6.x or above.
  • If you wish to view PDF output sheets, you'll need a PDF viewer.
  • Minimum RAM is 256MB (recommended 1-2GB)
  • Minimum CPU is 1GHz (recommended 2Ghz+)
  • 200MB of free HD space

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