Concern about refund policy, and modifying rulesets

[faramirrangerofithilien]

I, along with quite a few other people, am considering purchase of FG. However, the sticking point is that we plan on using it to play a Star Wars game based in the original WEG d6 rules. I say sticking point because I read how easy it was to create a ruleset for another system everywhere I looked on the site. But after digging about on the site, like reading the PDF manual, which points out quite clearly that it is too complex for the prog manual to demonstrate said steps, I have concluded that one has to either be a HTML/XML familiar coder, or someone with tons of time to fiddle with the rule files.

I'm not a programmer nor do I have tons of free time, hence why I want to use this prog for my far flung players to game with me, so I wondered if I bought this package, tried to modify it, and then felt it was too difficult to work with, can I get my money back?

I had the same reservations about Campaign Cartographer when I first saw it, but they offered a money back gaurantee, so I took the plunge. I never did CAD work before but the turtorials and supplemental material in the package allowed me to learn the program.

From all I see here the devs have pretty much said you can do it, but haven't really invested the time to fully inform the buyers how to do it. Sure, I've seen some posts, like the one by Goblin-King that is a basic tutorial, but a person not affiliated with the company has invested his own time to make a much better, albeit not complete one, due to his lack of familiarity with the source material, guide.

This being said I would love to try this myself, but sadly am not going to if I and my friends can't be sure we will get our investment back if the package is too complex and/or time consuming to modify to our needs.

In short, can anyone tell me what the return policy is on the prog, and also why the devs can't provide a comprehensive guide to the ruleset with all xml tags defined so that it would be easier to change the core set to our needs?

[faramirrangerofithilien]

I had hoped to hear at least from the devs about their policy of standing behind their product.

[Ged]

We offer the demo version for evaluation. With that you can hook up one GM and and two players and see what the program can generally do. We cannot offer refunds after purchase.

[joshuha]

Define difficult? Define time consuming?

What exactly do you want in a ruleset? If you want just the character sheet and to change the background and a couple of graphics it won't take much time at all.

Now if you want to put all the Stars Wars tables, rules, references, etc. in there prepared to spend a lot more time (and this is ignoring the copyright issues with that).

How famailiar are you with XML? With just a bare minimum XML knowledge and a little time getting the controls lined up to whatever your character sheet graphic is (and you can go as basic as a graphic that resembles notebook paper for that retro feel) can be done in a weekend.

[tdwyer11b]

I agree with Josh, I had no XML experience prior to purchasing FG. Not being a huge 3.x fan, I set out almost immediately after purchasing the prog to modifying the rulesets to games I typically play. Its hard to describe in any one single post, but with patience and some observation skills, you can pretty much figure out what is going on in the code. It can be time consuming, I usually only change small sections of code before testing it, which takes up alot of time. Sure I could just do it all at once, but it makes it hard to track down some obscure character that FG doesn't like.

[PeSt]

I bought the Complete SRD Ruleset from Digital Adventures. Didn't cost much and suited our needs perfectly. I'm thrilled about the product, and I'm equally sad that it didn't meet your expectation for your use. But you really should have tried the demo version first.

I would like to chime in with the others that a little understanding of XML makes it easier to make modifications to the charactersheet.

// PeSt

[Kalan]

I bought the Complete SRD Ruleset from Digital Adventures. Didn't cost much and suited our needs perfectly. I'm thrilled about the product, and I'm equally sad that it didn't meet your expectation for your use. But you really should have tried the demo version first.

I would like to chime in with the others that a little understanding of XML makes it easier to make modifications to the charactersheet.

// PeSt

That said - the charsheet is probably one of the hardest aspects in this to change! Adding houserules and the like is very simple - hell if I can do it anyone can!