Banco de dados de todas as regras no D&D Insider

Em seu blog de cobertura da D&D Experience, Scott Rouse descreveu um pouco como será o funcionamento do citado “banco de dados com todas as regras publicadas de D&D 4ª” que existirá no D&D Insider:

There is a lot of stuff being posted about 4the Edition and D&D Insider and I have been spending what free time I have reading the boards. One thing I read last night that was giving people a lot of confusion related to the Rules Database on D&D Insider.

This may be the killer app on Insider. It runs the character creation process and will be an amazing resource tool for both DMs and players but it will not replace buying physical books. It won’t, for example, give you art, story, flavor, and other key non-rules elements from books like the Player’s Handbook (e.g. informational text on Adventuring and Combat to name two). What it will do is give you every D&D rule (AKA crunchy bits) from both books and published on D&D Insider (e.g. in a Dragon article) at your finger tips.

Here is what you can expect:

As a subscriber:

After logging in you would open the web based application and start a query, lets say a feat. So you search via a series of cascading drop downs or editable fields : Feats > Eladrin > Ranger > and get a list of titles from which you select > Defensive Mobilty and see the rules entry that tells you it does “+2 to AC against opportunity attacks…”. You will look up any rule whether you have the book or not. Pretty awesome and very useful but again still not a replacement for books or the experience of reading a book on the couch.

What you can’t do is buy a 1 month subscription in 2010 and expect to get 2 1/2 years of free books that you can they download, cancel your account, and play for really cheap as one poster said they would do.

As a non-subscriber:

You get on the web site and click on the Rules Database tab and start a query for a rules (let’s say feats again). You search via a series of cascading drop downs or editable fields : Feats > Eladrin > Ranger > and get a list of titles from which you select > Defensive Mobilty and see the entry to the effect ” find on page x of chapter y of the Player’s Handbook. Useful and free.

Mesmo eu que provavelmente não assinarei o D&D Insider achei o esquema bem honesto. Para quem é assinante vai funcionar como a atual SRD, só que em uma versão aparentemente muito bem organizada e tal. Quem não assina ainda assim terá uma útil tabela de referência de todos os talentos, poderes e regras em geral. Nada mal.