This is my review of the Java based PC Gen from Sourceforge. sourceforge.net/projects/pcgen. By Calitrojan

Though my group has only playtested it twice and we have yet to complete our customization of the program (we have a lot of campaign specific stuff to add), I think I am ready to share my feelings on it for the rest of you.

PC Gen starts out as a very well put together program. It offers all of the rules form the supplements, core books, star wars, and even some of the bigger 3rd party publishers like S&S's Relics and Rituals. After reading the brief instructions I was off and had created a character relatively quickly. The main complaint that I had at this point was that there was just too much information in the equipment list and the filtering was not effectively organized. But I struggled through the lists of equipment (these can include all the PHB, DMG, Sword and Fist... well pretty much anything.)

The second complaint I discovered were the character sheet templates. They were not very useful at all... or at least I did not like the way they flowed and neither did my players. However, they appear easy to create and program so building your own would not be too difficult.

Now, about the customization of the program (because who runs a FR campaign anymore?). The customization document is easy to follow and easy to use. It is somewhat time consuming to create the data files you need for the customization (once again a lot of campaign specific info takes time to put into). Once you get going however, it works out well.

All in all this is an effective, well maintained, pretty easy to customize program. The programers (acording to other users I have spoken to) respond quickly and effectively to any requests you send them and they are quick to produce updates for new supplements (usually within a month after the supplement hits the shelves).