D20Universe.com was started around a two years ago with the goal of creating a site for Play-by-Post RPG gaming. Our goal is to create site software that is specifically tailored to Play-By-Post gaming for the D20 based role playing community. The software at the core of D20Universe is not modified open source forum software. It is a custom application specifically intended for D20 gaming. Therefore, you will not find all of the features of standard forum software. What you will find is a site that is geared towards enriching your online D20 gaming experience.

Within any of our gaming forums you'll find the following functionality for use with your online RPG:

1. A Dice Roller within the forum message editor. Give a description and a dice roll formula and roll the dice. The results will appear immediately within the message editor. Since you know the results of the roll, it is possible to react within the same post to your roll (assuming the GM has told you the success threshold for the roll). But be careful...

2. The game audit log lets the other players know when you roll the dice and what you roll. Backing out of a post to get away from rolling a "1" is a sure way to get in trouble with your GM and the other players.

3. Everyone on D20Universe.com has a user account. However, within any gaming forum that you are a member, you can create "characters." A character has a unique avatar image that is uploaded by you. The character summary area allows you to fill in information about your character. This information is available to you, the GM, and other characters at any time.

4. When posting messages within a gaming forum, you can post under you're username or as one of your characters within the forum. When you post as a character, your character's avatar is displayed instead of your user avatar. Clicking the character name of any post will bring up that characters summary information.

5. Is it my turn to post? Are we waiting on someone to post? These questions come up alot when playing RPG's by post. With D20Universe.com, the current posting status of each character is displayed at the top of the forum topic listing. When you post a message with your character, the character status automatically changes for you. Further, the character status board lets you tell the GM that you are not interested in posting at this. If the GM requests that you post but you forget, the system will generate a reminder email to ensure that the game keeps moving. And yes, you can turn it off if it starts bugging you.

The list above gives a summary of the current site functionality. However, there are many more features to come (as well as bug fixes no doubt...this is a beta still after all). With your support, we hope to make D20Universe a premier online gaming site.

Checkout our beta test "Port Languish" game to see some of the features in action (and to see what a terrible DM I am at times ;) ).

Thanks.

GM Warpelican