An open letter to Ed_NBOS: Please consider the future of Inspiration Pad Pro

DrVesuvius

This is an open letter, addressed to Ed_NBOS, creator of Inspiration Pad Pro, The Keep and many other RPG software tools that any of us still use and swear by. I'm a 55yr old IT professional, I've been around since the birth of personal computing, having seen things develop from home microcomputers, PCs, the Internet, mobile phones and tablets, the Cloud and now AI. The first computer I used to support my RPG hobby was an 8086...the current one I am using is a Chromebook. I think it's fair to say that where technology and the hobby intersect, change is a constant.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that in my opinion, Inspiration Pad Pro is the most criminally underrated and underutilised tool in the RPG marketplace. There are other tools out there to make and use random tables in RPGs, but nothing that I've seen can compete with the power and flexibility of the IPP scripting language, in a neat windows-friendly package. Every GM should have it in their toolbox, and YouTube should be filled with tips and tricks to make the most of it.

But here's the problem, and I say this with deep respect and the perspective of an IT veteran, bordering on dinosaur myself. It's old. I don't know what coding language or development environment you used to create it, but not only does the look and feel scream early 2000s, but we're approaching the point where we're beginning to struggle to run it on today's computing platforms. I've run into this struggle trying to get IPP running on my new Chromebook, we've seen the APK of the Android version be blocked from running on current phones and tablets. There will come a time when the Windows installer won't run on the latest Windows OS, because Microsoft have finally dropped some vital element of legacy support.

I won't say "you're not getting any younger" but... :-)

I get that NBOS is a one-man show and it's unreasonable to expect you to devote the time needed to constantly patch and port to multiple platforms any of your products, much less the one you make available for free. But as things stand, at some point in the not too distant future, IPP is going to be lost to the hobby world and that's a crying shame, as there's nothing out there that can match it.

But one thing we have seen in recent years is how internet community projects can produce software that can wipe the floor with the biggest commercial operations. Probably a good 75% of the software I use comes from open-source or non-commercial projects. GIMP, Paint.NET, LibreOffice, Inkscape, Audacity... I could go on. And in the videogame world we've seen many free mods and projects that rival or exceed the corporate offerings, like Sim Settlements or Fallout London.

So with the greatest respect for all the work you've done and your ownership of the property, I ask you: Please consider making Inspiration Pad Pro into Open Source product, Or if not, at least open it up to a community effort to continue its development and bring it into the modern world. I'm not asking for myself - while over the years I've dabbled in what we used to call "programming", I know that modern software development is not in my wheelhouse. (I do however volunteer to write documentation and tutorials for the project, should it come to pass) But I'm sure there are others out there with the required skillsets who would leap at the chance to keep IPP alive and carry it into the 2030s.

If you've got this far, thank you for your time and consideration. And I invite everyone with an interest in IPP to comment below, whether you feel you could contribute to an open-source IPP, or are just a dedicated user like me who would dearly love to see it survive and thrive, and maybe get some of the wider recognition it deserves.