This week's Digital Insider is a chance for us to take a moment to stop and celebrate our Character Builder. As you probably already know, we officially launched the Closed Beta of the Character Builder on Monday. We plan to open the Beta to the public at large in about a month. If you haven’t stopped by the forums yet to hear the feedback or to take a look at the screenshots from some of our staff, I recommend you do so now. Dylan "ExoByte" Mayo, our producer for D&DI posted a great walk through of how to "Unlock the POWER of Your Character Sheet!" here. You can also see how our very own Andrew Finch restructured the character sheet using the custom layout feature here. Or take a look at Jonathan Tweet's latest character Akatrask, the kobold swordmage here.

Here is an example of what some of our Insiders are saying:

Keen_Man:
“Great program I feel like my year long subscription is totally worth it now.”

EnigmaShock:
“Just tried the Character Builder and am impresed! more so than I thought I would be.”

WinWird:
“This is an excellent program. I'm finding it hard to provide constructive feedback.. Very clean, efficient, and user friendly.. could create a lvl 1 cha in 5 min if you know what you want...”

Mock:
“This is really excellent. I wish it went to level...say, 5 (since that's where my players are headed) but it's really slick. Well done!

I'm going to be making characters for hours. I'm gonna populate a whole city with edgy, heavily armed, imaginary people. It'll be great.”

On Enworld:

Hawke:
“I'm impressed... seems to be straightforward.”

garyh:
“I really, really like the program. Quick, easy, love being able to customize the character sheet layout.”

Renshai:
“… the Character Builder is top notch so far. Other than the bug with not being able to set your XP at a non-level interval it has performed amazingly. It is fast, responsive, the UI is intuitive and easy to use.

Kudos to the programmers that developed this application. I churned out four 1st level characters in about 10 minutes. You just can't beat that.”

thecasualoblivion:
“Now up to 36 characters created. Now for another 12 before I go to bed.”

From the Press:

Critical Hits:
"It'll be a boon for those just starting out, but as someone involved in an ongoing campaign, it's not as useful as I was hoping right off the bat. Still, I already have high hopes for it, and I'm already more impressed with it than I was with e-tools."

Emerson's Bookshelf:
"Overall, I'm really enjoying the Character Builder, as it does what it is expected to do and it does it quite well, almost seamlessly."

RPGcentric:
"All in all, this is a very, very nice product and it definitely makes my subscription worthwhile. It is very easy to use and beats the tar out of the 3E Character Generator."

We appreciate all your feedback and enthusiasm for the Builder, we look forward to making this tool even better as we move toward the final release so keep your suggestions coming, we are listening.

To read more or to discuss the Character Builder please go here.