The Bard player still has to say the right things in the first place to make the check at all, there is not guarantee they will do that. But if they do... LET THEM this is literally their characters big thing! Why not let them do that specific thing? It feels backwards to me to have a "Well this fight has a conversation skill option but I am not going to let the character that has conversation skills participate".

IMO the rolls are not the interesting part of this, the party figuring out how they can get bad the guy to change their mind is.

The map making and map exporting might be worth it for me, I'll defo wishlist it! One of the things I am noticing is that a lot of the features you got overlap with the software I already use (FoundryVTT) and between already having DungeonDraft and Dungeon Alchemist. It's a hard space to break in to and I do honestly wish you the best.

The Workshop support is interesting, though I am guessing from your description that so far, it won't come even close to rival the module support that something like Foundry has.

You price point is very good though. Could be a solid entry point for a lot of GMs that want to get off Roll20. Oh yeah one thing that is not super clear from the Steam page as well is, does only the GM need to purchase the software or do players need their own copy too?

So this is the question I tend to ask, if nothing else to learn something about your tool. Why should it use it over more established competitors? I am specifically thinking something like Roll20 and FoundryVTT, the former being easily accessible and free with SRD content at your fingertips, and Foundry just being, well, Foundry. Hell even Owlbear Rodeo for a generic and easily accessible tabletop. For campaign management text programs like Notion.so and full on world managers like World Anvil are providing massively powerful tools too.

What it is Dungeon Maker provides that is either missing from these other options and is so useful that losing out on all the other stuff in them is worth the switch, or what does Dungeon Maker do so much better than the others that it is worth switching?

Not trying to be a jerk about it, it looks like you have a solid base, just curious about your ideas on these things.

After 15 years of playing I came to the very easy conclusion that, at the start of the game we talk about how we as a group would like to handle a missing player. What the group wants is often the best way.

My personal preferred method I always suggest along side that is "If a player is not there, their character is not there and we don't try to explain it in game, we just play." - it is in my experience by far the best way, not "But Pyke should still come with us and help us!" hour long discussions. No "Well sorry Dave, last session when you weren't there, Gimmerleaf died." garbage. No one is going to spend that PCs resources or make a judgement call on "what that character would do" or how they would react to things.

It keeps the agency squarely on that players court while letting the rest of you just keep playing without having a bunch of in game worries about an IRL issue that is not under your control.