Best way to include pregen PCs in modules?

[Uthred]

Sorry if this has been covered, but I could not find anything in the forums.

Does anyone know the best way to include pre-generated PCs within an adventure module? Not Personalities, but characters that the players can choose when they log in to the server.

I've played around a bit by copying the <charsheet> block of PC stats from a campaign db.xml into the db.xml file of a module. It definitely works as the characters appear in the Character Selection when the module is opened, but the behavior is strange. Changes to the char sheet appear to be saved in the campaign. But the weird thing is when you close the module, the character disappears. When you reopen the module in the same campaign, the modified sheet is back. If you then open same module in new campaign, the original sheet is back, so it appears that the modified character is somehow linked with both campaign and module. This is great for playing that specific adventure, but what if you wanted to carry through the campaign with same characters but different adventures. You would need the module open.

Btw - One cool thing I discovered by accident is with the Call of Cthulhu ruleset, you can drag Personalities to the Character Selection window and they are copied in as a PC. I tried this with other rulesets, and this does not seem to function in any others ruleset that I've tried. This is another way to do this, but only with CoC it seems.

[Moon Wizard]

One thing to remember is that modules, at their core, are designed to be a read-only snapshot of game data. This means that anyone can open the same module, and get the same data.

One of the features that is available is to modify the module data within each campaign, in order to customize the module for your campaign. However, the module "override" data is saved on a campaign by campaign basis.

We have been thinking about the character situation quite a bit, and we have some ideas to improve character portability and access. They are not on the feature list for the next release, but they are high on the feature wish list.

Regards,
JPG

[Uthred]

Thanks JPG. I would definitely like to see more character import/export features in the future.

But for the time being, is there any way you know of to include pre-generated characters in a module? My previously described method did not work. The DM can see the characters, but players logging into the server cannot. I've tried storing the characters in both the common and db xml files. Basically, I have an adventure that requires very specific characters that I would like to pack with the adventure module, and was hoping to make them accessible to players within the FG interface, without anyone having to edit any files.

Even if I were to somehow use personalities, the players cannot control them, and their stats do not contain all the same info as a standard character sheet.

I'm not sure if there is even a way to do this, but thought I would check with the experts before I waste too much time on it. :)

[Matchstick]

I've seen them included as images. So you have the image of the pre-gen's character sheet in the Images list, and then once the module is installed the GM has to transfer them to the FG character sheet. It's not a perfect solution by any means, but with all the information right there the transfer takes just a few minutes.

[Doswelk]

But for the time being, is there any way you know of to include pre-generated characters in a module?
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I'm not sure if there is even a way to do this, but thought I would check with the experts before I waste too much time on it. :)
The only way I can think you could do it is to create a campaign, key in the PCs and then save it.

Then zip up the whole campaign folder and people have to unzip into the campaigns folder in the FGII application data folder and then it will show up as a campaign in FGII.

Not tested this so it may not work, but other than having PCs as images this is all I can think of right now.

[Foen]

Some rulesets (CoC and BRP, for example) support NPCs in modules that can be dragged to the PC character list to create pre-gen PCs. It depends on how well PC stats and NPC stats align (Rolemaster, for example, has completely different stat blocks for PCs and NPCs/monsters) and whether the ruleset supports NPC->PC drag and drop.

[Ikael]

I implemented one possible new solution for allowing Pre-gen characters in modules. In this solution the whole character sheet's XML structure is copied to module as it is in normal db.xml, except that the rootnode is named with different name, ie. instead of using nodename 'charsheet' I use 'pregen' nodename. Next step in this was to implement very simple listing of everything in pregen datasource and provide drag-and-drop capability to allow dragging from this source to the character selection window which will just make copy of all possible nodes from character sheet's tree structure in module. This way there is no need to have the same structure of data for PCs and NPCs to allow pregens in modules. I am very excited about this feature as I can create ready-to-run modules for quick games and re-play them with different set of players later, without needing to do manual copying from db.xml to another.