Dragon Age RPG

[thefallen]

@Stitched: Looks really good so far. I'm impressed with what you have been able to do. I am actually working on the book right now, and hope to have it and the drag and drop lists done soon. Should have more time tomorrow and Monday.

[Stitched]

My fear, now, is the future releases and how that will impact the classes, focuses, etc. One of the conscious decisions of not including so much text on the front page because the main stuff is already taking a lot of space.

Would also a front page more like the Dragon Age PC game, where you have the full size picture on one side and the base stats on the other.

Saw a cool thing in a Savage Worlds ruleset - A tabbed window on a sheet. So where you have, for example, your abilities on the front page, you could have tab for that window to switch to Focuses.

[thefallen]

I'm getting really frustrated and think I may just have to give up on the rulebook. I don't understand why they wouldn't have a simpler way to do this.

[drahkar]

I'm getting really frustrated and think I may just have to give up on the rulebook. I don't understand why they wouldn't have a simpler way to do this.

Simpler way for what?

[thefallen]

Adding in a rulebook. Probably just my frustration speaking.

[Doswelk]

The creation of a library module is slow but not exactly hard, just boring.

Have you seen my videos on creating a library module?

They are aimed at Savage Worlds but the procedures will be the same just the name of the reference windows will be different, but it might help.

Part 1
Part 2

Stick at it!

It's slow and boring but worth it in the end.

[Stitched]

Once the format has been established, would it be possible to use Tenian's Parser to convert documents into Modules?

The creation of a library module is slow but not exactly hard, just boring.

Have you seen my videos on creating a library module?

They are aimed at Savage Worlds but the procedures will be the same just the name of the reference windows will be different, but it might help.

Part 1
Part 2

Stick at it!

It's slow and boring but worth it in the end.

[Griogre]

It would only be possible if the ruleset you are trying to parse from uses the exact same element names, structures and data arrangements. The 4E ruleset sits at the top of the heap with the Rolemaster ruleset as the the most feature rich and advanced rulesets for FG right now. Most rulesets out in the "wild" are still based on the original d20 ruleset.

Practically speaking unless you were using a ruleset that is a variant of the 4E ruleset you will probably spend more time modifying the xml done by the parser than it is worth - with the following big exception: Probably pure text without fancy formating might be worthwhile.

You might try DrZuess' tool for module creation then run the parser over it. I've considered trying that myself but haven't found the time. If you are putting a hundred page PDF into an FG module, speeding up the text input might be very worth while. Making the links and organizing the data are nothing compared to the grind of copy/paste of that much text.

[Stitched]

I don't see why you would need to input 100s of pages of text; The Players Guide and GM's guide are only 66 pages each.

4e and Rolemaster may be advanced and have a lot of great things about them, however, Dragon Age RPG is very rules and lore light; part of it's charm IMHO.

Since they boxed sets are taking so long in terms of release dates, it's not totally arduous to input the "crunch" by hand (weapon lists, armor lists, etc.) Tables, Powers, Talents, etc. are formatted text (no mechanic dice rolls usually) are not as arduous if you have the PDFs.

I feel the bulk of the work is core mechanics of the ruleset : Dice Handling, Combat, PC and NPC sheets (and appropriate mini-sheets). After that, the rest feels like gravy (unlike 4e where the gravy IS necessary for the game).

Drag and Drop data can be defined (from what I saw inside D20 and 4e) so that formatting shouldn't be too hard to match.

On the forums, there is a lot of recommendations to make rulesets using D20_JPG. Of course, this may now be changing as 4E is now an integral part of FG2, however, D20_JPG, doesn't have a lot of the bells & whistles of 4E, which I see as a strength - less code to delete and navigate through to make things work.

The underlying theme is that it is quickly apparent that we need better tools to create rulesets or at least a core set of mechanics that allows us to build/prototype the base of the rules quicker; instead of hacking someone else's code to fit another ruleset.

But I guess, in the end, I am just ranting.

It would only be possible if the ruleset you are trying to parse from uses the exact same element names, structures and data arrangements. The 4E ruleset sits at the top of the heap with the Rolemaster ruleset as the the most feature rich and advanced rulesets for FG right now. Most rulesets out in the "wild" are still based on the original d20 ruleset.

Practically speaking unless you were using a ruleset that is a variant of the 4E ruleset you will probably spend more time modifying the xml done by the parser than it is worth - with the following big exception: Probably pure text without fancy formating might be worthwhile.

You might try DrZuess' tool for module creation then run the parser over it. I've considered trying that myself but haven't found the time. If you are putting a hundred page PDF into an FG module, speeding up the text input might be very worth while. Making the links and organizing the data are nothing compared to the grind of copy/paste of that much text.

[Griogre]

Hmm we may be talking past each other. I was talking about making library modules and the limitations of trying to use the 4E parser to generate such a module.

I don't think there is any doubt that ruleset creation takes much more time and effort than making a library module. Like Doswelk, I've made my fair share of them and there is nothing hard about it - it's just tedious - and if you do it all by hand fairly time consuming.