What 4e stuff have you parsed?

[GunnarGreybeard]

I am not a big fan of 4e having abandoned D&D back in the earliest AD&D days BUT I am considering trying to get back into it. I have a DDi account and am using the parser for the core books.

My question is for the regular FGII 4e'rs out there. Do you limit yourselves only parse the core books, have you parsed everything you can get your hands on or have you limited yourself to a certain groups of items?

[Stitched]

I've only parse the source books I will be using. Having all that stuff when you try to load a campaign takes a long time and uses up a lot of memory (if you have it all open).

There is, however, a part of me that would like to limit the game to the core books.

I will be interesting to see what happens now that Essentials has come out and is essentially a stripped-down, leaner 4e game; which for someone who is NOT heavily invested in 4e, is kind of attractive. Will it be DDI supported? I don't know.

[Griogre]

It really depends on your game... and your DDI subscription. When I was running RPGA you *had* to parse everything because everything was allowed even the stuff out of Dragon magazine. If you have signed up for a year of DDI and plan to renew then you can just parse the books as you decide you need them in your game. On the other hand if you just signed up for a month then you should parse everything you can.

For the DM the most important FG Libraries are the MMs, then DMGs, then any WotC modules you plan to run. Monsters and traps have high re-useablity in multiple adventures and if you are going to run a module not having to input the module custom monsters by hand is a huge time saver.

Players are most interested in the PHs, Splats and AVs. Just parse the ones you are going to allow into your game. If you don't know exactly what books you are going to allow in your game or what's going to be allowed in the games you play in then, yeah, you probably should parse every book.

Don't overlook the campaign books either. Personally I would not run or play in certain settings like Darksun or Eberon. I also don't plan to run FR in my home games but I do allow the Swordmage in some games so even though I don't really run FR in my home games I still use that module for the Swordmage. So even though you don't like a setting you might still want the module for the classes in the setting.

[Zeus]

I agree with Griorge in that its probably best for most users to just stick to the core content and the player guides. However given I tend to support Tenian's development work on the Parser as well as JPG on the ruleset I have parsed just about everything (with the exception of the Dark Sun Campaign guides which I have not found time for yet).

Having said that the only other person I know who has a more comprehensive set of 4E modules is Tenian, but then he would have wouldn't he

I guess you could speed things up by just scraping and parsing the functional rule content and omitting the reference or fluff text. However I prefer to complete each rulebook including the text, images and glossary (probably overkill).

For adventure modules, I now use my Workshop tool which speeds up the process immensely, I have H1-H3, P1-P2, SoW#1-5 and Dungeon Delves completed so far. Will be working on Revenge of the Giants shortly.

[Stitched]

(with the exception of the Dark Sun Campaign guides which I have not found time for yet).

I'll save you the trouble. The parser "sees" a lot of information but when it scrapes, you only get stats for Kruthiks; which already appear in the Monster Manuals and H1-Keep on the Shadowfell.

Wait for the Player Guide. It will probably have more useful information.

[Zeus]

There's also the Creature catalog and Encounters Season 2. Regardless we have to wait for Tenian to first scrape, debug and update the Parser (if he plans to that is) before we are able to scrape and parse without errors.

This of course in addition to the usual DDI delay in the content being added (usually lags rulebook publication by about a month, give or take a few days).

Regardless there's no rush as I am working on extensions at the moment as well as the Demonicon and polishing/debugging my MM3.

[GunnarGreybeard]

I guess you could speed things up by just scraping and parsing the functional rule content and omitting the reference or fluff text. However I prefer to complete each rulebook including the text, images and glossary (probably overkill).

Crap, I just realized you can pull the images? Each time I run through the books I realize I missed something. Back to the drawing board.

[Zeus]

Yeah, you can grab the images/maps from the Galleries on Wizard's Website.

[Tenian]

I haven't looked at dark sun. I don't believe we get full compendium access until the sept ddi update. Dark Sun also does not have a separate campaign and player book. They went with a single setting book (player and campaign content) and a creature catalog.

I try to do mechanical parses of all the books (I don't keep up with dungeon dragon or adventures)

I do full parses of all the non-setting books. The end of true PDF versions has made it too time consuming to manually correct books like Underdark, astral sea, etc. I have done all the NPC specific books (open grave, both dragonomicons and demonomicon) but those take a lot of time for very little gain

My own campaign is running Scales of War so I parse those as well, currently I have the adventures well into the paragon tier

[Griogre]

Crap, I just realized you can pull the images? Each time I run through the books I realize I missed something. Back to the drawing board.

The size of modules in 4E can quickly become a concern/issue. You might want to limit yourself to just the images that you *really* need as you don't want to end up in virtual memory over a bunch of fluff pics you are never going to look at.