MoreCore Ruleset

[damned]

Uploading a new build now...

[kronovan]

Yeah...I see that you fixed the /healme roll damned - awesome stuff!

The biggest challenge I'm currently having is trying to make sense of the display of the Health and Defence on the Combat Tracker. I get very inconsistent results for those, with more often then naught the Health and Defense columns not getting displayed correctly for either the GM or players. Sometimes the Health and Defence headers are displayed but nothing for those 2 are listed for the NPCs. Other times those 2 columns aren't listed at all. Meanwhile the Wound column is always displayed correctly. Yet at other times -albeit more rare- all 3 columns are correctly configured for both the GM and players.

I might very well being doing something wrong, because TBH I'm confused by the Health and Defense columns only having the 2 settings of "Off" and "GM Only"? Shouldn't those also have a 3rd setting of "GM and Player" like the Wounds column does? For my latest tabletop miniatures adaptation, the player being able to see Health and Defence is important, as knowledge of those strongly influences tactical decisions for combat. I'm just not sure what I should be setting those columns to in Options, to arrive at such a visible setup?

[damned]

No other game system shows the health and armor of NPCs in the CT to players.
I adopted the same approach.

[kronovan]

No other game system shows the health and armor of NPCs in the CT to players.

The weird thing is, the Health and Defence are sometimes being displayed in the CT for the player. I should probably mention, that when I'm seeing that, the other player is via a 2nd instance of FGU running on the same PC and joining to the Ultimate Host instance. Still, I wouldn't expect the FGU player-client would be capable or errantly reading settings from the Ultimate Host, since it's a properly compiled app with its own protected use of memory. My son will be connecting to and playtesting my adaptation as a player this weekend, so that should reveal to me whether there's any difference between a locally vs a remotely connected player.

As to other games systems/rulesets...While it isn't named health and armor, the Savage Worlds ruleset does display the armor equivalent of Toughness (provided Client CT: Show Stats option is 'On') to players, as well as the Shaken and Incapacitated conditions and wounds for both allied and enemy NPCs. Call of Cthulhu 7 which I also own, doesn't display armor, but the View: Health - Ally and View: Health - non-ally options when set to "Detailed", displays to the players the current Hit Points, Magic and Sanity scores for allied and enemy NPCs. The D&D 5e ruleset, provided the View: Health -Ally and View: Health - Non-ally options are set to "Detailed" do display the current Hit Points for PCs and NPCs to the players. I might be wrong about this, but of all the rulesets I have (bought and free), I believe all feature an option to display to the players the Health, or its equivalent for allied and non-allied NPCs.

I respect your decision that displaying Health or Armor to players is out of the scope of the MoreCore ruleset. It's the display of Health for allied NPCs that's most important for my adaptation, as it's only viewable on NPC sheets and my players will potentially be managing many NPCs at a time.

What I'm wondering, is whether it might be possible for me to code an extension that allows a "GM & Player" option for Health and whether a players view of the Health column could be enabled for the CT?

[damned]

It totally can be coded by extension.

[kronovan]

OK cool. Am I being naive that it could be as simple as finding where in the MoreCore ruleset that the "GM and Player" option for 'CT: Column 3 Wounds (Vis)' is enabled and how it's read for the Combat Tracker. And then code the equivalent for 'CT: Column 1 Health (Synced PC/NPC)(Vis)' option?

And while I'm mention that, what does the "Synced PC/NPC" exactly refer to? Does that just meant that Health will be read from the NPC / PC sheet and displayed in Column 1, or is it something perhaps more complex than that?

[damned]

Ohhhh its going to be a lot more complex than just changing the Option.
You are also going to need to edit the ct_client.xml

Where are you seeing Synced PC/NPC?
Sorry I work on lots of projects and cannot recall everything about them all...

[kronovan]

Where are you seeing Synced PC/NPC?

That's what's listed in the Options for the Combat Tracker settings for Health and Defence. The full text listings are "CT: Column 1 Health (Synced PC/NPC)(Vis)" and "CT: Column 2 Health (Synced PC/NPC)(Vis)". Whereas for the Wounds, the Options listing just states "CT: Column 3 Wounds (Vis)".

[Edit] As strange as this may sound, I've confirmed that the /healme roll won't work unless the NPC is in the Combat Tracker and you open the NPC Sheet from there. If you open an NPC from the NPC window, executing /healme in a CT Roll produces the error I reported earlier.

[damned]

I cant recall all my reasoning on those labels.

Health and Defence are present on both PC and NPC sheets but Wounds is only present on PC Sheets. That is how FG typically works. 90% (much more probably) of NPCs are mooks in most systems and games and dont survive past the encounter.
But following that reasoning C4 and C5 are present on both PC and NPC sheets and are syncd...

As to Rolls for NPCs. They are designed only to work from the CT for NPCs.
For PCs they are designed to work from the Charsheet.

[kronovan]

Health and Defence are present on both PC and NPC sheets but Wounds is only present on PC Sheets. That is how FG typically works. 90% (much more probably) of NPCs are mooks in most systems and games and dont survive past the encounter.
But following that reasoning C4 and C5 are present on both PC and NPC sheets and are syncd...

Ah Ok, that's more or less the conclusion I came too - that the synced refers to those column values being directly read from the PC/NPC sheet.

For my tabletop miniatures adaptation, I'm admittedly using MoreCore in an unconventional way, as I'm not using any PC sheets; just NPC sheets. That's because the details on the character cards for the source game are simpler than what you typically have on a PC sheet. Players (both host and connecting) will need to potentially have a good number of character sheets open at a time, so the more compact NPC sheets are a better fit. I'm using the C4 and C5 fields on NPC sheets for Attack and Damage and with that configuration there's a good resemblance to the source game's character cards. As well, a big part of the game is squad building. While we'll be using a 3rd party app for that, I need to create those squads as encounters, so player squads can have multiples for the same NPC. Encounters are proving to work well, because I can share it with the player for confirmation before I push their squad into the CT. That does limit game play to 1 Vs 1 skirmishes, but that's the standard mode of play for the vast majority of matches for the source game anyways. It'd be ideal if there was a way to allow connecting players to control more than green friendly NPCs. As well, having the player able to create their own Encounter and populate it with their squad of NPCs, would be ideal. I'm guessing that's defined and controlled by CoreRPG? So even if I get enthused about attempting an extension that would allow those, it probably isn't doable.

As to Rolls for NPCs. They are designed only to work from the CT for NPCs.
For PCs they are designed to work from the Charsheet.

Yes this poses a challenge for me, as my connecting player needs to have the CT Tracker instance of the NPC sheets. I've found if I drag & drop the NPC from the CT onto their player portrait (they choose a Player 1 pseudo-PC when they connect), that the NPC sheets work, even for /healme rolls. Having the Health column in the connecting players CT Tracker would be quicker for them to discern starting Health vs current wounds as opposed to reading it from the NPC sheet - hence my considering an extension that will allow that.