My AoW website is here. So far, the party are level 5 and at Blackwall Keep.
Nice site Paul. I am particularly impressed with your tracking of party XP. That level of organization is going to stand you in good stead as you approach higher levels.
Let me say that your XP chart really impressed me as well.
Let me say that your XP chart really impressed me as well.
Thanks. I'm using an OpenOffice spredsheet, and PDF is one way to export a document from within it - so I'm not gong to any sort of special trouble to produce it. I'm doing it because our group has been very disorganised: "What level are we all at? Dunno. Everyone level up to 7." Kind takes the thrill out of one of the main parts of the game - feeling that you have earned your advancement.
The other thing we are horribly disorganised about is managing items and gold. Up till now, it's always been "Dudes, am I handing out enough treasure? What's the GP value of what you characters own?". I have been intending for some time to build something to manage character inventory - not the full character sheet, just the inventory - but every time I start work on it, it becomes clear that it's actually a big job.
My current intended architecture is a portal front-end backed by glassfish portal server and MySql. But the data schema alone is a problem, let alone all the bits that need to be working for the damn thing to go. And my right arm is in a cast, which makes coding slow. Oh well. Maybe D&D 4 will take care of it all.
To continue:
My data structure has to handle 3 quite diffent things:
One off items that are part of a module (a key, a map)
Things that are sold in bulk (30 +1 arrows)
Individual items (a short sword, a +1 short sword)
I also want to handle the history of transactions. My current plan is for a two-layer schema.
At the bottom layer, we have a set of buckets. A bucket contains item instances. When a bulk item is moved from one bucket to another, the amount in the item instances is changed. When a non-bulk item is moved, the bucket of the instance is changed. Thus, when you look at the history of yor potions of CLW, you see "bought 5 from X, drank 1, gave 1 to X", wheras an instance of a +1 sword will read "found in room 3, transferred to Cedric, sold to shop X, bought by me"
This means that non-bulk items carry a "qty" field which they don't need, but it's all good because I can use that for charges.
I need to be able to tag item instances as identified and not identified, and the items need to have a type (potion, wand, shotsword) which implies encumberance, and the more specific stuff (potion of X) which affects price. There have to be transfer rules - if you pick up 3 unidentified CLW potions then they don't go into an existin CLW slot, but after you identify them they can be merged.
So that's the bottom layer. The top layer is things like characters, NPCs, dungeon rooms, shops and so on. Things that might contain items. A player, for instance, "owns" three bags - items worn, items carried, and items owned. A shop has rules regarding the type of items it might sell, and is associated with a virtual bag that gets items put into it by the system when a player does a purchase.
Finally, you need the admin layer - user accounts, permissions, campaigns, games, and characters.
Now - that's just the data model. After that's organised and the item types are populated from the SRD somehow, i need a controller layer. It supports use cases such as:
move X of item Y from bag A to bag B
create X of item Y in bag A (shop purchases, dungeon population)
create a player P.
Create a game G.
Game P is DMmed by user DM, and played by users P1, P2, P3. Viewing is public.
Create a character for game G, user P2.
Create a Module M.
Module M owns a unique iem "the horns of the BBEG".
Module M has a shop S - "Alazars potion shop". It sells arcane non-evil poitons up to a value of 2000gp at %110 of the base price.
Module M has rooms R1, R2, R3. All are initially hiden from the players.
The rooms of module M are populated initially with these items ...
Create an instance of Module M for game G.
I don't intend that these operations do any enforcement, but we track all item moves. In particular, I intend that a user be able to add items to their character from thin air: "add this item". It's an inventory tracking system, not an inventory manager.
With the model and controller in place, the final bit is the view - all the portlets allowing you to buy and sell, create modules and games etc.
So, it's a big job.
Let me say that your XP chart really impressed me as well.Thanks. I'm using an OpenOffice spredsheet, and PDF is one way to export a document from within it - so I'm not gong to any sort of special trouble to produce it. I'm doing it because our group has been very disorganised: "What level are we all at? Dunno. Everyone level up to 7." Kind takes the thrill out of one of the main parts of the game - feeling that you have earned your advancement.
The other thing we are horribly disorganised about is managing items and gold. Up till now, it's always been "Dudes, am I handing out enough treasure? What's the GP value of what you characters own?". I have been intending for some time to build something to manage character inventory - not the full character sheet, just the inventory - but every time I start work on it, it becomes clear that it's actually a big job.
I find this a tad odd. I track XP and treasure in Open Office myself. I'm not sure why tracking treasure is more of a chore then tracking XP. From my experience tracking XP requires that one use a whole conversion system as outlined in the DMG. Tracking treasure just means working out the GP value of each treasure in an adventure and dividing that by 4 to make sure your players are meeting their wealth by level requirements.
Once you've given them the money what they do with it is not your problem so you don't really need to track their inventory, just what you gave them.
I find this a tad odd. I track XP and treasure in Open Office myself. I'm not sure why tracking treasure is more of a chore then tracking XP. From my experience tracking XP requires that one use a whole conversion system as outlined in the DMG. Tracking treasure just means working out the GP value of each treasure in an adventure and dividing that by 4 to make sure your players are meeting their wealth by level requirements.
Does this mean that you keep track of your player's inventory? Or does each player maintain a standard OpenOffice spreadsheet, and have to supply you with a copy?
Tracking inventory is no biggie if you are a player, but I was looking at some more organised system to coordinte the thing. The difference between inventory and XP is that players mant to manage their own inventory, whereas XP is assigned by the DM - end of story. Hence the need for some sort of web app.
And the other reason, of course, is that my company may assign me to a client that uses portals, so some experience in coding portlets would come in handy :) .
I find this a tad odd. I track XP and treasure in Open Office myself. I'm not sure why tracking treasure is more of a chore then tracking XP. From my experience tracking XP requires that one use a whole conversion system as outlined in the DMG. Tracking treasure just means working out the GP value of each treasure in an adventure and dividing that by 4 to make sure your players are meeting their wealth by level requirements.
Does this mean that you keep track of your player's inventory? Or does each player maintain a standard OpenOffice spreadsheet, and have to supply you with a copy?
Tracking inventory is no biggie if you are a player, but I was looking at some more organised system to coordinte the thing. The difference between inventory and XP is that players mant to manage their own inventory, whereas XP is assigned by the DM - end of story. Hence the need for some sort of web app.
And the other reason, of course, is that my company may assign me to a client that uses portals, so some experience in coding portlets would come in handy :) .
I'm not tracking their inventory. I'm just making sure that I gave them enough gold to meet their wealth by level requirements. After that I guess I don't care what their inventory is. Why does their inventory matter? I mean so long as you gave them the correct amount of gold?
That said if you do make a dynamic inventory system for them then I'm sure they'll appreciate it. I can't really see why you would care what their inventory is but I can sure see why they would care.
How did a Colour Spray help against a swarm of beetles?
Nice job.
BTW, there's a javascript method out there allowing your site's transparent png files to be viewed correctly with IE. If you're interested, it involves a file called pngfix.js (something to search for) and is easy to implement. It's been invaluable for my Savage Tide site.
Regards :)
How did a Colour Spray help against a swarm of beetles?
Well they got eyes, don't they?
it involves a file called pngfix.js
Thanks heaps. I'll try it tonight.
How did a Colour Spray help against a swarm of beetles?Well they got eyes, don't they?
C-Spray is mind-affecting. A beetle swarm is immune to it twice over, once for being a swarm and once for being mindless, and *also* immune to most of the individual effects it can have.
How did a Colour Spray help against a swarm of beetles?
Well they got eyes, don't they?
C-Spray is mind-affecting. A beetle swarm is immune to it twice over, once for being a swarm and once for being mindless, and *also* immune to most of the individual effects it can have.
If it was the only thing available to the party I'd allow it, as it would be that or a TPK.
Well spotted though - I missed it.
BTW, this is an example of a great site without the bells and whistles - nice one!
Also, your geekiness is to be commended - that XP chart is something else. :D
BTW, this is an example of a great site without the bells and whistles - nice one!
Also, your geekiness is to be commended - that XP chart is something else. :D
Well, the lack of bells and whistles is owing to its being all static content. Notice the images, though? I use The GIMP to make the shadows around those images partially transparent. Great - except that Internet Explorer doesn't understand PNG files.
As for the XP, meh. It's just a spreadsheet.
Geeky will be when I have the inventory tracker in place. One of these days.
I'm enjoying reading your Blog.
You ask rhetorically if anyone else has players that would decide to take a Dragons Egg and try and raise it themselves. I suspect that the answer is yes - everyone else has those exact same players. Leastwise if there is a group that sees a Dragon Egg and does not think 'Oh boy! lets get us a Dragon ally!' I've never met them.
Your far to kind to them.
They have a Half-Ogre War Hulk and you let him wrestle the Illithid into submission. The Illithids mind blast, or whatever it is, is a supernatural ability, it can't be stopped by a grapple. He should have blasted that Ogre right out of his hair with round after round of good old brain cookage. I bet that Warhulk does not have much of a Will Save.
So yeah - its a cool read, but your not doing much business in terms of the souls of the dead.
Your players make me laugh, they're adorable.
ray of dizziness
Is their no save on this spell or something? It seems pretty clear that it made both Madtooth and Ilthane minor annoyances quickly and easily dispatched.
Well I've got to near the end of your blog. Its clear from what you do have linked that what you have linked and titled as 31 is in fact 32. Whats listed as 32 is 33 etc.
Week 47 - Smells in here something awful! is up.
I haven't been posting to this thread, but now I have my emila program hooked to the thread RSS, meaning that if anyone posts here, I'll know about it and be able to reply. We are halfway through Kings of the Rift - the end is in sight ... but better late than never, I suppose.
Arrgh! Arrgh! This is not the correct part of these boards for campaign logs. The campaign log is now here.